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Michael Collins awareness thread


rustysocket

Michael Collins awareness thread  

58 members have voted

  1. 1. Do you know who Michael Collins is?

    • Yes
      49
    • No
      9


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25 minutes ago, rustysocket said:

No he was the 3rd member of Apollo 11 who didn't land on the moon and just stayed on the command module.

Nope.  He would have been too old.  Almost 79 years at that point.  NASA would never have accepted him.

Michael_Collins_Commander-in-Chief_of_th

Michael Collins Commander-in-Chief of the Irish National Forces, 1922

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51 minutes ago, razark said:

Michael Collins Commander-in-Chief of the Irish National Forces, 1922

Hehe, when I saw the thread title I was wondering if someone would bring him up.

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3 hours ago, rustysocket said:

Poor Michael Collins he gets no recognition

Yeah.  It's sad that the only astronauts that the general population knows about are Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, maybe Scott Kelly. Honestly, nobody I knew really cared about Nasa's day of remembrance either.

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I've said this before, but as a kid I always thought it was unfair that he had to stay behind while the other guys got to romp around on the moon.

Only when I grew up did I understand why.

Michael Collins comes across really well in interviews. Seems super nice and I wish he was my grandpa. Hmm, actually he is probably my dads age.

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9 hours ago, razark said:
Nope.  He would have been too old.  Almost 79 years at that point.  NASA would never have accepted him.

Maybe he's one o' them undead vampires or highlander-like immortals or something. Then again we irish-blooded folk seem to always turn up when we should be otherwise dead. ;) If I was immortal I certainly wouldn't spend my time running an antique store in New York.

Somebody should cast Liam Neeson as Michael Collins in the next Apollo 11 movie, just to muddy the issue.

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Mike Collins was the most skilled writer of the Apollo astronauts who wrote their memoirs.  Read his book 'Carrying the fire'.  Also, after Apollo 11 Deke Slayton, who was in charge of crew assignments, offered Mike a lunar landing which, under Deke's rules, would probably have meant that Mike would have replaced Gene Cernan on Apollo 17.  However, Mike could not face the thought of two further years of intense training away from his family and declined.  Had he accepted he would have been the last man to walk on the Moon.  So far.  He said that he has no regrets about declining the offer.  After all, he had flown solo in a spacecraft around the Moon and not many people can make that claim!

 

 

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You know, people always talk about how lonely Collins must have been, but from what I read, he was perfectly happy with his role as CMP. I think Richard Gordon, the Apollo 12 CMP, is the one you ought to have an awareness thread for. He had known Pete Conrad since they were fighter pilots and flew with him on Gemini 11, but when it came time for him to go to the Moon on Apollo 12, Alan Bean got to land on the Moon with Conrad instead, while Gordon stayed in orbit.

Well, at least he had that... *calendar*... up there to keep him company, courtesy of the Apollo 12 backup crew... :D

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I read a couple of books on the Apollo astronauts, and somewhere, the CMP's got the best deal in the long run. Yes they did not get to walk on the moon. but at least they got to fly there, how amazing is that.

Collins had a pretty easy ride after the mission, the world tour was harsh but he got through and had the room to do what he wanted after Apollo XI. Neil and Buzz certainly didn't . 

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Towards the end of Apollo, Slayton started assigning experienced pilots to backup crews (Apollo 14 CMP was the backup for Apollo 17). By the rotation pattern that was in place (fly, skip two missions, backup, skip two missions, fly again), it is likely that a few CMPs might have landed on the Moon had Apollos 18, 19, and 20 not been cancelled.

Edited by pTrevTrevs
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