Lost in space

This chilling memo, from William Safire to H.R. Haldeman, outlines what the U.S. had planned to say if Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were either killed or stranded in space. Of the two creepy options, I think the idea that they were alive, on the moon, but couldn't get back, is the most heart-chilling.

The memo bluntly refers to calling the "widows-to-be" and suggests that Nixon say "Fate has ordained that the men who went to the moon to explore in peace will stay on the moon to rest in peace."

Rob and I just read a Richard Matheson (author of "I Am Legend," which became the Charlton Heston zombie movie "The Omega Man") short story about three astronauts who land on a planet and see a crashed replica of their own spaceship there already. They then find their own dead bodies inside the second spaceship. They begin to believe that they have somehow stumbled into their own future, and that if they take off in the rocket to go home, they will indeed crash. But finally they decide they have to go up, because staying there, waiting to die or hoping to evade death, is much worse than taking action, any action, and rolling the dice.

I sometimes think of poor Laika, the space dog, the poor thing, and am glad we never left a person up in space, to die scared and far from home.