16 ms·

Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died

1252 points by edwinbalani 5y ago

caution 5y ago
Statements on Passing of Michael Collins. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/statements-on-passing-of-michael-collins https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/statements-on-passing-of-...
- raverbashing 5y ago
  "As pilot of the Apollo 11 command module – some called him ‘the loneliest man in history’ – while his colleagues walked on the Moon for the first time, he helped our nation achieve a defining milestone." In a way it was a bit disappointing. But it was also a big, huge responsibility. Remember, if something went wrong with the Eagle, he was going to return alone to Earth.
  - Breza 5y ago
    Extra disappointing after going through helicopter pilot training to be certified to fly the lunar lander.
thestoicattack 5y ago
I'm glad his memoir, "Carrying the Fire", got mentioned. It's one of the best astronaut memoirs.
- bsdooby 5y ago
  Definitively!
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- jbperry 5y ago
  Wow, I just finished reading Carrying the Fire three days ago. Good writer and a great ambassador for the space program.
- JKCalhoun 5y ago
  I believe it was his book where he describes the moon hanging there as they were closing in on it. This massive, plaster-of-paris sphere almost filling his view. His description (ignore mine above) made me realize just how remarkable that must have been to see. The Earth diminishing to a ball is one thing, but this atmosphere-less, white desert, Little-Prince-like, moon bearing down on you sounds like something else entirely.
- aluket 5y ago
  I'm half-way through reading this at the moment and I cannot recommend it highly enough. In the prologue he talks of being able to turn to any page and find something interesting to read. He's not wrong.
- matt_j 5y ago
  Carrying The Fire is my favourite astronaut memoir and I've read a few, it reads beautifully. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest.
unchocked 5y ago
Clear skies and tailwinds. Can't get back to the Moon fast enough, while we still have living continuity to Apollo. Can't believe how low the low in our space program has been.
- minikites 5y ago
  SpaceX is still blowing up rockets like it's 1950s NASA, maybe we should just fully fund the competent folks at 2020s NASA instead.
  - toomuchtodo 5y ago
    NASA seems confident enough in SpaceX's ability to award them a contract for Starship to take them back to the moon. "This is but one of many genuinely shocking aspects of NASA's decision a week ago to award SpaceX—and only SpaceX—a contract to develop, test, and fly two missions to the lunar surface. The second flight, which will carry astronauts to the Moon, could launch as early as 2024." https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/five-reasons-why-nasas-starship-award-is-a-watershed-moment-in-spaceflight/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/five-reasons-why-nas...
  - thelean12 5y ago
    SpaceX also blew up a huge amount of their Falcon rockets at the beginning too, and now they're consistently bringing astronauts to the ISS and payloads into orbit. So I'm not sure what your point is.
  - derekp7 5y ago
    I love how whenever SpaceX fails to land a booster that I see headlines of "SpaceX blows up another rocket", even if it still delivered its payload to orbit. I do wonder, however, where NASA would be if they would have continued with the DC-X prototype instead of abandoning it when it had a landing leg failure causing it to topple over in an early test.
    - minikites 5y ago
      It's because of Elon's hubris and the ways that hubris is baked into the entire institutional culture. I think far fewer people would delight in their failures if they showed an ounce of humility from any of their mistakes. Instead, they continue to make wild eyed proclamations and promises of impossible goals, but it's Elon so people continue to believe him for some reason.
benatkin 5y ago
Only this one left https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGFcC5IZyvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGFcC5IZyvs
- aphextron 5y ago
  I'm convinced he will live forever. My mental health depends on it.
- anonymousiam 5y ago
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW3yQ4ye9ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW3yQ4ye9ac
- kube-system 5y ago
  This will always be my favorite Buzz video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y-Pc0cz-9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y-Pc0cz-9o
_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago
Only four people are still alive that have walked on the moon and only 10 Apollo Moon mission people are still alive. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/890/who-has-walked-on-the-moon/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/890/who-has-walked-on-the-...
- hinkley 5y ago
  We are now in a race to see if the last people on the moon are still around to congratulate the next people to stand on the moon.
mnw21cam 5y ago
It turns out that https://xkcd.com/893/ https://xkcd.com/893/ was posted almost ten years ago. Although he didn't actually get to walk on the moon, he still went there.
- martincmartin 5y ago
  This was the first thing I thought of. Thanks for posting.
- benatkin 5y ago
  He didn't score the most points, but he got the most rebounds and assists.
- macintux 5y ago
  The alt text is quite poignant. > The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
- FabHK 5y ago
  Very accurate so far.
- suvakov 5y ago
  I compared it with real data, the prediction is remarkably accurate: https://twitter.com/msuvakov/status/1387525030083432451 https://twitter.com/msuvakov/status/1387525030083432451
pjmorris 5y ago
