It’s been nearly 19 years since my last trivial Wikipedia contribution,so high time for another one.

I recently enjoyed watching Fly Me to the Moon (2024), which got me curious about what the original TV broadcast of the Apollo 11 moon landing looked like. I found this video which, to my surprise, had a lunar lander set very similar to the one in the movie. But this one is clearly labeled as CBS NEWS SIMULATION.

I was further curious about the names of the actors that protrayed Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin? I went to ChatGPT and had this dialog. It could not find the identities of the actor, but it offered to research the matter and get back to me. I said, “sure”. What do you know but a couple weeks later it sends me an email, even though ChatGPT said it could not send me an email.

Findings (new):

  • The best-documented “stand-in” for CBS’s Apollo 11 simulation was Scott MacLeod, a Grumman lunar module consulting pilot/test engineer. He appeared on-air in a suit, climbed down the LM ladder on the Bethpage moonscape, and “simulated Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s duties during the moon landing.”

  • Evidence also indicates Tom Sylvester of ILC Industries (the Apollo suit maker) suited up for CBS’s Bethpage filming prior to the landing; contemporary captions describe him climbing down a full-scale LM for CBS’s simulation package (likely B-roll used in coverage). This aligns with community documentation that CBS used Grumman/ILC personnel rather than hired actors for the second suited role. (Primary: archival captioned images; secondary: space-history forum recollections.)

  • PBS’s production history and CBS’s own retrospective confirm the Grumman moonscape set at Bethpage and that two suited “astronauts” were sometimes shown, but they do not name the second individual on-air.

Bottom line: A named, high-confidence ID exists for the commander role (Scott MacLeod). The likely second suited performer was Tom Sylvester (ILC) for pre-taped segments, though CBS’s public records don’t explicitly credit him in the broadcast itself.

Pleased with this asynchronous research feature, I decided to update the Wikipedia page Apollo 11 in popular culture, which I copy here in case my edit gets reverted.

CBS news coverage of the Apollo 11 landing itself included several aspects of portrayal. Grumman engineer Scott MacLeod portrayed Neil Armstrong descending from the steps of a full-scale model of Lunar Module Eagle so viewers could see what was happening before the live TV broadcast from the moon commenced.19 Tom Sylvester portrayed Buzz Aldrin during the same broadcast.20