Why Michael Collins did not returned to moon?

[Pawelk198604]

Michael Collins accompanied Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin in famous Apollo 11 flight but he stayed behind and orbited Moon as CMP, while Armstrong and Aldrin walked on the moon.

I wonder why NASA not offered Collins to be CDR or LMP in next Apollo mission? Or does Michael Collins himself don't want?

[DerpenWolf]

There were still ALOT of other crews that we're waiting their turn for a moon mission and due to the program being cut (no Apollo 18,19,etc...) many astronauts were not able to achieve their dreams. Another reason he may not have gone again is because the us government probualy didn't want to loose him in an accident as he was a trophy for them at the time as one might put it. In the end he actually had a pretty good job on Apollo as if the landing and rendezvous part of the mission were to fail he would be able to return. He also got a nice view of the moon for a long time.

[pxi]

You could check Wikipedia:

It was during the training for Apollo 11 that Collins told Deke Slayton that he did not want to fly again. Slayton offered to get him back into the crew sequence after the flight' date=' and according to Collins, this would probably have been as backup commander of Apollo 14 followed by commander of Apollo 17.[/quote']

And later in the article:

After being released from a 21-day quarantine' date=' the crew embarked on a 45-day "Giant Leap" tour across the United States and around the world. Prior to this trip NASA Administrator Thomas O. Paine had told Collins that Secretary of State William P. Rogers was interested in appointing Collins to the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. After the crew returned to the U.S. in November, Collins sat down with Rogers and accepted the position on the urgings of President Richard Nixon.[/quote']

[Pawelk198604]

You could check Wikipedia:

And later in the article:

If this is true, it is puzzling why he rejected this offer?

Commanding lunar expedition is astronaut biggest dream, and career crowning achievement.

I would agree to such offer:D

Ultimately the backup commander of Apollo 14 and Prime Commander of Apollo 17 become Gene Cernan

[HeadHunter67]

Jim Lovell, John Young and Eugene Cernan are the only three people to travel to the Moon twice. Of those three, Lovell is sadly the only one who never set foot there.

Collins is one of a dozen men who have traveled to the Moon but never landed. It's got to be a lot of mixed emotions - the disappointment of coming so close but not actually "getting there" must be outweighed by the feeling of actually seeing it with your own eyes and being so near to the Moon. After all, Collins is one of only 24 people in history to travel to the Moon - that's an accomplishment that still has not been exceeded.

At a con a couple of weeks ago, there was a framed Apollo poster signed by all 24 of the Lunar astronauts... how I wish I'd had $2900 to afford that priceless piece of history!

[pxi]

If I was going to guess:

It was the secret terror that gripped astronaut Michael Collins throughout the Apollo 11 project 40 years ago. As his spacecraft, Columbia, swept over the lunar surface, Collins - the mission's third and largely forgotten crewman - waited for a call from fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to say their lander craft had successfully blasted off from the Moon.

The message would banish Collins's deepest fear: that he would be the only survivor of an Apollo 11 disaster and that he was destined to return on his own to the United States as "a marked man".

....

In his case, the astronaut was obsessed with the reliability of the ascent engine of Armstrong and Aldrin's lander, Eagle. It had never been fired on the Moon's surface before and many astronauts had serious doubts about its reliability. Should the engine fail to ignite, Armstrong and Aldrin would be stranded on the Moon - where they would die when their oxygen ran out. Or if it failed to burn for at least seven minutes, then the two astronauts would either crash back on to the Moon or be stranded in low orbit around it, beyond the reach of Collins in his mothership, Columbia.

All 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.

...

Thus Collins - alone in Columbia as the world focused on Armstrong and Aldrin walking on the lunar surface - fretted about his two companions below him on the Moon and revealed, in a note written at the time, that he was now "sweating like a nervous bride" as he waited to hear from the Eagle.

"My secret terror for the last six months has been leaving them on the Moon and returning to Earth alone; now I am within minutes of finding out the truth of the matter," he wrote. "If they fail to rise from the surface, or crash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it."

(Source: http://www.theguardian.com/science/2009/jul/19/michael-collins-astronaut-apollo11)

I could imagine such thoughts weighing very heavily on a person.

[Motokid600]

Wow.. heavy thoughts indeed. Well let's all be grateful that those six ascent engines performed greatly each time. Was there ever an instance of an issue during ascent? I know there was a few hairy descents, but for the most part the LEM performed beautifully, no?

[Nibb31]

The LM ascent engine was the only part of the Apollo mission which had no redundancy and no survivable abort. It was the single most critical part, which is why it was designed to be as simple as possible, using hypergolics and very few moving parts. The engine cover was even removable so that the astronauts could tinker and bang on it if a valve got stuck.

AFAIK, it worked flawlessly each time.

[Dkmdlb]

AFAIK, it worked flawlessly each time.