Huge fan. "Carrying the Fire" was one of the greatest finds in my (rural Florida, 1970's) high school library. I'd never heard anyone say "I bore easily", let alone someone as responsible as an astronaut, I was awed by the vulnerability, and encouraged that boring easily wasn't necessarily debilitating. A great book, a great man.
- Breza 5y ago
  Agreed, it's an amazing book.
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jsrcout 5y ago
Sad news. He was articulate and passionate, but very humble also. His book Carrying the Fire revived my interest in space as a 30-something adult who grew up dreaming of being an astronaut.
slg 5y ago
Collins' role in Apollo 11 is often minimized in the public conciseness, but I find it particularly fascinating from a human perspective. In certain ways it seems even scarier than Armstrong's and Aldrin's jobs. They at least had more direct control over their success in landing on the moon. Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of abandoning his crewmates to die on the moon and fly back to Earth himself. Meanwhile no one had ever been as far from other life as he was on that flight. When he was on the far side of the moon he was truly alone in a way that no other person had ever been in human history.
- bishnu 5y ago
  I mean, a few guys stayed in orbit on subsequent lunar missions, but you're right, Collins was the first.
  - slg 5y ago
    >he was truly alone in a way that no other person had ever been in human history The "had" there was meant to imply it was true up until that point in history. Other people have either nearly matched or slightly exceeded him depending on the specific details of the later Apollo mission lunar orbits. However it is mentally easier to be the second person to do something dangerous once you see the first person succeed safely. There is a reason everyone knows Armstrong and Aldrin, but Conrad and Bean don't have much notoriety today in the general population.
    - mumblemumble 5y ago
      For the sake of clarifying further: At least according to usage that I'm familiar with, if the phrase were, "no other person has ever been", that would be talking about before or since. But "no other person had ever been" is only talking about history up until that point. "Has been" is the present perfect tense, and "had been" is the past perfect tense.
- shadowgovt 5y ago
  Collins also spent a lot of time outside of radio comms. If something had gone wrong on the dark side of the moon, we might never have known what happened. We'd have had a perfectly cheerful conversation with the command module pilot, then a comms blackout, then nothing... With a lot of coordination, the lander crew could possibly have returned to the command module without Collins's support to find out what happened to him (and hopefully found a CM still in a condition to go home). And for all that, he reported in his autobiography that it didn't bother him.
mbauman 5y ago
I've always thought the CSM commanders had the most incredible and challenging role of the three Apollo astronauts. They were undoubtedly the "most alone" humans ever — at least on a physical level. Every other hour they'd transit to the far side of the moon and would be 2200 miles (3600km) away from the nearest two humans and hundreds of thousands of miles/km away from everyone else who's ever lived. Not only that, they lost radio contact. The silence and solitude must have been wild. For upwards of three days. From the NYT obit: “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life,” [Collins] wrote in recreating his thoughts for his 1974 memoir, “Carrying the Fire.” “If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God only knows what on this side,” he added. “I like the feeling. Outside my window I can see stars — and that is all. Where I know the moon to be, there is simply a black void.”
- jl6 5y ago
  What I find remarkable about that quote is that there were only three billion humans at the time. Apollo 11 wasn’t that long ago was it? And we’re already at a population more than twice that figure.
  - computerphage 5y ago
    Before covid, worldometers was known for tracking population data! https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-historical https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-histor...
  - shoo 5y ago
    > Nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber–Bosch process. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_environmental_aspects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...
nr2x 5y ago
The ultimate designated driver.
DarkByte 5y ago
The greatest ambassador to the space effort. Always humble and selfless.
quercusa 5y ago
Statement from his family: https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1387438495040348168 https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1387438495040348168
japhyr 5y ago
For anyone interested in the story of the astronauts who went to the moon, Moondust is a great read. In the early 2000s (if I remember right), the author traveled around the world to visit each of the living men who had set foot on the moon. He asks them about their experiences, both on the moon and in the time since the moon missions ended. Some of them treat him like any interviewer, but toward the end as they realize he has actually connected all of their stories once again, they share a bit more than what comes out in typical interviews. It's a wonderful blending of life in the world at that time, the story of our collective quest to reach the moon, and the individual stories of humans who actually went there. - https://www.amazon.com/Moondust-Search-Men-Fell-Earth/dp/1526611570/ https://www.amazon.com/Moondust-Search-Men-Fell-Earth/dp/152...
- jbrnh 5y ago
  A similar concept, it seems, Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon" is a fantastic read.
pornel 5y ago
I love the photo he took, where in the frame there was literally every human who was alive and has ever lived, except Michael Collins himself: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a11_h_44_6642.html https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a11_h_44...
