

The forgotten astronaut of Apollo 11 - justlearning
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael-collins-astronaut-apollo11/print

======
rbanffy
It's fun when people confuse being calm and don't panicking with having no
fear. You have your fears and doubts, but just don't let them cloud your
judgment.

And I remember him. While it sucks he didn't walk on the Moon, I will probably
never even leave Earth's atmosphere. At least he got to space. He may be the
one I envy less, but I still envy him ;-)

They were all made of superhero-stuff.

I wonder if NASA's current problems are not due to a lack of superheroes.

~~~
mechanical_fish
_I wonder if NASA's current problems are not due to a lack of superheroes._

I'm not trying to disparage the bravery of the Apollo astronauts. But: No.
Obviously not. We've still got a lot of brave people. Ask a New York
firefighter.

As the astronauts themselves would probably have hastened to point out at the
time, there were half a million U.S. troops in Vietnam even as Armstrong was
stepping onto the moon. Some of those troops lived with much higher stress,
for much longer, than any astronaut. The same is true for many soldiers
working today.

No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics and little
to do with a shortage of heroes.

~~~
randallsquared
"No, NASA's problem has everything to do with gravity and economics"

Well, politics and bureaucracy, I'd say.

~~~
tybris
that's because of gravity and economics.

~~~
randallsquared
Economics, in the sense of being the study of human action, sure. Gravity,
only in some much weaker senses.

We've known since the Orion project how to get off the planet quickly, easily,
and with a lot of cargo; the reasons we haven't done so are not primarily
because of how much money it costs.

------
KC8ZKF
I disagree that Michael Collins is forgotten.

~~~
DannoHung
Mike Collins has a marketing problem: his name's too boring. He should have
immediately commissioned someone to name a Tom Collins derivative drink after
him when he got back from the mission.

I mean, seriously, you go and do a job with two guys named Neil _Armstrong_
and _Buzz_ Aldrin. And you wonder why people forget your name.

~~~
mechanical_fish
Yeah, if _Bootsy_ Collins had orbited the moon nobody would _ever_ have
forgotten it.

As it was, it took Frank Zappa to figure out the marketing angle and name his
child "Moon Unit".

~~~
DannoHung
Yeah, the only problem with that is that Bootsy Collins has been _way_ higher
than the moon. He's completely out of this galaxy.

------
brandnewlow
Since when are the Guardian's story pages so cluttered that we need to link to
the print version of their articles? It's about the best designed newspaper
site on the web. Is pagination really so awful?

~~~
mhartl
Pagination _is_ awful, but this article isn't paginated even in the original,
so your point here is well-taken. To wit:

[http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael-
collin...](http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2009/jul/19/michael-collins-
astronaut-apollo11)

------
sdurkin
If I am half as remembered as Michael Collins, I will consider my life well-
lived.

------
edw519
_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._

Kinda puts the word "hero" in perspective.

~~~
pwmanagerdied
Apparently he would disagree. :P From the article:

 _"At age 78, some things about current society irritate me, such as the
adulation of celebrities and inflation of heroism," he said last week. Neither
description fits him, he added. "Heroes abound, but don't count astronauts
among them. We worked very hard, we did our jobs to near perfection, but that
is what we had been hired to do."_

~~~
skorgu
What's the joke about the Medal of Honor recipients meeting? They all think
it's a mistake for them to be around all these heroes. Heroes are heroes
precisely because they don't find their actions heroic. My take anyway.

