HOUSTON — The morning of July 16, 1969, the crew of Apollo 11 was preparing. Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins all knew the world would be watching.
Were they feeling the pressure?
“We felt, at least I felt, the weight of the world on our shoulders,” said Collins. “This was the culmination of John F. Kennedy's mandate to put a man on the moon, return him safely to earth by the end of the decade."
The mandate was one that President Kennedy made in Houston in 1961.
“We had our marching orders from the president and those orders were extremely useful to us as we made our preparations," he said.
Armstrong was the mission commander. Aldrin was the lunar module pilot and Collins flew the command module Columbia.
The journey to the moon would take four days. They hadn't really had a good view of the moon until they got right up into lunar orbit.
“Huge, filled our big window completely, three dimensional,” said Collins. “Its belly bulged out toward us."
Collins said the moon didn't seem like a welcoming place. It appeared hostile, but he said the real show was the beautiful shiny blue planet in the distance.
“Out the window, earth was tiny,” said Collins. “You could obscure it with your thumb if you put it out at arm’s length, but if you took your thumb away, it popped back. It wanted to be noticed."
Collins also described it as looking fragile.
“And if you analyze that, if you think about it, the earth is a terribly fragile place in a million different ways and we humans have a way of making it closer to a bad kind of fragility."
The view may have been unbelievable, but they still had tons of dangerous work ahead.
While Collins stayed in orbit around the moon, Armstrong and Aldrin, would land the lunar module ‘Eagle’ on the moon surface. Collins himself would never land on the moon.
Any regrets?
“I can say with total honesty that I was delighted, extremely pleased to have the seat I had,” he told us.
As he circled the moon alone, he would be called the loneliest man alive, but he didn't see it that way.
“I never once for a moment considered being lonely up there,” said Collins. “I had a happy home command module. Columbia was plenty big. I had hot coffee. I had music if I wanted it, the voice of Mission Control 2/3 of the time in my ear."
What he did worry about was his crewmates on the lunar surface. Would they be able to successfully make it off the surface to rejoin Collins? The lunar module had just one engine.
And if it didn’t work…
“Well, I was gonna come home by myself,” he said. “I didn’t have much of a choice. I didn’t have any landing gear on my command module Columbia. I couldn’t go down and rescue them. I could commit suicide one way or another, but I wasn’t going to do that, so I would come home by myself. I certainly didn't want to do that. I said at the time that I would be a marked man for the rest of my life. I'm not sure what I meant by that but it wouldn’t have been a joyful thing."
But there would be no disaster. Armstrong and Aldrin would lift off from the moon and rejoin Collins in the command module, returning to Earth and splashing down in the Pacific Ocean after more than 8 days in space.
They all became closer friends after the mission and Collins says he really got to know Neil Armstrong, the man.
“He was just a wonderful representative of our country and I'm so glad that our boss, Deke Slayton, had selected him to be the one,” said Collins.
As for returning to the moon and getting to Mars, Collins says he's all for the millionaires like Jeff Bezos forking the bill and taking the lead in getting us there.
“I think what Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk are doing is wonderful. They've taken billions of dollars and they’re throwing it into the kitty alongside the appropriated funds that come from congress,” said Collins. “I don't know how anybody can say no to an offer like that."
As for what he has planned for the 50th anniversary of his incredible journey, there won’t be champagne or a celebration. He says he'll probably hide under rock.
But not a moon rock. He never got one.