- sp3000 5y ago
  “How isolated, how lonely those two space supermen appeared! But they had each other for companionship; and through television, they were held in the thoughts of viewing millions of men and women. To be really isolated, to fully experience loneliness, you must be alone. From Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s spectacular movements, my mind shifted to Collins’s lunar orbiting. Relatively inactive and unwatched, he had time for contemplation, time to study both the nearby surface of the moon and the distant moonlike world. Here was human awareness floating through universal reaches, attached to our earth by such tenuous bonds as radio waves and star sights. A minor functional error would leave it floating forever in the space from which, ancestrally, it came.” Charles Lindbergh's forward in Carrying the Fire.
  - ahi 5y ago
    Lindbergh died in 1974. The man who first soloed across the Atlantic wrote the forward for the man who first soloed around the moon. Huh.
    - mandevil 5y ago
      A child born on December 17th, 1903- the day the Wright's flew a plane just under a quarter mile at Kittyhawk- would have turned 65 the day before Apollo 8 took off to take the first humans to Lunar orbit.
- hcrisp 5y ago
  He spoke about this in the documentary film, In the Shadow of the Moon [0], "Certainly I didn't feel it as fear, I felt it as awareness, almost a feeling of exultation. I liked it! It was a good feeling." He mentioned the same thing in his book, Carrying the Fire (I saw that NPR is calling it "the best of the astronaut autobiographies", and having read it, I concur.) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMx2MA5bEtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMx2MA5bEtk
ppierald 5y ago
In 1970 (shortly after my birth), my grandmother bought me my first Christmas ornament for the tree. It was a glass Michael Collins astronaut figure. Over the years, it has taken a couple tumbles, lost a leg and most of the helmet, but every year it goes up to the top of the tree in a prominent place. I was struck with a profound sense of sadness today when I heard of his passing mostly due to my connection to him via this simple ornament. He will continue on in that place of prominence and I hope to pass this on to my children and their children at some point.
WalterBright 5y ago
Michael Collins is the ultimate team player. What a privilege it would have been to work with him. It's sad to read of his passing, but I'm glad he got 90 years. A great man.
MichaelMoser123 5y ago
RIP Michael Collins. Jethro Tull has a song about Michael Collins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU7BYLmAiV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU7BYLmAiV8 "For Michael Collins, Jeffery and Me" I'm with you L.E.M Though it's a shame that it had to be you The mother ship Is just a blip from your trip made for two I'm with you boys So please employ just a little extra care It's on my mind I'm left behind when I should have been there Walking with you
- leet_thow 5y ago
  First thought too after reading the title
parenthesis 5y ago
Appropriately he has died just after a full moon.
FabHK 5y ago
12 people have walked on the moon (4 are still alive), 12 more people have flown around the moon (6 are still alive). Time to go again.
MyHypatia 5y ago
There's a fantastic song about Collin's role in Apollo 11 that perfectly captures his role in the mission: "sitting backstage vs. taking the fame". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86q_xc3kZ9g&ab_channel=JohnCraigie-Topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86q_xc3kZ9g&ab_channel=JohnC...
Anointmous 5y ago
rip.
colordrops 5y ago
Michael Collins was one of many astronauts that claimed to have seen UFOs or at least firmly believe in extraterrestrial life.
thanatos519 5y ago
I met Collins many years later. I was a terminally shy child at the time so I don't remember much, but he graciously autographed his entry in ... some Encyclopedia of Space somethingsomething book I had. I should probably try to dig up that book and eBay it. Anyways, RIP.
utopcell 5y ago
https://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/ https://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/
Diablesse 5y ago
Jj
Diablesse 5y ago
Ok
grouphugs 5y ago
no one cares what nazis think about another nazi
yarg 5y ago
I feel bad for Collins, at best he got the "also participated" award in the public mindshare - and this despite that fact he was left more alone than any man in history, locked about the dark side of the moon, wondering if he was going home alone.
- dokem 5y ago
  It's hard to imagine that bitter-sweetness he must've felt. At the same time, how could he ever complain. Maybe he took no issue, but I'm sure everyone in the program was hoping to be the first man.
  - yarg 5y ago
    I can't imagine that he took issue; these guys generally seemed to put the mission before the self.
    - dokem 5y ago
      They are also cut-throat competitive, ego maniacs. Just incredibly professional. I don't think you get to where those guys are without an incredibly appetite for success.
      - Breza 5y ago
        That's the central thesis of The Right Stuff. Collins was bumped from Apollo 8 and didn't feel that bad about bumping someone else from Apollo 11 as a result.
    - lmm 5y ago
      I forget the exact wording in his autobiography but it was something like "I can't pretend I'm crazy enough to prefer being in my seat to the other two's. But I've got my own part to play."
- anyfoo 5y ago
  Yeah, I don't know... at the same time he was well in the "first crew on the moon" club, without just as much of the constant, unwavering, overwhelming attention that Neil Armstrong must have gotten.
areoform 5y ago
