Editing 2668: Artemis Quote

{{comic
| number    = 2668
| date      = September 5, 2022
| title     = Artemis Quote
| image     = artemis_quote.png
| titletext = Another option: "It is an honor to be the first human to set foot on the moon."
}}

==Explanation==
{{incomplete|created by a COLLABORATIVE EFFORT. Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

The {{w|Artemis program}} is a series of planned space missions that will land humans on the Moon and begin to set up infrastructure for a permanent human presence. Humans first landed on the Moon in 1969 as part of the Apollo program. They have not been back since 1972.  

When the first human to walk on the Moon, {{w|Neil Armstrong}}, took the first step there, he was intending to say, "That's one small step for '''''a''''' man, but a giant leap for mankind [emphasis added]." [https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/48/Frase_de_Neil_Armstrong.ogg The audio recording] omits the first instance of the word "a", making the sentence confusing, because conflating "a" man with "mankind" is obviously unintended. This recording was broadcast worldwide at the time and has become a famous historical quote.

The {{w|schwa}} grammatical article, "a", may be optional in certain contexts and dialects of American English.{{Actual citation needed}} That it was apparently elided by Armstrong in the excitement, thus modifying the semantic meaning of the historical phrase, has a certain controversy and therefore fuels a certain type of hunour.

Subsequently Armstrong and others have blamed insufficiently tuned {{w|voice activity detection}} hardware circuitry intended to save power in radio voice transmission, but NASA engineers, third-party historians and their hired experts have never been able to corroborate that explanation.

Randall proposes that the first Artemis astronaut should create an even more confusing quote, saying the sentence, "This is one of my favorite historical quotes — the first words spoken by an Artemis astronaut on the moon," aloud as they step onto the Moon. When quoted by later historians, it would be confusingly self-referential. Speaking as if they are alluding to something from the past, it would add contextual confusion to any attempt to directly quote or replay the words from then on. This is very unlikely, and funny merely as a recommendation. If it actually happened, it might be both hilarious and scandalous.

The title text suggests an alternate phrase by which the Artemis astronaut would say being the first (rather than 13th) human on the Moon is a great honor. People hearing this quote in the future could assume that Artemis was the first crewed mission to the Moon. It could also feed into contemporary conspiracy theories that the Apollo landings were faked, furthering the confusion.

==Transcript==
{{incomplete transcript|Do NOT delete this tag too soon.}}

:[The surface of the moon, with craters and rocks, and a rocket with a ladder attached and an astronaut stepping onto the moon's surface.]
:Astronaut: This is one of my favorite historical quotes -- the first words spoken by an Artemis astronaut on the moon.

:Caption: Neil Armstrong's "man"/"a man" quote created a lot of historical confusion, and I think it's our duty to expand on that legacy with Artemis.

{{comic discussion}}