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.

If you can remember the 60s, then you weren’t really there. Or so they say, “they” in this case allegedly being Robin Williams, though it seems most people are a bit hazy on this too. Sex, drugs and rock ‘n roll will do this to you. Well, the drugs will, at least. Or so they say.

The Swinging Sixties has achieved iconic status. Its music lives on, as do, against all odds, most of the musicians who gave us some of the greatest songs of all time. Bob Dylan is still going strong, as are members of The Rolling Stones (Keith Richards, by now, is pickled and will live forever more, amen), The Beatles, The Who, Pink Floyd, and Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.

The fashion of the 60s keeps making a comeback. The fashion industry, it would seem, is one of the best at recycling, bringing back Mary Quant’s mini skirts and the hippie chic of the late 60s every time they run out of ideas. If you want my opinion (and even if you don’t, you’ll get it anyway, since this is my blog and I will opine if I want to), the Sixties styles are infinitely preferable to those of the 80s, which didn’t look good then and certainly don’t now.

From descriptions of the 60s, the decade sounds like one long psychedelic party that morphed into the summer of love, saw men walking on the moon, and culminated at Woodstock, the music festival that set the bar for all festivals since. But, since those waxing lyrical about the decade obviously remember it well, it stands to reason that they weren’t actually there. Which is why, when the history books are consulted, the dark heart of the 60s emerges.

The Cold War and its constant threat of nuclear attacks meant that bomb shelters became as standard as garden furniture. The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 was the closest the world ever came to full on nuclear war. Thank God someone blinked. The Berlin Wall was built and a city divided, America took on Vietnam, and Nelson Mandela was sentenced to life in prison. John F Kennedy was assassinated, as was Malcolm X, Martin Luther King Jr and Robert F Kennedy.

Whichever way you look at it, the Sixties was certainly memorable. But, I can’t possibly comment. I wasn’t there.

Buy our “I remember the 60s” t-shirt:

Remember The 60s White T-Shirt

The first manned moon landing took place on 20 July 1969. Or maybe it didn’t.

According to conspiracy theorists, all that occurred was the filming of another Stanley Kubrick movie, albeit one designed to fool the world into thinking that the USA had won the Space Race. Think of it as the first reality show, if you will.

So what’s the truth? Are we celebrating the 40th anniversary of this historic occasion? Or not?

I love conspiracy theories. Some of them are exceptionally well crafted and plant little seeds of doubt in my mind. Others, perhaps not so convincing, but I marvel at the theorists’ creativity and dedication nonetheless, and applaud their courage in standing up for what they believe in the face of much critical opposition.

In my heart of hearts, I want to believe that Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin walked on the surface of the moon. I want to feel for their fellow crew member, Michael Collins, who somehow drew the short straw of having to stay behind in the command shuttle. I mean, that’s surely got to suck big time right? To go all that way and then not even to get a little moon dust on your boots?

But maybe I shouldn’t feel too sorry for him… after all, say conspiracy theorists, there’s something just a tad suspicious about that moon dust and those boot prints left up there. How on earth (er, moon?) did those prints stay so perfect when there’s no water up there to bond the sand together? And why wasn’t there more moon dust flying about all over the place when the Eagle landed? Valid points perhaps, though to give them some credit, the scientists have also been able to dazzle my mind with their technical explanations about the special properties of moon dust and vacuums that creates effects like that.

But then, you know, alarm bells start ringing at the mention of effects… special effects to be precise. The lunar module looks like it’s made from cardboard and tin foil, stuck together with scotch tape – your classic 1960s film prop. Some of the footage appears to show the astronauts jumping around matrix like with the help of wires, the mountains in the background are the same in photos supposedly taken miles apart, and the lighting is clearly from spotlights.

And then there’s the American flag that proudly waves in the breeze. Wait, hang on, what? No breeze on the moon? Ah, right. Vacuum. Yes.

Add in the original high quality footage that has conveniently gone “missing”, the stars that have all “disappeared” from the sky, and the continuity errors in the footage, and what you end up with is a lot of question marks. Not very scientific, all that uncertainty, is it?

To be sure, there are explanations for some of the conspiracy theorists’ accusations. Some very good explanations. Quite convincing, most of them.

And they’ve nearly swayed me. Now all I need is an explanation of how NASA got Apollo 11 all the way to the moon using the equivalent of a pocket calculator in computing power. Yup, you heard me. It takes 1GB of RAM to play a computer game these days. Heck, it even takes 210MB to run MS Office so that you can type a letter to someone. But it took a mere 152kb to send men all the way to the moon. Kilobytes. Kilo. Bytes. That’s not even a full floppy disk. Remember those?