Putting The Moon Flag Thing Into Perspective
The lunar flag-planting was no big deal. Leaving it out of the movie is no big deal too., opinion by Homer Hickam, Washington Post
“The history here is instructive. Although the lunar flag-planting may seem like a given in hindsight, for months before the flight of Apollo 11 there was a debate within the federal government and in the press as to the wisdom of doing it. The argument for the flag was that the voyage was an entirely American effort that was paid for by American taxpayers, who deserved to see their flag planted in the lunar regolith. The argument against was that it could cast the landing in the eyes of the world as a nationalistic exercise, diminishing what was otherwise indisputably a triumph of American values and ideals, not to mention a demonstration of our technical superiority over our great adversary, the Soviet Union. Ultimately, just a few months before the flight, Congress ordered NASA to put up the flag. The result, a rushed bit of engineering, was a set of spindly tubes holding a government-issued flag valued at around $5 and, since there was no room in the moon lander, flown clamped to a leg of the vehicle. Armstrong and Aldrin put up the flag and saluted it, then got on to other business.”
I have always liked the way that Homer Hickam tells a story. Especially in this case, he’s straight to the point yet includes enough detail that you understand the context in its entirety.
It doesn’t appear that Neil had much say in the matter of whether or not a flag was planted. Once the decision was made, obviously Neil and Buzz planted the thing. But that was just one item on a very long checklist of things to do. It didn’t contribute to the science or engineering knowledge gained by Apollo 11. At best, planting the flag was a relatively minor item on the checklist, IMHO.
Perhaps, but the story that Jack Kinser told NASA’s oral history department indicated that Neil Armstrong provided input and had to provide approval of the design. It also appears that Jack Kinser had the original idea for a free standing flag,
https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/hi…
“Kinzler: In regard to the flag, I stood there in that—sat there in that meeting and suggested that, “You know, if we had a freestanding flag, it’d be much more appropriate than just depending on the Moon flag painted—I mean, the American flag painted on the lunar lander.” So, I got an action item to go and come back with a projection, you know, a scheme. So, I went back to the office and I remembered how nicely telescoping tubes work and so on. So, I got some telescoping tubes out of the shops and we made up a prototype, and then I got a directive to show it to Neil Armstrong and see if he would approve of what we had. So, he came over to the Tech Service
Division. We put our flag together in—on its little prototype. And he said, “That’s perfect. Let’s go with that.”
In reading his stories it is clear that NASA really has changed from those Apollo days. Today there would probably be endless committee meetings, study groups and eventually a RFP sent to industry followed by a long formal decision process for something that was just done in a couple of simple meetings then. Maybe that is a clue on why NASA hasn’t been able to return to the Moon or go beyond LEO…
Yes, Neil Armstrong approved of the design. But, he had nothing to do with the original decision to include the flag as part of the mission.
Even looking at the trailer, the movie is about Neil Armstrong. Yes it climaxes with the successful Apollo 11 mission, but Apollo 11 isn’t the focus of the movie, Neil Armstrong is. And from what I understand, the flag that everyone is complaining about is right there in the movie. They omitted the planting of the flag, and Buzz saluting it as Neil took his picture. But they didn’t completely erase the flag from the movie.
Anne Platoff’s 1993 paper, “Where No Flag Has Gone Before: Political and Technical Aspects of Placing a Flag on the Moon” is a particularly timely look at this issue. It can be found at: https://ntrs.nasa.gov/archi…
I found another link with color pictures at https://www.jsc.nasa.gov/hi…
although for some reason that link is missing the appendix with the engineering drawings that your link has.
So apparently it was NASA that decided on the flag. More specifically it was decided by the Committee on Symbolic Activities for the First Lunar Landing which was appointed by Administrator Paine to select something that would “signalize the first lunar landing as an historic forward step of all mankind that has been accomplished by the United States” and that would not give the impression that the United States was ‘taking possession of the moon'”. According to Jack Kinzler, Neil Armstrong was one of the committee members. So I guess in that sense he did have some say in it.
