What Neil Armstrong Said...

Well, I always thought that Armstrong had said "one small step for a man," and that the "a" had been just almost drowned out by static.

Language Log: What Neil Armstrong said : My conclusion: I have no doubt that Neil Armstrong meant to say "for a man". And perhaps he produced an unusually rapid performance of the "for a" part, with a brief syllabic /r/ followed by an even briefer and very weakly de-rhoticized schwa. But it seems more likely that what he actually said was just what everyone has always heard, namely "for man"...