I cried today. I don't cry when strangers die, famous strangers particularly. But I cried today when I heard he had passed. He was a profound man who deserves a profound eulogy. That's beyond my capabilities, but I'd like to give it a good shake anyway. I never had the good fortune of crossing paths with him except for the one time he liked one of my tweets (I joked that I'd been touched by celebrity - he intensely disliked celebrities). But I want to take a moment to describe how much Michael Collins meant to me. His book, Carrying The Fire, https://www.amazon.com/Carrying-Fire-Astronauts-Michael-Collins/dp/0374531943 https://www.amazon.com/Carrying-Fire-Astronauts-Michael-Coll... is one of the reasons why I've decided to go into aerospace and take my shot at becoming an astronaut as an adult. He wrote parts of this book in orbit around the moon, and the rest when he came back to Earth. It is hard to describe the degree of tender self awareness that he possessed and the insight with which he wrote. His book is one of the few books where the forwards are just as important as the book itself. Here's one he recently wrote, > Could I be one of twelve of eighteen thousand? No way in hell. It is rare for someone to acknowledge the locus at which the sum of their perspiration and preparation collided with the vagaries of fate. It is rarer still for them to say that had they been born later, or had the circumstances been any different, they might not have been the same. And it is far rarer for someone to talk about the mistakes of youth with this level of humor and care, > Never mind the excuses, I was a mediocre student, more interested in athletics than academics. I was captain of the wrestling team, but even that was a bit tainted, as I was also a secret smoker. Stupid. He had, as he admits in the forward, ADHD that went undiagnosed at the time. His teachers thought he was lazy, and he struggled in school. His grades were subpar, and at some point he woke up and he was thirty, writing, > How had I managed to take so long to get so little done — no advanced degree, a piddling two thousand hours’ flying time, thirty years old, and nothing special in my record to offset these deficiencies? A lot of books by people who have experienced what it is like to have history's eye upon them don't go into such details. And if they do, they tend to be written by others or they suffer from terminal self-aggrandizement. Collins' account doesn't suffer from this. It feels so raw and real, an inner exploration just as much an outer one. It's as if we sent on Apollo 11 not just a preternaturally calm man with oodles of the Right Stuff (Neil Armstrong) and an orbital mechanics expert (Buzz Aldrin), but also a self-aware artist who recorded some of the most beautiful images of the trip and tried to capture the beauty of what he saw in front of him in verse. A man who can recite passages from Paradise Lost from heart and talks about the importance of bringing art and joy into the sciences. https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1313882376225734656 https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1313882376225734656 NASA chose well. Here's one final quote from Carrying The Fire, > Of course, Apollo was the god who carried the fiery sun across the sky in a chariot. But beyond that, how would you carry fire? Carefully, that's how, with lots of planning and at considerable risk. It is a delicate cargo, as valuable as moon rocks, and the carrier must always be on his toes lest it spill. > I carried the fire for six years, and now I would like to tell you about it, simply and directly as a test pilot must, for the trip deserves the telling. I lied. Here's another Michael Collins-ism, > Farmers speak to farmers, students to students, business leaders to other business leaders, but this intramural talk serves mainly to mirror one's beliefs, to reinforce existing prejudices, to lock out opposing views - I'm holding a quasi-vigil for him on the aerospace club Small Steps & Giant Leaps in ClubHouse by reading Carrying the Fire personally or via the audiobook. You are welcome to join us and read a passage, a chapter, or whatever suits your fancy. Here's the link, just come in the room and raise your hand, we'll pull you up :) https://www.joinclubhouse.com/event/PrDlo22D https://www.joinclubhouse.com/event/PrDlo22D - Here's an excellent interview of him from 2019 talking about SpaceX, Blue Origin, NASA, and Mars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtIO06N3sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtIO06N3sw
lambda_dn 5y ago
Irish people should be sad that someone who fought for their independence has died.
peanutz454 5y ago
Hearing him talk as part of this google (doodle?) moon landing 50th anniversary video is a good introduction to his perspective on moon landing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VpHyKXHBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VpHyKXHBM
daveslash 5y ago
I pondered to my wife "I wonder if we'll return to the moon before all those who have been have passed away?" Phrased another way: "Will there ever be a day (since the first landing) on which no living human has left the Earth?" Here's the list. In this context, I use "leave the Earth" mean to mean having left the planet's gravity well, not the atmosphere only. And asterisk implies walked on the moon. The number in brackets is the Apollo Mission no. Frank Borman [8] Jim Lovell [8,13] Bill Anders [8] Tom Stafford [10] Fred Haise [13] Buzz Aldrin* [11] David Scott* [15] Charlie Duke* [16] Ken Mattingly [16] Harrison Schmitt* [17]
juegos 5y ago
ad astra Mr. Collins
Black101 5y ago
He was aged 90 years old.
username91 5y ago
I highly recommend playing https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/ https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/ through - maybe in the background - it's a great way to experience the entire mission and enjoy the interaction between the three astronauts.
tobmlt 5y ago
I’d like to post the google moon doodle. Pretty good stuff and Michael Collins narrates: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VpHyKXHBM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VpHyKXHBM

