We weren’t there, but we heard that…
… when the Eagle landed on the moon, neither was Michael Collins.
Monday 20 July 2009 marks the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing. And, in honour of the occasion, we’ve decided to dedicate this blog post to the man who has the ultimate “I Wasn’t There” story related to the event: Major General Michael Collins.
By virtue of being the Apollo 11 mission pilot, Collins had to remain in the command shuttle, orbiting the moon while Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin got to go down and leave footprints on its surface.
“Far from feeling lonely or abandoned, I feel very much a part of what is taking place on the lunar surface. I know that I would be a liar or a fool if I said that I have the best of the three Apollo 11 seats, but I can say with truth and equanimity that I am perfectly satisfied with the one I have.”
Michael Collins, in Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys.
Piloting Apollo 11 to the moon was actually Collins’ second space flight. His first was aboard Gemini 10 in 1966, when he and John W Young were tasked with (amongst others) retrieving a cosmic dust-collecting panel from the side of a dormant Agena Target Vehicle, left drifting in space after the aborted Gemini 8 mission. This task required Collins to complete a 15 meter space-walk. So, no footprints on the moon, but Michael Collins at least got to float among the stars.
“I really believe that if the political leaders of the world could see their planet from a distance of 100,000 miles their outlook could be fundamentally changed. That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced. The tiny globe would continue to turn, serenely ignoring its subdivisions, presenting a unified facade that would cry out for unified understanding, for homogeneous treatment. The earth must become as it appears: blue and white, not capitalist or Communist; blue and white, not rich or poor; blue and white, not envious or envied.”
Michael Collins, in Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut’s Journeys
Collins was born on 31 October 1930 in Rome, Italy, where his father, a Major General in the US Army, was stationed at the time. Prior to becoming an astronaut, Collins followed his father into a military career, joining the US Air Force as a test pilot.
It was John Glenn’s 1962 flight around the earth that inspired Michael Collins to become an astronaut. Although he was rejected upon his first application to NASA in 1962, he was accepted into their ranks the following year.
Collins retired from NASA in 1970, just a year after flying to the moon. He had been offered and accepted the position of Assistant Secretary For Public Affairs in the Department Of State. After a year, he left to become the Director of the National Air And Space Museum, a role he held until 1978 when he moved to the Smithsonian Institute as Undersecretary. In 1980, he became Vice-President of LTV Aerospace, until resigning in 1985 to start his own engineering consulting business.
A devoted family man, Collins (now 78) is still married to his wife Patricia, with whom he had three children – Kate, Ann and Michael Jr. Kate, an actress, appeared in the soapie All My Children as Janet Marlowe Green Dillon.