The forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael-collins-astronaut-apollo11/print

by justlearning • 17 years ago

66 28 17 years ago

guardian.co.uk

KC8ZKF• 17 years ago

I disagree that Michael Collins is forgotten.

RiderOfGiraffes• 17 years ago

I agree with you that Mike Collins is not forgotten.

Wouldn't it be interesting to know what proportion of the population can name all three astronauts on Apollo 11, both of those that walked on the Moon, which it was that was first, or none.

But then again, how many here on HN can name all twelve who walked on the Moon? Does it matter who they were? They were, after all, as Neil Armstrong says, just the most visible of the half million people who made it possible.

evgen• 17 years ago

In my childhood nerd days I could name all the apollo crews and CM/LM names and could name all the gemini and mercury astronauts (could never keep the gemini missions/pairs straight though.) It did not win me many friends or bar bets but it was time well spent IMHO. For some reason I never managed to get excited about or care very much about missions once Cernan's foot left the surface of the moon (except for Deke Slayton finally getting his shot on the Apollo-Soyuz mission.)

doug_m• 17 years ago

http://www.cmcpr.co.uk/main/news.php?content=news_article...

The Institution of Engineering and Technology in the UK did a survey recently but they seemingly haven't published the full results though they do mention they might provide them on request.

Some of the stats are a little discouraging though

mechanical_fish3• 17 years ago

Particularly when you compare him to the engineers who designed that engine that, the very first time it was fired on the surface of the moon, worked and brought the astronauts home instead of marooning them to listen to Walter Cronkite narrate their obituaries on national television.

Yikes.

Except in certain special cases, engineering is not actually a job for rock stars. When you succeed, the projects usually get the glory, not you. From the article, it sounds like Collins understands that perfectly well.

DannoHung2• 17 years ago

Mike Collins has a marketing problem: his name's too boring. He should have immediately commissioned someone to name a Tom Collins derivative drink after him when he got back from the mission.

I mean, seriously, you go and do a job with two guys named Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. And you wonder why people forget your name.

mechanical_fish3• 17 years ago

Yeah, if Bootsy Collins had orbited the moon nobody would ever have forgotten it.

As it was, it took Frank Zappa to figure out the marketing angle and name his child "Moon Unit".

10ren2• 17 years ago

Buzz legally changed his name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin#Biography

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

Agreed. THe real forgotten Astronaut of Apollo 11 would be Charles Moss Duke - the CapCom that was on duty when Eagle landed (and surely must be considered lynch pin to the whole landing)

rbanffy2• 17 years ago

It's fun when people confuse being calm and don't panicking with having no fear. You have your fears and doubts, but just don't let them cloud your judgment.

And I remember him. While it sucks he didn't walk on the Moon, I will probably never even leave Earth's atmosphere. At least he got to space. He may be the one I envy less, but I still envy him ;-)

They were all made of superhero-stuff.

I wonder if NASA's current problems are not due to a lack of superheroes.

mechanical_fish3• 17 years ago

I wonder if NASA's current problems are not due to a lack of superheroes.

I'm not trying to disparage the bravery of the Apollo astronauts. But: No. Obviously not. We've still got a lot of brave people. Ask a New York firefighter.

As the astronauts themselves would probably have hastened to point out at the time, there were half a million U.S. troops in Vietnam even as Armstrong was stepping onto the moon. Some of those troops lived with much higher stress, for much longer, than any astronaut. The same is true for many soldiers working today.

No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics and little to do with a shortage of heroes.

randallsquared2• 17 years ago

"No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics"

Well, politics and bureaucracy, I'd say.

xiaoma• 17 years ago

http://www.ted.com/talks/bill_stone_explores_the_earth_and_s...

10ren2• 17 years ago

He also went to the moon before then, a circumlunar flight, on Apollo 8 http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_8 I did not know that.

I thought Apollo 11 was the first to the moon, and it struck as odd to accomplish so much on the first go. But it turns out NASA was sensible: one step at a time. A great example for me! And I wonder what else I don't know...

stewiecat• 17 years ago

The book "To the moon" goes into quite a bit of detail around the planning and scheduling of the Apollo missions. They took a very iterative approach to getting there, never doing more than they planned but being prepared to do it all.

edw519• 17 years ago

All three astronauts believed there was a real chance such a disaster would occur. Armstrong thought his prospects were only 50-50 of making it back to Earth. And so did Collins, the pilot of Columbia and one of the world's most experienced aviators.

Kinda puts the word "hero" in perspective.

pwmanagerdied• 17 years ago

Apparently he would disagree. :P From the article:

"At age 78, some things about current society irritate me, such as the adulation of celebrities and inflation of heroism," he said last week. Neither description fits him, he added. "Heroes abound, but don't count astronauts among them. We worked very hard, we did our jobs to near perfection, but that is what we had been hired to do."

skorgu• 17 years ago

What's the joke about the Medal of Honor recipients meeting? They all think it's a mistake for them to be around all these heroes. Heroes are heroes precisely because they don't find their actions heroic. My take anyway.

ErrantX2• 17 years ago

Indeed. I always respect them for that - yes they understood the importance of the occasion. But the Apollo 11 'nauts were chosen for something more important than heroism - dependability. The guts to do the job and come home (the last one arguably being the crucial bit).

adrianwaj• 17 years ago

After doing some checking, the only people to have died in the Apollo Program were those in the command module of Apollo 1 when a fire broke out on the launchpad. Apollo 13 could've ended in tragedy had the service module's oxygen tank exploded after LM landing or on return after the LM jettisoned.

Collins' concern from the article was the ascent module's component would not work correctly to separate from the lander and reach the command module again. Videos of that successfully occurring in Apollo 15 and 17 are here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BMBcLg0DkLA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKRkvCKri8

The problem for Collins was that this stage of the mission had not been tested in prior Apollo test launches.

In hindsight, Apollo was a great success with 6 lunar landings and 1 aborted mission. Whoever knows if they were just very lucky each time, or that the craft was quite reliable. Collins may have, or still might think the former, yet he might have been fairly safe all along. We'll never know.

brandnewlow• 17 years ago

Since when are the Guardian's story pages so cluttered that we need to link to the print version of their articles? It's about the best designed newspaper site on the web. Is pagination really so awful?

jonknee• 17 years ago

Yes.

mhartl• 17 years ago

Pagination is awful, but this article isn't paginated even in the original, so your point here is well-taken. To wit:

http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael-collin...

sdurkin• 17 years ago

If I am half as remembered as Michael Collins, I will consider my life well-lived.

The forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11

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