1252 points by edwinbalani 5y ago

Statements on Passing of Michael Collins. https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/statements-on-passing-of-michael-collins https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/statements-on-passing-of-...

raverbashing 5y ago
"As pilot of the Apollo 11 command module – some called him ‘the loneliest man in history’ – while his colleagues walked on the Moon for the first time, he helped our nation achieve a defining milestone." In a way it was a bit disappointing. But it was also a big, huge responsibility. Remember, if something went wrong with the Eagle, he was going to return alone to Earth.
- Breza 5y ago
  Extra disappointing after going through helicopter pilot training to be certified to fly the lunar lander.

thestoicattack 5y ago

I'm glad his memoir, "Carrying the Fire", got mentioned. It's one of the best astronaut memoirs.

bsdooby 5y ago
Definitively!
deleted 5y ago
[deleted]
jbperry 5y ago
Wow, I just finished reading Carrying the Fire three days ago. Good writer and a great ambassador for the space program.
JKCalhoun 5y ago
I believe it was his book where he describes the moon hanging there as they were closing in on it. This massive, plaster-of-paris sphere almost filling his view. His description (ignore mine above) made me realize just how remarkable that must have been to see. The Earth diminishing to a ball is one thing, but this atmosphere-less, white desert, Little-Prince-like, moon bearing down on you sounds like something else entirely.
aluket 5y ago
I'm half-way through reading this at the moment and I cannot recommend it highly enough. In the prologue he talks of being able to turn to any page and find something interesting to read. He's not wrong.
matt_j 5y ago
Carrying The Fire is my favourite astronaut memoir and I've read a few, it reads beautifully. Highly recommended to anyone with an interest.

unchocked 5y ago

Clear skies and tailwinds. Can't get back to the Moon fast enough, while we still have living continuity to Apollo. Can't believe how low the low in our space program has been.

minikites 5y ago
SpaceX is still blowing up rockets like it's 1950s NASA, maybe we should just fully fund the competent folks at 2020s NASA instead.
- toomuchtodo 5y ago
  NASA seems confident enough in SpaceX's ability to award them a contract for Starship to take them back to the moon. "This is but one of many genuinely shocking aspects of NASA's decision a week ago to award SpaceX—and only SpaceX—a contract to develop, test, and fly two missions to the lunar surface. The second flight, which will carry astronauts to the Moon, could launch as early as 2024." https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/five-reasons-why-nasas-starship-award-is-a-watershed-moment-in-spaceflight/ https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/04/five-reasons-why-nas...
- thelean12 5y ago
  SpaceX also blew up a huge amount of their Falcon rockets at the beginning too, and now they're consistently bringing astronauts to the ISS and payloads into orbit. So I'm not sure what your point is.
- derekp7 5y ago
  I love how whenever SpaceX fails to land a booster that I see headlines of "SpaceX blows up another rocket", even if it still delivered its payload to orbit. I do wonder, however, where NASA would be if they would have continued with the DC-X prototype instead of abandoning it when it had a landing leg failure causing it to topple over in an early test.
  - minikites 5y ago
    It's because of Elon's hubris and the ways that hubris is baked into the entire institutional culture. I think far fewer people would delight in their failures if they showed an ounce of humility from any of their mistakes. Instead, they continue to make wild eyed proclamations and promises of impossible goals, but it's Elon so people continue to believe him for some reason.

benatkin 5y ago

Only this one left https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGFcC5IZyvs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGFcC5IZyvs

aphextron 5y ago
I'm convinced he will live forever. My mental health depends on it.
anonymousiam 5y ago
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW3yQ4ye9ac https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CW3yQ4ye9ac
kube-system 5y ago
This will always be my favorite Buzz video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y-Pc0cz-9o https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Y-Pc0cz-9o

_fizz_buzz_ 5y ago

Only four people are still alive that have walked on the moon and only 10 Apollo Moon mission people are still alive. https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/890/who-has-walked-on-the-moon/ https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/news/890/who-has-walked-on-the-...

hinkley 5y ago
We are now in a race to see if the last people on the moon are still around to congratulate the next people to stand on the moon.

mnw21cam 5y ago

It turns out that https://xkcd.com/893/ https://xkcd.com/893/ was posted almost ten years ago. Although he didn't actually get to walk on the moon, he still went there.

martincmartin 5y ago
This was the first thing I thought of. Thanks for posting.
benatkin 5y ago
He didn't score the most points, but he got the most rebounds and assists.
macintux 5y ago
The alt text is quite poignant. > The universe is probably littered with the one-planet graves of cultures which made the sensible economic decision that there's no good reason to go into space--each discovered, studied, and remembered by the ones who made the irrational decision.
FabHK 5y ago
Very accurate so far.
suvakov 5y ago
I compared it with real data, the prediction is remarkably accurate: https://twitter.com/msuvakov/status/1387525030083432451 https://twitter.com/msuvakov/status/1387525030083432451

pjmorris 5y ago

Huge fan. "Carrying the Fire" was one of the greatest finds in my (rural Florida, 1970's) high school library. I'd never heard anyone say "I bore easily", let alone someone as responsible as an astronaut, I was awed by the vulnerability, and encouraged that boring easily wasn't necessarily debilitating. A great book, a great man.

