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The forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11
- KC8ZKF 17y agoI disagree that Michael Collins is forgotten.
- RiderOfGiraffes 17y agoI 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 17y agoIn 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 17y agohttp://www.cmcpr.co.uk/main/news.php?content=news_article&article_id=389 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_fish 17y agoParticularly 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.
- DannoHung 17y agoMike 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_fish 17y agoYeah, 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".
- DannoHung 17y agoYeah, the only problem with that is that Bootsy Collins has been way higher than the moon. He's completely out of this galaxy.
- 10ren 17y agoBuzz legally changed his name http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin#Biography http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Buzz_Aldrin#Biography
- ErrantX 17y agoAgreed. 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)
- rbanffy 17y agoIt'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_fish 17y agoI 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.
- randallsquared 17y ago"No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics" Well, politics and bureaucracy, I'd say.
- rbanffy 17y agoA couple heroes do help a lot with those.
- tybris 17y agothat's because of gravity and economics.
- randallsquared 17y agoEconomics, in the sense of being the study of human action, sure. Gravity, only in some much weaker senses. We've known since the Orion project how to get off the planet quickly, easily, and with a lot of cargo; the reasons we haven't done so are not primarily because of how much money it costs.
- edw519 17y agoAll 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 17y agoApparently 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 17y agoWhat'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.
- ErrantX 17y agoIndeed. 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 17y agoAfter 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=BMBcLg0DkLA http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WIKRkvCKri8 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 17y agoSince 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?
- sdurkin 17y agoIf I am half as remembered as Michael Collins, I will consider my life well-lived.