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1484: Apollo Speeches

2026-01-21T23:00:38Z

COBRIEN: Fix broken link

{{comic
| number = 1484
| date = February 9, 2015
| title = Apollo Speeches
| image = apollo_speeches.png
| titletext = While our commitment to recycling initiatives has been unwavering, this is not a cost any of us should be expected to pay.
}}

==Explanation==
As explained in the comic, {{w|Richard Nixon|Nixon}} staffer {{w|William Safire}} wrote [https://news.lettersofnote.com/p/in-event-of-moon-disaster two speeches] for the United States President to deliver, depending on whether or not the {{w|Apollo 11}} return launch was successful. When the outcome of an event (moon landing, military actions, etc.) can't be predicted with sufficient certainty, it is a common practice for "[http://www.archives.gov/presidential-libraries/events/centennials/nixon/exhibit/nixon-online-exhibit-disaster.html contingency speeches]" to be prepared.

The rest of the comic runs with this theme, making the false claim that Safire had written several other such contingency speeches for increasingly unlikely possibilities. First listed are a couple pages from the real contingency speech to be delivered in the event that the astronauts were left stranded on the Moon. The speeches after that deal with the following increasingly improbable contingencies:

;The spacecraft went missing
This was relatively unlikely, as communication with the spacecraft was maintained throughout the entire mission, except for when it transited behind the Moon. There were times, even on the nearside, when communications were 'spotty', and they had to change which antennas were used, but the problems were more with telemetry readings than the loss of scheduled voice contact.

;The astronauts had stolen the ship and piloted it towards Mars
While the crew could have redirected the ship while sending insulting messages to Earth, the spacecraft lacked the power to fly all the way to Mars within any reasonable period of time or the supplies for the astronauts to survive such an extended trip by several orders of magnitude. Furthermore, the crew was made of three adult men who would not have been entrusted with the mission had they shown signs of immaturity or mental instability. (Indeed, {{w|Gordon Cooper}} was not allowed to fly on {{w|Apollo 13}} because of his lax attitude towards training.) It is even more unlikely that multiple astronauts would have had mental breakdowns at about the same time, in a short enough time interval to prevent the sane two astronauts from radioing back to inform Johnson Space Center of what was going on and request sending a psychologist to CAPCOM. (The cramped environment and relative environment could have made this more likely than the probability of the majority of a group of three on Earth suffering mental breakdowns in the timeframe of a few days, but the crew had radio contact with Earth, and they had each other for company, which was more than the astronauts of Mercury had, and they didn't suffer mental breakdowns.)

The quote "…'''commit itself, before this''' year '''is out'''…" is similar to John F. Kennedy's quote of "…'''commit itself''' to achieving the goal''', before this''' decade '''is out'''…" that kicked off the Moon race; this was likely intentional.

;More astronauts than expected were found in the recovered ship
The appearance of three (possibly six?) additional astronauts ventures into the realm of possibility normally reserved for science fiction such as "Twilight Zone" episodes.

;The ship had hit the U.S.S. Hornet and crushed Nixon
The {{w|USS Hornet (CV-12)|USS ''Hornet''}} was the ship that recovered the Apollo 11 astronauts after they completed their return mission by landing their command module in the Pacific Ocean; President Nixon himself was on board to greet them upon their return. Apollo 11 famously landed in the Pacific Ocean, and the single ship tasked with its recovery would be a very small target to hit for the technology even if that had been the intent, which it was of course not. Spiro Agnew was, in 1969, Vice President of the United States, and thus next in line for the presidency. This joke plays off the extreme improbability of the ship, and indeed President, being hit and triggering a succession, causing "President Agnew" to address the world.

This is not as implausible as it sounds. The re-entry guidance had become good enough by Apollo 11 that the destination point of the capsule was moved several hundred yards from the carrier's position for exactly this reason. Such a collision had been the subject of jokes at NASA, until one day an engineer came to Gene Kranz and said, "The more I think about it, the less I think it is a joke."