The committee eventually decided that a combination of a freestanding U.S. flag along with a non-nationalistic plaque on the LM would send the right message. Both the flag and the plaque were Jack Kinzler’s idea, although he says Bob Gilruth thought of having the world hemispheres on the plaque instead of the U.S. flag that was in Jack’s design. After an apparently heated debate about the flag the House agreed, in the form of a directive in the next years appropriations bill. So essentially they said “we agree, now we order you to do it”. However the bill wasn’t finalized with the Senate until after the Moon landing.
There was a slight mistake in the article when it stated:
“President John F. Kennedy, in his historic speech of September 1962, expressed his vision of space exploration for an audience assembled in the stadium Rice University. Earlier that year he had challenged the United States to go to the moon within the decade.”
Actually Kennedy made his “before this decade is out” speech to Congress more than a year earlier in May 1961.
In the context of the times at which Apollo 11’s Eagle landed on the Moon, once the decision was made to plant the American flag. It was done; that is history! For Hollyweird to omit this, is simply an attempt at revisionist history, for whatever reasons they have. A lot of people will see this movie who were not born when the landing happened. To omit part of history is to do a disservice to people in understanding the those times.
BTW: If anyone thinks the Soviet Union wouldn’t have planted its flag, if their cosmonauts had been the first to land on the Moon, they are delusional. It will be interesting to see how the rest of the movie portrays the life and times.
By most accounts the flag is shown on the moon just not the actual action of planting. People will see the american flag on moon so not sure why we need to see Neil push the pole into the ground.
No it’s not. By that standard, not including every single bit of historical minutia in a movie of finite length is revisionist an attempt at revisionist history.
Maybe some comparisons would help. For example, _Patton_ was a well regarded biopic of the Second World War general. (Well, it won seven Academy Awards, although the Best Actor didn’t accept his.) I’d have to watch it again and look some things up, but I’m quite sure limited time forced the directors to leave some things out or skip over some details. That’s normal for movies about a person or historical events. In that context, is the Apollo 11 flag planting any different? Were equally significant events left out from other movies, without anyone complaining too much?
I agree that the director probably didn’t intend it as a political statement. Damien Chazelle only came of age during the ISS era and so probably has no knowledge of Project Apollo beyond what he learned in school and the book, “First Man”, assuming he read it. Since this is his first historical picture he probably didn’t give any thought to the different world that Project Apollo took place in or its historical significance. His specialty, reviewing his pass films, has been on character growth coming from conflict and I expect that is the approach he took to “First Man”. Pity that a more experience director who was familiar with the space program, like Ron Howard or Tom Hanks, wasn’t given this picture. It will be interesting to see the full product when it is finally released to the public and folks familiar with Project Apollo review it.
It was interesting to learn from Anne Platoffs paper listed below that the actual flag was purchased at a nearby Sears by a NASA worker during their lunch hour, about as American as it gets 🙂
It was also interesting to read that Edward White and James McDivitt purchased themselves the flags that they wore on their spacesuits.
2. White’s crewmate, James A. McDivitt, also wore a flag on his suit. The astronauts purchased the flags themselves, but following their flight NASA made the flag patch a regular feature on the space suits. Dick Lattimer, “All We Did Was Fly to the Moon” (Gainesville, FL: Whispering Eagle Press, 1983), p. 23
As much as I admire Hickman I don’t agree with his statement: “As it turned out, people across the world didn’t much care. What they
saw and celebrated were two fellow human beings walking on the surface
of the moon.” I believe that Americans saw it as a truly American achievement, that our society and the foundation of our country was what made us great and allowed us to do great things. One of the most popular photos is that of the lander, Armstrong, and our flag. I think this is for a good reason. We were proud to be Americans and proud to mark the achievement. As the saying goes, “It isn’t bragging if you can do it.”
But the monument says “we came in peace for all mankind”, yes?
(I think?)
