Few events in my lifetime have been as exciting as the July 1969 mission of Apollo 11 to land human beings on the Moon -- on any otherworld -- for the first time.
So today, a few months after the death of Neil Armstrong , the first human to walk on the Moon, we today observe the 82nd birthday of his colleague on 1969's Apollo 11 mission, the Command Module Pilot Michael Collins. He is one of just 24 humans to have ever flown to the Moon. (In an endevor that proved very dangerous indeed, it's a blessing that all 24 returned safely.)
Reading a bit of biography today about Collins on Wikipedia , on NASA.gov, and on the Encyclopedia of Science, I'm struck by the thought that Collins is a man of military aristocracy, a gifted writer, and born to serve his nation in many callings. He is not an astronautical "hotdog" in the sense of many of the Mercury Seven, but rather a servant of his people called to a mission of keen observation, exploration, experimentation, and representation. [Photo at right from NASA.gov bio of Michael Collins.]
Collins was born in Rome, Italy, where his father, Major General James Lawton Collins of the U.S. Army, was serving. James Collins was the son of an Irish immigrant, Jeremiah Bernard Collins, who according to the family served in the Civil War as a drummer boy. The family military tradition started with politics. The astronaut's great-great-uncle, elected the mayor of New Orleans, was asked by the local member of Congress to suggest a young man to accept an appointment to West Point -- someone, Wikipedia notes, who would have the stamina to finish West Point. The astronaut's father had already started at Tulane, but transferred to West Point. Thus began an Army career leading to service in the Philippine-American War and as an aide-de-camp to General Pershing during the Mexican Expedition and in France during World War I.
After Europe, the astronaut's family returned home and served in Washington, D.C., and in Columbus, Ohio. Thus, the astronaut gained the opportunity for education at Washington's prestigious St. Alban's School before heading to West Point. From West Point, he entered not the Army but rather the Air Force, attaining the rank of Major General, matching his father. (The astronaut's brother, James Lawton Jr., also was a military officer.)
In service to NASA, Collins had both the fortune and misfortune of a pair of spacewalks on Gemini 10, which practiced the art of orbital docking using an unmanned Agena Target Vehicle as the dock. Collins' first Gemini 10 spacewalk was overly exciting. Designed to retrieve a micrometeorite package that had been left on the Agena for several months, the Encyclopedia of Science recounts that he lost his grip and tumbled at the end of his umbilical cord -- surely a frightening experience even if he trained for it on the ground. He also apologized sincerely for losing a camera in space.
Apollo 11 was Collins' second mission to space. After leaving NASA the following year, in 1970, he served as assistant secretary for public affairs of the U.S. State Department and then became the first director of the Smithsonian Institution's fabulously successful National Air and Space Museum. Collins supervised the construction and initial development of the museum. It's interesting to think of the many people who leave the museum with Armstrong's name on their lips (along with Wright, Lindbergh, Glenn, etc.), unaware that Armstrong's colleague was in charge of developing and opening the museum.
In 1978, Collins left federal service and attended Harvard Business School. He became a vice president of LTV Aerospace and then formed his own consulting company (perhaps it's worth mentioning that the company, LTV, had a troubled business history). Along the way, Collins wrote several books, and some of the following quotes are from those works.
Herewith, the quotes that strike me:
During the July 1969 mission, when he was alone in the Command Module Columbia orbiting the Moon while Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin was on the surface, Collins experienced 48-minute periods of losing touch with Earth while on the far side of the Moon. He reported not loneliness but "awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation."
In November 1969, four months after Apollo 11, he wrote, ...think a future flight should include a poet, a priest and a philosopher . . . we might get a much better idea of what we saw.
About space exploration in general: It's human nature to stretch, to go, to see, to understand. Exploration is not a choice, really; it's an imperative. And of exploration as a way of life: To go places and do things that have never been done before—that's what living is all about.
Of the experience of liftoff, Collins reportedly has said: Well, you think about the fact that you are at the top of 6 million parts, all made by the lowest bidder.
Finally, the author of Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys, Flying to the Moon and Other Strange Places, Liftoff: Story of America's Adventure in Space, and Space Machines and the People Who Fly Them, has proven himself to be perhaps just the first of the philosophers, poets, and priests he thinks should go on Moon missions to come. He wrote in Carrying the Fire of his feelings orbiting the Moon:
It's not quite as exhilarating a feeling as orbiting the earth, but it's close. In addition, it has an exotic, bizarre quality due entirely to the nature of the surface below. The earth from orbit is a delight - offering visual variety and an emotional feeling of belonging "down there." Not so with this withered, sun-seared peach pit out of my window. There is no comfort to it; it is too stark and barren; its invitation is monotonous and meant for geologists only.
In a field of exploration fraught with danger and in which lives have been lost to the cause of exploration, it's good to have Michael Collins home on Earth and celebrating his 82nd birthday.
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