;The re-entry craft had been sold for scrap and crushed along with the astronauts inside
Apollo 11 observed a strict quarantine procedure after landing. This possibility requires extraordinary incompetence and unholy zeal for recycling programs. The command module was historically recovered, examined, and is now on permanent display in the {{w|National Air and Space Museum}}. Primary sources indicate that the astronauts were allowed to leave the craft before it was put on display{{Citation needed}}.

The title text builds upon this last contingency speech, delving into the pathos of the horror of the spacecraft's recycling and its passengers' resulting deaths despite the U.S.'s commitment to recycling initiatives.

==Transcript==
:[Commentary above the speeches.]
:In 1969, Nixon staffer William Safire wrote a speech for the president to deliver if the Apollo 11 return launch failed, stranding the doomed astronauts on the Moon.
:Uncovered in 1999, it is often called the greatest speech never given.
:Today, the ''full'' set of Safire's contingency speeches has been found.

[The speeches are shown written on separate sheets of paper, with only a few lines of each speech being shown before the text is cut off by the next speech on top of it. The first speech, "In event astronauts stranded on Moon", is divided among two sheets of paper, while all the rest are shown on a single sheet.]

:'''In event astronauts stranded on Moon'''
:Fate has ordained that the men who went to the Moon to explore in peace will stay on the Moon to rest in peace.
:[Here, several lines from the original speech are cut, and the text continues on a separate sheet of paper.]
:In ancient days, men looked at stars and saw their heroes in the constellations. In modern times, we do much the same, but our heroes are epic men of flesh and blood.
:Others will follow, and surely find their way home. Man’s search will not be denied. But these men were the first, and they will remain the foremost in our hearts. For every human being who looks up at the Moon in the nights to come will know that there is some corner of another world that is forever

:'''In event spacecraft goes missing'''
:Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins went to the Moon as ambassadors of peace for all mankind, and all mankind prays that they may yet return safely home.
:We are separated from the Moon by a vast gulf of space, against which their tiny vessel appeared as but a drifting speck. For a few brief seconds, we took our eye off them, and despite days of desperate searching, never again was their vessel sighted from Earth.
:While these men are lost, they are not forgotten, and their sacrifice will not

:'''In event astronauts abscond with spacecraft'''
:We do not know what led Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins to betray the trust we placed in them, abandon their mission, and steer their vessel toward Mars. Nor do we know what compelled them to transmit such hurtful messages back to Earth, heaping contempt on their onetime home.
:But whatever the cause of their dereliction, I call upon the United States to commit itself, before this year is out, to launching a mission to chase down Apollo 11 and return its crew to earth to face justice. We must not rest until

:'''In event spacecraft returns with extra astronauts'''
:While there is much we do not understand, tonight all of earth is united in celebrating the safe return of our brave explorers.
:We of course have many questions, and in the days and weeks to come we will demand answers. How many souls were truly aboard Apollo 11 when it launched? Who are the six men now in quarantine aboard the USS Hornet? What happened

:'''In event spacecraft hits U.S.S. Hornet, crushing Nixon'''
:'''President Agnew''': Tonight, we have experienced a great national triumph and a great national loss. We take joy in the safe return from the Moon of Neil Armstrong, Edwin Aldrin, and Michael Collins, but that joy is tempered with sorrow as we mourn our president’s tragic death beneath their wayward capsule.
:Richard Nixon wholeheartedly supported our courageous astronauts as they carried the hopes and prayers of Earth to the heavens, and in the moment of their homecoming, he himself has departed on that ultimate voyage. As we grieve, we must rededicate ourselves to the cause for which our president

:'''In event spacecraft accidentally sold for scrap and crushed with astronauts inside'''
:My fellow Americans, I am as shocked and appalled as you at this stunning and

==Trivia==
*Shortly after this comic was released, in that week's ''What if?'', ''those speeches'' are referenced with a link to this comic. (see [http://what-if.xkcd.com/129/ Black Hole Moon]).
*This comic was referenced again in another ''What If?'', [https://what-if.xkcd.com/146/ Stop Jupiter].
*In [[1510: Napoleon]] the contingency speech is referenced in the title text but in reverse, as the idea is to actually strand Napoleon on the Moon.
**In [[1291: Shoot for the Moon]] the subject of the title text is what happens if you instead miss the Moon with your space craft and get stranded in space in orbit around the Sun.

