The Classy Drink Buzz Aldrin Chose Over Tang After The Moon Landing
The recent Artemis II mission has many catching moon fever all over again. If you've been like us and were glued to NASA coverage or spiraling down a very specific 2 a.m. Wikipedia rabbit hole about the Apollo program, then you know some fascinating bits of little-known trivia regarding previous lunar missions. But we bet you don't know about this bit. In 1969, when Buzz Aldrin and company landed on the moon for the first time, he had a special drink in the lander: wine.
Despite Tang's reputation as the unofficial drink of the space age, Aldrin wasn't particularly sentimental about the stuff. Even though the menu for "space-worthy" food and drink isn't long, he famously had no patience for it. What he actually brought to the moon — tucked carefully among his gear — was wine. Real wine, along with a small portion of bread. But he didn't bring it to have a siesta on the moon, no. As a committed Presbyterian elder at his Houston-area church, Aldrin wanted to mark the moment of humanity's first lunar landing with something personally sacred — a Christian communion ceremony performed nearly 240,000 miles from Earth.
The wine, when poured into a small chalice provided by his church, "curled" and moved alongside the sides of the cup in the moon's lower gravity. He ate the bread, read a passage of scripture (John 15:5), and sat quietly with the moment. Neil Armstrong, who held his own spiritual views, watched without joining in. It was brief and private and, for being the first religious ceremony done on the moon, was rather low-key. As it turns out, NASA had intentionally kept it that way.
The wine and bread were kept secret for a tasteful reason
Buzz Aldrin told NASA administrators long before the flight that he'd like the moment to be broadcasted to the millions of watchers and listeners on Earth. However, Aldrin was not permitted to do so due to a previous "incident" in an earlier mission: Apollo 8. The flight was not unlike that of Artemis II, though instead of landing, the crew of three orbited the moon several times before returning to Earth. During the mission, the astronauts read aloud the first 10 verses of the Book of Genesis to a live broadcast on Christmas Eve of 1968. This moment didn't sit well with Madalyn Murray O'Hair, a prominent atheist activist, who filed a lawsuit against NASA, arguing that astronauts (as federal employees) shouldn't be performing religious acts in an official capacity.
The case never went anywhere, but it sure shook NASA, who only approved the astronaut's plan on one condition: strip the public broadcast of anything overtly religious. So, the wine was poured and the bread was eaten, mirroring the same meal eaten at the Last Supper, but the whole thing stayed inside the lunar module. Not a word of it went out over the airwaves. Soon after, the crew would partake in the first ever meal on the moon, which featured a pineapple-grapefruit drink and some coffee. As for Tang? As far as Buzz was concerned, that stuff could stay on Earth.