On July 20, 1969, NASA successfully pulled off their seemingly impossible Apollo 11 mission to put the first two men – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – on the Moon. Armstrong made history, jumping off the lunar lander Eagle and delivering his legendary “one small step” speech to the millions of anxious people watching back on Earth, before his colleague joined him around 20 minutes later. The late astronaut became an overnight sensation after burying the US flag into the lunar surface and bringing an end to the Space Race with the Soviet Union.
However, a new book has claimed Aldrin thought he should have been the one to be propelled into fame.
James Donovan revealed during his new book “Shoot for the Moon” how the now 89-year-old lost his temper when he worked out he would play second fiddle in the mission and decided to take it to Armstrong.
He wrote: “When Aldrin heard a rumour that Slayton had decided that Armstrong would be the first to walk on the Moon, he was not happy.
“He also heard that Neil’s civilian status was a reason for the choice – NASA wanted to make a clear statement about the non-military nature of the landing and of the American space programme as a whole.
“Aldrin decided to confront Armstrong about it.
“According to Aldrin, Neil ‘equivocated a minute or so, then with a certain coolness, I had not known he possessed he said that the decision was quite historical and he didn’t want to rule out the possibility of going first.’”
However, according to Mr Donovan, his scheming did not stop there.
He added: “Aldrin approached a few other lunar module pilots and used charts and graphs and statistics to show why he, and they, should step out on the Moon before other crewmen.
“When he tried to discuss it with Mike Collins, Mike cut him off.
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Aldrin would later claim that this satisfied him, it had been the ambiguity, he said, that he found unsettling.
“Buzz may have been okay with the explanation, but his father wasn’t.
“Soon after Buzz told him about it, the elder Aldrin contacted high-placed friends with connections to NASA and the military and tried to have the plan changed.”
More recently, former astronaut Mike Massimino shed some light on the decision.
He explained: “I think that they picked someone humble.
“Actually, I used to think that maybe at first, but I think lately, in the last few years, I’ve changed my thinking of it.
“Because I think that is almost too much thinking.
“I think really what they saw was this was the right man to land on the Moon.”
Mr Massimino rounded off his point for viewers, explaining NASA picked the best man for the job.
He continued: “Whether or not he was gregarious, whether or not he was shy, whatever those personality traits were.
“He was the right man because he understood what was happening, he was going to focus on that job 100 percent, not be distracted.
“Maybe that has partly to do with the fame-seeking, but I think really he was chosen not for that, for the personality part of it, but because he was the right man to do that job.”