Yep. One of the most reliable aspects of Apollo (possibly *the* most reliable component). They never had any kind of problem worth mentioning with it.

[Nibb31]

Interestingly, the Soviet LK lander had two sets of ascent engines for redundancy, just in case. They didn't want to strand their cosmonaut on the Moon either.

[Motokid600]

Interestingly, the Soviet LK lander had two sets of ascent engines for redundancy, just in case. They didn't want to strand their cosmonaut on the Moon either.

The LK's ascent engine was its decent engine though, no? I can't picture where a second engine would fit on the bottom of that bulb.

[Dartguy]

Yep. One of the most reliable aspects of Apollo (possibly *the* most reliable component). They never had any kind of problem worth mentioning with it.

They had at least one very serious problem. Apollo 10 had a severe issue when it undocked in lunar orbit. Both the Astronauts flipped the same switch by mistake causing the lander to flip violently several times, almost becoming non-controllable.

Quoted from Wiki:

Upon separation of the ascent stage and engine ignition, the Lunar Module began to roll violently due to the crew accidentally duplicating commands into the flight computer which took the LM out of abort mode, the correct configuration for the orbital separation and ignition. The live network broadcasts caught Cernan and Stafford uttering several expletives before regaining control of the LM. Cernan has said he observed the horizon spinning eight times over, indicating eight rolls of the spacecraft under ascent engine power and that while the incident was downplayed by NASA, the roll was just several revolutions from being unrecoverable.

Edit: I just realized that you were referring to the engine. But this is an interesting tidbit that I was unaware of until recently, so I will leave it here.

[szputnyik]

There was also an issue (I think during Apollo 11) when the ascent stage didn't fire because of a faulty wire or fuse, so one of the astronauts had to stick a pen into an opening at the circuits, to get it to fire.

[Nibb31]

The LK's ascent engine was its decent engine though, no? I can't picture where a second engine would fit on the bottom of that bulb.

Unlike the Apollo LM, the LK lander used the Block D for most of its descent before staging at the last minute. It only used its own engines for the final descent.

On ascent, all it left on the ground was a metal frame with the legs, the ladder, and a couple of auxiliary tanks.

The big central nozzle is the main engine. The two medium sized ones are the backup engines. The four smaller ones are exhaust nozzles.

On ignition, both the main and backup engines would start up. Then the backup engines would shut down if the main was running properly.

[xcorps]

I wish I'd had $2900 to afford that priceless piece of history!

How could it be priceless if it was $2,900?

Commanding lunar expedition is astronaut biggest dream, and career crowning achievement.

Just not HIS biggest dream. When taking measure of a man, you might consider that he weighs his grain by the handful instead of the bushel.

[HeadHunter67]

How could it be priceless if it was $2,900?

Because they're not making any more of them. After all, 4 of those men are dead now. To the man selling the poster, it's worth $2900 - but to those who know what it stands for, it's worth more than dollars and cents. If I had the disposable cash, I'd have bought it without hesitation.

[xcorps]

I can't imagine paying $2,900 for any signature.

[Tex]

I can't imagine paying $2,900 for any signature.

Ah, but it's not just any old signature. It's twenty-four of them. And each person was one who took mankind's giant leaps and small steps, touched the face of another world, and continue to inspire untold millions and billions to this day. These are the men which inspire me to go through school and become an astronaut just like these guys. It's their accomplishments which drive our interest in space and I, for one, would gladly pay $2,900 for any one of their signatures, let alone all of them. *sigh*

[HeadHunter67]

Precisely! Out of the seven billion people alive today, and the hundred billion or so that came and went before us, only these two dozen men have ever set foot on the Moon. That's a more significant accomplishment than any of us will ever achieve.

Not to mention, in the next 10-20 years, the remaining Apollo astronauts will certainly pass on - and something like this will be a pretty important object. That poster is a piece of history - you'd expect to see something like that in a museum.

[78stonewobble]

I can't imagine paying $2,900 for any signature.

Personally I have to agree...

It doesn't diminish their accomplishments though... I attach the same high value to those accomplishments as the next guy. It just doesn't carry over to a piece of paper and autographs. It's one of the few places where I'm not overly sentimental, well for me I mean.

[rdfox]

Actually, the big reason Mike Collins decided to retire rather than stick around in the crew rotation was simple--he had spent the past seven years of his life at NASA, running full speed and hardly ever seeing his wife and children, and while he wouldn't have traded it for the world, he really didn't want to miss his daughters' ENTIRE childhoods. Since sticking around for one more mission would mean at least another two years barely ever at home (over THREE years, as it turned out, thanks to the post-Apollo 13 hiatus), he decided it was time to move on to a new job. In his first book, he stated that he'd told his bosses that if the mission aborted and dropped into the Atlantic, he'd be pounding on their door the very next morning to try and get another flight, but if the mission went off reasonably well, he would be retiring to spend more time with his family.