{{comic discussion}}

[[Category:Space]]

2530: Clinical Trials

2022-10-28T10:11:03Z

COBRIEN: Add lowercase text category

{{comic
| number = 2530
| date = October 18, 2021
| title = Clinical Trials
| image = clinical_trials.png
| titletext = We don't need to do a clinical trial of this change because the standard of care is to adopt new ideas without doing clinical trials.
}}

==Explanation==
The comic begins with a simple process for adopting a new idea just by convincing people that it is a good idea. The joke is that this skips the important step of checking whether it actually ''is'' a good idea. That correction presumably comes about after ideas are adopted which sounded good but turn out to be harmful. The comic captions the addition of this checking step as "the invention of clinical trials".

The purpose of clinical trials in medicine is to make sure that a new medicine works and doesn't have serious side-effects. One example of the dangers of failing to make sure that it doesn't have serious side effects is {{w|thalidomide}}, which caused a lot of birth defects. In a clinical trial, the effect of a treatment is compared to the effect of a placebo, or an existing treatment, to make sure it actually has a beneficial effect. (Earlier trials establish that it is even a viable candidate for testing and establishing possible dosages/regimens that can then be carried forward to a treatment (Phase III) trial.)

Before the invention of clinical trials, people generally didn't know, or at least had no way of confirming, whether medicines actually worked. Although many herbs and medicines were effective, others were no better than a placebo, and some medical treatments such as {{w|trepanation}} and {{w|bloodletting}} not only had no benefit (except for a very few rare conditions) but were very likely to be harmful. Those treatments that did work at all were mostly those that had been tried (for {{w|doctrine of signatures|whatever reason}}) and just happened to be useful, but others had neutral or even adverse effects, but still managed to not be so dangerous that subsequent recoveries from the original ailment—regardless of (or despite!) dangers inherent in such treatments—were taken as proof of their efficacy.

Similar to more recent examples, some earlier treatments may have been gradually discovered to help a particular condition only by noticing beneficial side-effects when consumed for sustenance or for unrelated medical 'guesses'. However, they also remained without the full scientific rigour so long as it remained a 'traditional remedy' with at best an oral tradition across many disparate practitioners, and no consistent effort to formalise or test the falsifiability of any findings.

At the time that this comic was published, the world was in the middle of the {{w|COVID-19 pandemic}}, which made the existence of clinical trials more relevant to the public, who waited eagerly for what sounded like good ideas to get through clinical trials and available to the general public… or fail clinical trials and not do that. During this frustrating wait, many unscientific claims have been made that various drugs or non-drug treatments are cures for COVID-19, making it difficult to convince believers to get real treatments. On the other hand, many people were skeptical about COVID-19 vaccines which were made available to the public for emergency use before the clinical trials were finished, or had concerns about whether the clinical trials were rushed or otherwise flawed due how quickly they were conducted compared to the traditional speed for vaccine development and approval.

In the title text, "Standard of care" refers to the previously accepted practice which a new medicine needs to be compared against. Because the original 3-step "standard of care" in this comic didn't include clinical trials before their adoption, we didn't need to do any testing in order to decide to start using them. If we ''had'' had them as the standard of care, then we would have had to perform tests before we added a step and it would have taken longer. This assumes that the process itself is subject to the same scientific rigor as medical treatment; in practice that would be more of a political change that is still not tested.

This comic can be viewed to criticize several extreme political proposals that are obviously bad ideas to most people, such as abolishing the nuclear family, making gay marriage illegal, blocking the development of renewable energy sources and defunding the police. People tested the latter in Seattle, and {{w|Capitol Hill Occupied Protest#During the zone|the test didn't go well}}.

==Transcript==
:1. Come up with new idea
:2. Convince people it's good

:[Scrawled in red as an afterthought, an arrow inserting it between item 2 and the original item 3]
:3. Check whether it works

:3. [Now scribbled over and amended to "4."]
:New idea is adopted

:[Caption below the panel]
:The invention of clinical trials
{{comic discussion}}
[[Category: Science]]
[[Category: Comics with color]]
[[Category: Comics with lowercase text]]