It was still a point of American pride. We didn’t put a world flag up there. We put an American flag as a testament to American technological prowess. It was for humanity but a humanity lead by the US. I don’t believe the movie is meant to be anti-american. I think the star made this an issue in his statements to the press. I will say, the planting of the flag is an odd is moment to omit as Buzz Aldrin Saluting the flag is one of the more iconic photographs. But that in and of itself does not make the movie anti-american.
One thing certain this flag controversy is providing lots of publicity
for the movie and the book outside usual circles of space buffs.
Interesting to read how the flag was quickly added to the mission and
what was done to make it happen without a mountain of paperwork. Plus that ten minutes is a good portion of EVA time. Last minute planning reminds me of the TV camera and how on that day it almost didn’t work (imagine ***no*** video of Neil coming down the ladder). In the background there were many other issues such as clearing up that 1201 alarm software issues. At touchdown there was concerned about the ascent program if it might have similar problems which many computer people pulled an allnighter to remedy the issue (I think I read this from the book “Apollo: Race To The Moon”).
As a young boy I perceived the flag planting as something natural after a big deal of being able to have men walk the surface of the Moon, not as claiming the Moon as US territory. My feelings were bring back the most moon rocks they can!
Regarding Armstrong, Gina Lollobrigida managed to do a photo essay of Armstrong (I have yet to find this book), her 2009 “Fotografa” book has this picture of him at University of Cincinnati. It would be interesting to see more as Neil didn’t do much interaction with media.
https://scontent-sjc3-1.xx….
Why does everything have to be so ridiculously political? I have not seen the movie but I’ve read the book and if its relatively faithful, this is a great opportunity to help new generations learn of how, from modest beginnings, Neal Armstrong was able, through his effort, diligence and determination, to become an astronaut who will go down in history while serving his nation. There is no more patriotic statement than that and if some stupid argument over the flag planting causes people to trash the movie that will be more of a disservice to our history than a ten second scene that wasn’t included.
My brother and I will still go see the movie, and we are sure that it will show sides of Armstrong we have not seen before. Of course, we will never know for sure if the producer and director even thought about the flag planting scene, since there was seemingly no effort to avoid showing it in other scenes according to various sources. The obvious motive that many will ascribe to them, (assuming it was a deliberate omission), was that the movie was also intended for and aimed at an international audience. They should have known omitting it would cause a political flap, which is a shame since it will reduce the audience for a probable good movie on Apollo.
I liked the idea of both a flag and a plaque, showing different sides of the overall motive for Apollo, even though it is partly responsible for leaving us stranded in Low Earth Orbit for half a century afterwards. Afterwards the US news media had a lot of people convinced that the Russians had never been in a moon race, until images of the Russian lunar module and the Lenin booster were found years later. It is too bad that Korolev never got enough money to build a test stand, so that we could have seen a successful Lenin booster launch.
I was 18 years old, am a Canadian, and watched the whole 30 hours or so of coverage (unprecedented for a news program to run that long!) from my mother’s couch, where I lived for the entire time. The American flag planting was a non-issue – that and the phone call from Nixon were a distracting side-show that we didn’t think had anything to do with the triumph of the landing. It was kind of like a time-out from the proper mission, that hadn’t happened on previous missions, and were properly understated. For instance, the Apollo 8 crew read from the Book of Genesis, not from the American constitution! In fact, the thing to be proud of was “we came in peace for all mankind”. We all figured it would have been a much different story if the USSR had contributed to history by being first, they would have probably said something like, “we come in peace for the glorious motherland” or something similar. That was the victory of the space race. They didn’t come in peace for the USA. It was “one giant leap for mankind”, not for Americans. NASA represented the best of the western world and its values, not just America.
“The lunar flag-planting was no big deal.”
That’s a crock. It WAS and still is a big deal.
I didn’t write the headline and, in fact, had it changed. You have to read my op-ed to understand what I was actually saying. In any case, I think the film is going to be of such quality and good story-telling, this controversy won’t matter much.