One Small Step for a Man, One Giant Leap for Mankind: The Moon Landing Hoax

A Wednesday morning on July 16, 1969, a fervent crew of three astronauts including Neil Armstrong, Michael Collins, and Edwin Aldrin, Jr. was launched by a Saturn V rocket into a controversy. Apollo 11 departed from Cape Kennedy into Earth’s orbit after Columbia, the service module, attached itself with the lunar module, Eagle, and continued the group’s journey towards the Moon. By July 20, Apollo 11 approached the craterous satellite after hovering in its orbit for twenty-four hours. Armstrong and Aldrin allegedly ambled over the lunar surface upon the Lunar Module’s arrival on the Tranquility Base, Armstrong reporting: “The Eagle has landed”. Upon his descent from the Eagle’s ladder, Armstrong delivered his famous words: “That's one small step for a man, one giant leap for mankind” (“The First Lunar Landing”). After arriving back to Earth at a high speed of 25,000 miles per hour, Aldrin, Armstrong, and Collins parachuted to safety into the Pacific Ocean on July 24. During a post-flight press conference in the Manned Spacecraft Center’s auditorium in Houston, Texas, Armstrong, Collins, and Aldrin recall the aspects of their adventure, beginning from the undocking process to the placing of the flag and ultimately the voyage back home, at the same time presenting photographs (“The First Lunar Landing”). Upon Buzz Aldrin’s return, he became a victim to severe depression and alcoholism, losing touch with his heroism and plummeting into a stage he referred to as the “downward spiral” (Aldrin & Abraham 271). As for the other men in the Apollo crew, they returned to their regular lives, amid soaking up the fame and glory by the American public. Americans across the nation tuned in to the news channels on their television sets and watche...

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