Parallel worlds and alternate realities–Apollo 13 and Nixon’s Apollo 11 moon disaster

Ask anyone who was alive in 1969 what their most vivid memory of a world event was and they’ll likely come up with word of President Kennedy’s assassination or the Apollo 11 moon landing. To go back in time and replay the mission events that led up to Michael Collins dropping Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the lunar surface would be nothing but exciting. This weekend we remember that moon mission that did not result in a lunar landing, Apollo 13, a mission that has been called NASA’s “most successful failure” for the achievement of NASA scientists and three other astronauts: Jack Swigert, Fred Haise, and Jim Lovell.

Forty-five years ago the world waited to find out whether these astronauts would make it back to Earth, as chronicled in documentaries like the History Channel’s Man, Moment, Machine: Apollo 13 – Triumph on the Dark Side of the Moon and Ron Howard’s modern classic blockbuster Apollo 13, starring Tom Hanks, Bill Paxton, and Kevin Bacon. But what if Apollo 11 had encountered a similar fate?

In the summer of 1969 the Nixon administration contemplated that outcome. If something, anything happened to the astronauts on Apollo 11, how would America respond to such a disaster? Nixon speechwriter William Safire wrote a speech for Nixon to be broadcast if Apollo 11 didn’t make it back–specifically if astronauts Armstrong and Aldrin were somehow stranded on the Moon.

To promote a news series on famous letters on the BBC, actor Benedict Cumberbatch read Nixon’s speech–a “what if?” that we’re fortunate never was actually read by the President. Here’s Cumberbatch (affecting an American accent) performing the reading:

This past week a Midwest motion graphics and visual effects designer named Neil Smith released a video that followers of NASA and space travel will love. He adapted the mission patches each of the Apollo missions and fleshed them out into full-color animations. Watch his video here:

Smith explained his process for making the animations on this blog, saying “I’ve always thought it would be cool to animate all the mission patches from NASA’s manned moon missions. So when looking for a short project to do while teaching myself a bit more about the Octane renderer for C4D, this seemed like the perfect choice.”

Finally, in case you missed it, the National Air and Space Museum at the Smithsonian Institution released photos on April 1 of its new installation of Wonder Woman’s invisible jet plane in the main atrium of the Washington, D.C. facility. It is installed just above Charles Lindbergh’s Spirit of St. Louis, the Apollo 11 command module Columbia, and the Mercury Friendship 7 that was piloted by John Glenn. Check out the details at the NASM official blog here.