Interesting...

...bit of pre-prepared press statement (a short speech) that was produced for President Nixon in 1969 just in case the Apollo moon landing went terribly wrong has been published by the rubbish bin-divers over at The Smoking Gun, a scan of the document is here...

"These brave men, Neil Armstrong and Edwin Aldrin, know that there is no hope for their recovery. But they also know that there is hope for mankind in their sacrifice."

It all could have been so different...reading it evokes feelings like Star Trek episodes where someone is mucking around with the timeline and changing history...thoughts of what they would have done (and what I would have done, had I been in that situation) if the booster on the lander had failed to fire...just open the hatch and walk until the air ran out? Move rocks around into an enormous tag hopeful that it might be visible from Earth as some sort of legacy...? I wonder if they gave them suicide pills...