Apollo 11's three astronauts did 'jobs to near perfection'

NASA photo Michael Collins suited up for water egress training aboard the NASA motor vessel Retriever, when he was backup command pilot for Gemini VII. processed by IntelliTune on 09072013 195429 with script 11*New - blk-new SUB (AP)

Editor's note: This is part one of a three-part story

Their destination looked like "a great ripe grape in the sky," Michael Collins described in his memoir, "Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys" (Farrar, Straus and Giroux/1974).

On July 20, 1969, the first two of what would eventually be 12 men stepped onto the Moon. When Neil Armstrong, the first, and Buzz Aldrin arrived at their landing site, that "ripe grape" was a disaster awaiting victims. What they saw below was "a crater the size of a football field covered with large rocks," a NASA Mission Report (Aug. 14, 1969) stated. If not for Armstrong snatching the pilot duties from the computer, the outcome might have been calamitous, instead of the triumphant achievement that half a billion television viewers witnessed from around the world. When the Lunar Module Eagle finally touched down, four miles away, Mission Report said just "30 seconds worth of fuel" remained.

"Houston, Tranquility Base here. The Eagle has landed," Armstrong radioed to NASA's Mission Control.

"That was not in the flight plan; nobody in Mission Control had known that Neil Armstrong would call it (Tranquility Base)," according to "First On The Moon" (Little, Brown and Company/1970).

Charlie Duke, the mission's CapCom (capsule communicator),

responded: "Tranquility, be advised there are lots of smiling faces in this room and all over the world," Man On the Moon (Milwaukee Journal Sunday supplement/Aug. 10, 1969) reported.

"And don't forget one on the Command Module," Collins interjected as he circled in solitary aboard Columbia.

No one really knew where Eagle had ended up, which turned out to be the Sea of Tranquility. The Mapping Sciences' Laboratory staff at Houston's Manned Spacecraft Center immediately began poring over maps. Armstrong's co-astronauts and friends started "a dollar pool," "First On the Moon" said.

The three men traveling aboard Apollo 11, which had launched four days earlier, were all spaceflight veterans.

"Mike Collins was probably the best-trained command module pilot NASA had," Aldrin wrote in "Men From Earth" (Bantam/1989). "He spent more than 400 hours working in the CSM simulator - most of it on his own."

Aldrin's co-workers called him Dr. Rendezvous, because "the docking and rendezvous techniques he devised for spacecraft became critical to the success of the Gemini and Apollo programs," buzzaldrin.com said.

Before NASA chose Armstrong, he'd flown the X-15 seven times.

Michael Collins

Michael Collins' family members served their country in the U.S. Army. In 1916, his dad spent time with "Black Jack" John Pershing in Mexico, and retired as a two-star general. An uncle was the Army's chief of staff, and another a brigadier general. A brother was a colonel, and a cousin a major.

Collins, in "Carrying the Fire," said he felt he "had a better chance to make my own way" by joining the Air Force.

Collins was born in Rome, Italy on Oct. 31, 1930. A graduate of the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, he began flying Sabrejets with the 21st Fighter Bomber Wing at George Air Force Base, Victorville, Calif., according to "First On The Moon."

In October 1963, NASA chose Collins in the third group of astronauts. He made two spacewalks on Gemini X, in 1966, said "Countdown" (Silver Arrow Books/1988). Collins' International Space Hall of Fame biography described how the Gemini capsule "rendezvoused with a separately launched Agena target vehicle. Using the Agena propulsion system, Gemini 10 was transferred to a new orbit for a rendezvous with a second, passive Agena." During Collins' second walk he retrieved a micrometeorite experiment from the "passive" Agena.

For Apollo 11, he piloted Columbia. Alone for 24 hours, Collins orbited the Moon as, just 60 miles below him, Armstrong and Aldrin took mankind's first lunar steps.

"I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life," Collins recalled in "Carrying the Fire." He referred to himself as the "proprietor of this orbiting men's room."

When Apollo 11 returned to Earth, Collins was not nearly as much in the limelight as the two Moon walkers.

"I've never enjoyed the spotlight," Collins said in a 2009 press release commemorating the mission's 40th anniversary. "Heroes abound, and should be revered as such, but don't count astronauts among them. We work very hard; we did our jobs to near perfection, but that was what we had hired on to do."

The website nasa.gov said Collins left the NASA not long after, in January 1970, "to become the Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. A year later he joined the Smithsonian Institution as the Director of the National Air and Space Museum, where he remained for seven years. In April 1978, Collins became Under Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution."

He is a retired Air Force major general.

Collins has said his most enduring memory is seeing Earth from lunar orbit.

"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," he said in the press release. "That all-important border would be invisible, that noisy argument silenced."

Michael Shinabery is an education specialist and humanities scholar with the New Mexico Museum of Space History. Email him at michael.shinabery@state.nm.us.

Source: http://www.alamogordonews.com/news/ci_23701252/alamogordo-news?source=rss

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