Breza 5y ago
Agreed, it's an amazing book.

deleted 5y ago

[deleted]

jsrcout 5y ago

Sad news. He was articulate and passionate, but very humble also. His book Carrying the Fire revived my interest in space as a 30-something adult who grew up dreaming of being an astronaut.

slg 5y ago

Collins' role in Apollo 11 is often minimized in the public conciseness, but I find it particularly fascinating from a human perspective. In certain ways it seems even scarier than Armstrong's and Aldrin's jobs. They at least had more direct control over their success in landing on the moon. Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of abandoning his crewmates to die on the moon and fly back to Earth himself. Meanwhile no one had ever been as far from other life as he was on that flight. When he was on the far side of the moon he was truly alone in a way that no other person had ever been in human history.

bishnu 5y ago
I mean, a few guys stayed in orbit on subsequent lunar missions, but you're right, Collins was the first.
- slg 5y ago
  >he was truly alone in a way that no other person had ever been in human history The "had" there was meant to imply it was true up until that point in history. Other people have either nearly matched or slightly exceeded him depending on the specific details of the later Apollo mission lunar orbits. However it is mentally easier to be the second person to do something dangerous once you see the first person succeed safely. There is a reason everyone knows Armstrong and Aldrin, but Conrad and Bean don't have much notoriety today in the general population.
  - mumblemumble 5y ago
    For the sake of clarifying further: At least according to usage that I'm familiar with, if the phrase were, "no other person has ever been", that would be talking about before or since. But "no other person had ever been" is only talking about history up until that point. "Has been" is the present perfect tense, and "had been" is the past perfect tense.
shadowgovt 5y ago
Collins also spent a lot of time outside of radio comms. If something had gone wrong on the dark side of the moon, we might never have known what happened. We'd have had a perfectly cheerful conversation with the command module pilot, then a comms blackout, then nothing... With a lot of coordination, the lander crew could possibly have returned to the command module without Collins's support to find out what happened to him (and hopefully found a CM still in a condition to go home). And for all that, he reported in his autobiography that it didn't bother him.

mbauman 5y ago

I've always thought the CSM commanders had the most incredible and challenging role of the three Apollo astronauts. They were undoubtedly the "most alone" humans ever — at least on a physical level. Every other hour they'd transit to the far side of the moon and would be 2200 miles (3600km) away from the nearest two humans and hundreds of thousands of miles/km away from everyone else who's ever lived. Not only that, they lost radio contact. The silence and solitude must have been wild. For upwards of three days. From the NYT obit: “I am alone now, truly alone, and absolutely isolated from any known life,” [Collins] wrote in recreating his thoughts for his 1974 memoir, “Carrying the Fire.” “If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God only knows what on this side,” he added. “I like the feeling. Outside my window I can see stars — and that is all. Where I know the moon to be, there is simply a black void.”

jl6 5y ago
What I find remarkable about that quote is that there were only three billion humans at the time. Apollo 11 wasn’t that long ago was it? And we’re already at a population more than twice that figure.
- computerphage 5y ago
  Before covid, worldometers was known for tracking population data! https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-historical https://www.worldometers.info/world-population/#table-histor...
- shoo 5y ago
  > Nearly 50% of the nitrogen found in human tissues originated from the Haber–Bosch process. -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_environmental_aspects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haber_process#Economic_and_env...

nr2x 5y ago

The ultimate designated driver.

DarkByte 5y ago

The greatest ambassador to the space effort. Always humble and selfless.

quercusa 5y ago

Statement from his family: https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1387438495040348168 https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1387438495040348168

japhyr 5y ago

For anyone interested in the story of the astronauts who went to the moon, Moondust is a great read. In the early 2000s (if I remember right), the author traveled around the world to visit each of the living men who had set foot on the moon. He asks them about their experiences, both on the moon and in the time since the moon missions ended. Some of them treat him like any interviewer, but toward the end as they realize he has actually connected all of their stories once again, they share a bit more than what comes out in typical interviews. It's a wonderful blending of life in the world at that time, the story of our collective quest to reach the moon, and the individual stories of humans who actually went there. - https://www.amazon.com/Moondust-Search-Men-Fell-Earth/dp/1526611570/ https://www.amazon.com/Moondust-Search-Men-Fell-Earth/dp/152...

jbrnh 5y ago
A similar concept, it seems, Andrew Chaikin's "A Man on the Moon" is a fantastic read.

pornel 5y ago

I love the photo he took, where in the frame there was literally every human who was alive and has ever lived, except Michael Collins himself: https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a11_h_44_6642.html https://nssdc.gsfc.nasa.gov/imgcat/html/object_page/a11_h_44...

