Neville tells his audience that 'today' three astronauts have splashed down after returning from the moon, using the half-million-mile round trip as an image for how consciousness can travel without truly leaving its place. The lecture's own transcript dateline and independent corroboration date this delivery to 24 November 1969 -- the day Apollo 12's crew, who had landed on the moon and returned, splashed down -- rather than Apollo 8 as this event's title names; Apollo 8 orbited the moon in December 1968 but never landed.