Collins lifts off for final time
SADLY, the world has now lost another of its famous astronauts of the “Apollo” era.
Michael Collins, who journeyed to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission with moon walkers Neil Armstrong and Edwin “Buzz” Aldrin in 1969, has passed away at the age of 90.
Collins’ trip to the moon was not his first spaceflight. In July 1966, he and fellow astronaut John Young flew on the Gemini 10 mission, the eighth of a 10-mission series. In each mission, two astronauts orbited Earth. Gemini 10 made a rendezvous with two separate orbiting objects: Agena Target Vehicles, or ATVs, which were placed in orbit for the specific purpose of practising docking procedures. In his 1988 book Liftoff, Collins called it the “nicest flight plan of the series”.
Docking and undocking was going to be essential for the lunar landing missions, because of the need to extract the lunar module from the protective housing attached to the Saturn V rocket, and to ensure that the moon walkers could safely return to the command module before returning to Earth.
There was a complete linkup with one of the Agenas, but the second one, long having been without power, was visited by Collins performing a space walk between the two craft so that he could retrieve an experiment. It was the first ever space walk to another orbiting object.
Though successful, Collins had some anxious moments manoeuvring himself. On returning to the Gemini 10 capsule, he discovered that he no longer had his Hasselblad camera, which had become detached during the activity.
Of course, Collins is much better known for the Apollo 11 mission, on which he was the command module pilot. The cone-shaped command module, Columbia, with its associated service module, was the main Apollo craft, transporting the astronauts to and from the vicinity of the moon.
The name of the lunar module, Eagle, had already been selected by Armstrong and Aldrin, but with just a few weeks remaining before launch, Collins had still not chosen a name for the command module. Eventually,
following a suggestion, he agreed on Columbia, which is the female personification of the USA.
The mission patch for Apollo 11 was, at the time, a point of contention. There was general agreement that it would contain a picture of an eagle (a bird) descending to the moon, and the original idea was to have an olive branch in its beak, to denote the peacefulness of the mission. This was later changed to the branch being carried in its talons, a decision with which Collins seemed uncomfortable. It is reported that he commented that he
hoped that the Eagle would drop the branch before a landing attempt.
As is well known, the Apollo 11 mission was a great success. While his crewmates descended to the moon, performed their activities on the surface, and made their return to Columbia, Collins was orbiting the moon alone for about 21 hours. It has often been written that he was the loneliest human during that period, but Collins said that he did not feel lonely. He wrote: “If a census were taken, there’d be three billion plus two on one side, and one plus God only knows what on the
other”. Because he was a test pilot, he added that he was accustomed to being alone in a flying machine, and that he was enjoying the sensation, commenting that it was “flying solo at its finest”.
Collins also wrote that as Eagle’s moment of lift-off from the moon neared, he became more and more nervous, and that his secret terror was having to leave his colleagues there and return to Earth alone.
Indeed, it could have happened that way. Eagle could have crash-landed on arrival, or failed to lift off from the moon. However, once he saw
Eagle returning, he felt that they were going to “carry this whole thing off”, and indeed, they did.
None of the Apollo 11 astronauts ever flew in space again. Collins’ role in Apollo 11 was absolutely essential, and he never regretted that he did not walk on the moon.
Armstrong was the commander of the mission, but Collins was in charge of Columbia, their home as they travelled to and from the moon.