sp3000 5y ago
“How isolated, how lonely those two space supermen appeared! But they had each other for companionship; and through television, they were held in the thoughts of viewing millions of men and women. To be really isolated, to fully experience loneliness, you must be alone. From Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s spectacular movements, my mind shifted to Collins’s lunar orbiting. Relatively inactive and unwatched, he had time for contemplation, time to study both the nearby surface of the moon and the distant moonlike world. Here was human awareness floating through universal reaches, attached to our earth by such tenuous bonds as radio waves and star sights. A minor functional error would leave it floating forever in the space from which, ancestrally, it came.” Charles Lindbergh's forward in Carrying the Fire.
- ahi 5y ago
  Lindbergh died in 1974. The man who first soloed across the Atlantic wrote the forward for the man who first soloed around the moon. Huh.
  - mandevil 5y ago
    A child born on December 17th, 1903- the day the Wright's flew a plane just under a quarter mile at Kittyhawk- would have turned 65 the day before Apollo 8 took off to take the first humans to Lunar orbit.
hcrisp 5y ago
He spoke about this in the documentary film, In the Shadow of the Moon [0], "Certainly I didn't feel it as fear, I felt it as awareness, almost a feeling of exultation. I liked it! It was a good feeling." He mentioned the same thing in his book, Carrying the Fire (I saw that NPR is calling it "the best of the astronaut autobiographies", and having read it, I concur.) [0] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMx2MA5bEtk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lMx2MA5bEtk

ppierald 5y ago

In 1970 (shortly after my birth), my grandmother bought me my first Christmas ornament for the tree. It was a glass Michael Collins astronaut figure. Over the years, it has taken a couple tumbles, lost a leg and most of the helmet, but every year it goes up to the top of the tree in a prominent place. I was struck with a profound sense of sadness today when I heard of his passing mostly due to my connection to him via this simple ornament. He will continue on in that place of prominence and I hope to pass this on to my children and their children at some point.

WalterBright 5y ago

Michael Collins is the ultimate team player. What a privilege it would have been to work with him. It's sad to read of his passing, but I'm glad he got 90 years. A great man.

MichaelMoser123 5y ago

RIP Michael Collins. Jethro Tull has a song about Michael Collins: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU7BYLmAiV8 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IU7BYLmAiV8 "For Michael Collins, Jeffery and Me" I'm with you L.E.M Though it's a shame that it had to be you The mother ship Is just a blip from your trip made for two I'm with you boys So please employ just a little extra care It's on my mind I'm left behind when I should have been there Walking with you

leet_thow 5y ago
First thought too after reading the title

parenthesis 5y ago

Appropriately he has died just after a full moon.

FabHK 5y ago

12 people have walked on the moon (4 are still alive), 12 more people have flown around the moon (6 are still alive). Time to go again.

MyHypatia 5y ago

There's a fantastic song about Collin's role in Apollo 11 that perfectly captures his role in the mission: "sitting backstage vs. taking the fame". https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86q_xc3kZ9g&ab_channel=JohnCraigie-Topic https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86q_xc3kZ9g&ab_channel=JohnC...

Anointmous 5y ago

rip.

colordrops 5y ago

Michael Collins was one of many astronauts that claimed to have seen UFOs or at least firmly believe in extraterrestrial life.

thanatos519 5y ago

I met Collins many years later. I was a terminally shy child at the time so I don't remember much, but he graciously autographed his entry in ... some Encyclopedia of Space somethingsomething book I had. I should probably try to dig up that book and eBay it. Anyways, RIP.

utopcell 5y ago

https://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/ https://www.firstmenonthemoon.com/

Diablesse 5y ago

grouphugs 5y ago

no one cares what nazis think about another nazi

yarg 5y ago

I feel bad for Collins, at best he got the "also participated" award in the public mindshare - and this despite that fact he was left more alone than any man in history, locked about the dark side of the moon, wondering if he was going home alone.

dokem 5y ago
It's hard to imagine that bitter-sweetness he must've felt. At the same time, how could he ever complain. Maybe he took no issue, but I'm sure everyone in the program was hoping to be the first man.
- yarg 5y ago
  I can't imagine that he took issue; these guys generally seemed to put the mission before the self.
  - dokem 5y ago
    They are also cut-throat competitive, ego maniacs. Just incredibly professional. I don't think you get to where those guys are without an incredibly appetite for success.
    - Breza 5y ago
      That's the central thesis of The Right Stuff. Collins was bumped from Apollo 8 and didn't feel that bad about bumping someone else from Apollo 11 as a result.
  - lmm 5y ago
    I forget the exact wording in his autobiography but it was something like "I can't pretend I'm crazy enough to prefer being in my seat to the other two's. But I've got my own part to play."
anyfoo 5y ago
Yeah, I don't know... at the same time he was well in the "first crew on the moon" club, without just as much of the constant, unwavering, overwhelming attention that Neil Armstrong must have gotten.

