Good luck, Mr. Gorsky
Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky ( German Good luck, Mr. Gorsky ), according to a modern forecast a phrase the American astronaut Neil Armstrong during the moon landing to have said on 21 July 1969th The story first spread from the mid-1990s as an Internet hoax , i.e. as a kind of false report or joke, but later found its way into traditional media.
According to the official transcript of the Apollo mission, Armstrong did not say these words. Instead, the transcript contains a comment according to which Armstrong wrote on November 29, 1995 that the joke was a year old at the time and that he had heard it for the first time in California from comedian Buddy Hackett .
Despite this clear denial by Armstrong, this anecdote is repeatedly classified as a true story and spread in numerous variations. Some commentators suspected that the reason for this was that the story was very detailed in many details, such as the names of the people involved or the dates mentioned.
The alleged story
As a participant in the Apollo 11 space mission, Armstrong was the first person to step on the lunar surface on July 21, 1969 at 02:56:20 a.m. (UTC). He spoke his famous sentence:
“That's one small step for ‹a› man… one… giant leap for mankind!”
"This is a small step for (a) human ... a ... big leap for humanity!"
After Armstrong returned to the Lunar Module after his lunar walk , he allegedly uttered this further sentence wishing Mr. Gorsky the best of luck. According to the story, nobody at NASA's Mission Control Center knew what the phrase meant either. Against the background of the space race, it was suspected that there was a little joke about a Soviet cosmonaut . However, the review then quickly showed that there was no cosmonaut of that name.
After his return to earth, Armstrong was asked again and again what the ominous sentence meant. But he never gave an answer to that question. Only after 26 years did he reveal the secret during a lecture on July 5, 1995 in Tampa (Florida). After being approached by a reporter again on the sentence, Armstrong is said to have replied that Mr. Gorsky has since passed away and that he can now answer the question. The former astronaut is said to have reported the following story to the journalist:
“When I was a kid, I was playing baseball with my brother in the backyard. He hit a fly ball that landed in front of my neighbors' bedroom window. The neighbors were Mr. & Mrs. Gorsky. As I leaned down to pick up the ball, I heard Mrs. Gorsky shouting at Mr. Gorsky, 'Oral sex! Oral sex you want? You'll get oral sex when the kid next door walks on the moon! '”
“When I was a kid, I played baseball with my brother in the backyard. He hit a big ball that landed in front of my neighbors' bedroom window. The neighbors were Mr. and Mrs. Gorsky. As I bent down to pick up the ball, I heard Mrs. Gorsky yell at her husband: ' Oral sex ! Do you want oral sex? You get your oral sex when the neighbor child walks on the moon! '"
There are numerous variations of the story in which, instead of the brother, a childhood friend of Armstrong hits the ball or the neighboring family has another name such as Seligman, Schultz, Lipinski or Klein instead of Gorsky.
Reception and post-history
During the STS-109 space mission , mission specialist John Mace Grunsfeld radioed the sentence Good Luck Mr. Hubble! After completing work on the Hubble space telescope .
The Norwegian director Astrid Aakra made the short film Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky! ( Norwegian Hell og lykke, Mr. Gorsky! ), in which the incident is shown on film.
The sentence is also mentioned in the opening credits of the comic book adaptation Watchmen - Die Wächter . In a sequence that depicts various historical events of the 20th century that deviate from actual processes, an astronaut speaks this sentence during the moon landing.
The sentence is also the title of various pieces of music:
- Sleeper : Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky from The It Girl (1996)
- Transglobal Underground : Good Luck Mr. Gorsky from the album Psychic Karaoke (1996)
- Moon: Good Luck Mr. Gorsky from the album Gorsky Park (2007)
Individual evidence
- ↑ JA Hitchcock, Loraine Page and Vinton Cerf : Net Crimes & Misdemeanors: Outmaneavering Web Spammers, Stalkers, and Con Artists. Cyberage Books, 2005, ISBN 978-0-910965-72-9 , p. 67.
- ↑ a b Apollo 11: Corrected Transcript and Commentary , accessed June 25, 2010.
- ↑ a b Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky at snopes.com, accessed June 25, 2010.
- ↑ Apollo 11 at nasa.gov
- ^ David Baum: Lightning in a Bottle: Proven Lessons for Leading Change. Kaplan Publishing, 2000, ISBN 978-0-7931-3595-0 , p. 45
- ^ STS-109 Mission Control Center Status Report # 18 , accessed June 25, 2010
- ↑ Good Luck, Mr. Gorsky in the Internet Movie Database (English)
- ↑ Sleeper - The It Girl at discogs.com, accessed June 25, 2010.
- ^ Transglobal Underground - Psychic Karaoke at discogs.com, accessed June 25, 2010.
- ^ Moon - Gorsky Park at discogs.com, accessed June 25, 2010.