npr:

Well, this doesn’t happen every day. In a recent post, I talked about Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin’s walk across the lunar surface back in 1969 and wondered, how come they walked such a modest distance? Less than a hundred yards from their lander? And Neil Armstrong wrote in to say, here are the reasons: It was really, really hot on the moon, 200 degrees Fahrenheit. We needed protection. We were wearing new-fangled, water-cooled uniforms and didn’t know how long the coolant would last. We didn’t know how far we could go in our space suits. NASA wanted us to conduct our experiments in front of a fixed camera. We [meaning Neil] cheated just a little, and very briefly bounded off to take pictures of some interesting bedrock. But basically, he says, we were part of a team and we were team players on a perilous, one-of-a-kind journey. Improvisation was not really an option. But, reading between the lines, I kinda think he wanted to do more, go further. Anyway, read for it for yourself.

Neil Armstrong Talks About The First Moon Walk