areoform 5y ago

I cried today. I don't cry when strangers die, famous strangers particularly. But I cried today when I heard he had passed. He was a profound man who deserves a profound eulogy. That's beyond my capabilities, but I'd like to give it a good shake anyway. I never had the good fortune of crossing paths with him except for the one time he liked one of my tweets (I joked that I'd been touched by celebrity - he intensely disliked celebrities). But I want to take a moment to describe how much Michael Collins meant to me. His book, Carrying The Fire, https://www.amazon.com/Carrying-Fire-Astronauts-Michael-Collins/dp/0374531943 https://www.amazon.com/Carrying-Fire-Astronauts-Michael-Coll... is one of the reasons why I've decided to go into aerospace and take my shot at becoming an astronaut as an adult. He wrote parts of this book in orbit around the moon, and the rest when he came back to Earth. It is hard to describe the degree of tender self awareness that he possessed and the insight with which he wrote. His book is one of the few books where the forwards are just as important as the book itself. Here's one he recently wrote, > Could I be one of twelve of eighteen thousand? No way in hell. It is rare for someone to acknowledge the locus at which the sum of their perspiration and preparation collided with the vagaries of fate. It is rarer still for them to say that had they been born later, or had the circumstances been any different, they might not have been the same. And it is far rarer for someone to talk about the mistakes of youth with this level of humor and care, > Never mind the excuses, I was a mediocre student, more interested in athletics than academics. I was captain of the wrestling team, but even that was a bit tainted, as I was also a secret smoker. Stupid. He had, as he admits in the forward, ADHD that went undiagnosed at the time. His teachers thought he was lazy, and he struggled in school. His grades were subpar, and at some point he woke up and he was thirty, writing, > How had I managed to take so long to get so little done — no advanced degree, a piddling two thousand hours’ flying time, thirty years old, and nothing special in my record to offset these deficiencies? A lot of books by people who have experienced what it is like to have history's eye upon them don't go into such details. And if they do, they tend to be written by others or they suffer from terminal self-aggrandizement. Collins' account doesn't suffer from this. It feels so raw and real, an inner exploration just as much an outer one. It's as if we sent on Apollo 11 not just a preternaturally calm man with oodles of the Right Stuff (Neil Armstrong) and an orbital mechanics expert (Buzz Aldrin), but also a self-aware artist who recorded some of the most beautiful images of the trip and tried to capture the beauty of what he saw in front of him in verse. A man who can recite passages from Paradise Lost from heart and talks about the importance of bringing art and joy into the sciences. https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1313882376225734656 https://twitter.com/AstroMCollins/status/1313882376225734656 NASA chose well. Here's one final quote from Carrying The Fire, > Of course, Apollo was the god who carried the fiery sun across the sky in a chariot. But beyond that, how would you carry fire? Carefully, that's how, with lots of planning and at considerable risk. It is a delicate cargo, as valuable as moon rocks, and the carrier must always be on his toes lest it spill. > I carried the fire for six years, and now I would like to tell you about it, simply and directly as a test pilot must, for the trip deserves the telling. I lied. Here's another Michael Collins-ism, > Farmers speak to farmers, students to students, business leaders to other business leaders, but this intramural talk serves mainly to mirror one's beliefs, to reinforce existing prejudices, to lock out opposing views - I'm holding a quasi-vigil for him on the aerospace club Small Steps & Giant Leaps in ClubHouse by reading Carrying the Fire personally or via the audiobook. You are welcome to join us and read a passage, a chapter, or whatever suits your fancy. Here's the link, just come in the room and raise your hand, we'll pull you up :) https://www.joinclubhouse.com/event/PrDlo22D https://www.joinclubhouse.com/event/PrDlo22D - Here's an excellent interview of him from 2019 talking about SpaceX, Blue Origin, NASA, and Mars https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtIO06N3sw https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aUtIO06N3sw

lambda_dn 5y ago

Irish people should be sad that someone who fought for their independence has died.

peanutz454 5y ago

Hearing him talk as part of this google (doodle?) moon landing 50th anniversary video is a good introduction to his perspective on moon landing https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VpHyKXHBM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VpHyKXHBM

daveslash 5y ago

I pondered to my wife "I wonder if we'll return to the moon before all those who have been have passed away?" Phrased another way: "Will there ever be a day (since the first landing) on which no living human has left the Earth?" Here's the list. In this context, I use "leave the Earth" mean to mean having left the planet's gravity well, not the atmosphere only. And asterisk implies walked on the moon. The number in brackets is the Apollo Mission no. Frank Borman [8] Jim Lovell [8,13] Bill Anders [8] Tom Stafford [10] Fred Haise [13] Buzz Aldrin* [11] David Scott* [15] Charlie Duke* [16] Ken Mattingly [16] Harrison Schmitt* [17]

juegos 5y ago

ad astra Mr. Collins

Black101 5y ago

He was aged 90 years old.

username91 5y ago

I highly recommend playing https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/ https://apolloinrealtime.org/11/ through - maybe in the background - it's a great way to experience the entire mission and enjoy the interaction between the three astronauts.

tobmlt 5y ago

I’d like to post the google moon doodle. Pretty good stuff and Michael Collins narrates: https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VpHyKXHBM https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=t6VpHyKXHBM