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One small step for man – the moon landing in sound

one small stepHere’s one sound that needs no introduction – possibly the most famous radio broadcast of all time, as Neil Armstrong sets foot on the Moon to declare “one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”.

The raw facts are as follows:

On July 20, 1969, the Apollo 11 crew successfully completed the national goal set by President John F. Kennedy eight years prior: to perform a crewed lunar landing and return to Earth.

Crew: Neil Armstrong, Edwin E. Aldrin Jr., Michael Collins
Launch: July 16, 1969; 9:32 a.m. EST
Landing: July 24, 1969; 12:50 p.m. EST

City version:

How to reimagine such an iconic sound? Simon Woods took on the challenge, and saw it as his chance to offer a tribute to the many thousands of people who worked on the Apollo 11 mission:

“The different voices, all saying the quote “I’m stepping off the LEM, one small step”, etc. in different languages, represents the different backgrounds of the men and women, engineers, scientists and technicians, who worked to put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon.

“According some estimates there were as many as 400,000 people who worked on the project.

“It also represents the achievement for all the people of the world.

“On the technical side – the voices are from Google Translate, the later lead line was generated by dropping the audio file of Neil Armstrong into a MIDI track and altering the notes to fit.

“The white noise is taken from the noise between Neil’s comments and altered.”

Memory version: