He doesn’t have the name recognition of Armstrong or Aldrin but can you imagine what man would have went through had Armstrong ran out of fuel before “landing the Eagle?” That would have felt like the longest 240,000 miles in the universe.
RIP Astronaut Michael Collins, 90
- Thread starter PineGroveBully
- Start date
Anybody else go to see Haise, Apollo 13 and Duke, Apollo 16 at Lee Hall in 2017? Needless to say the panel discussion was fascinating but I also sat there 20 feet from the stage and all I could think is these SOB's walked on the 17 moon. One of a handful in the history of the world to do so. "I've walked on the moon" is hard to top as a cocktail party mic drop and not many left who can say it.
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What in the 17 tarnation's have you done. Delete your account.
ETA. Much better. I puked after scrolling through that original post.
ETA. Much better. I puked after scrolling through that original post.
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Much better as well and thanks for allowing me to stay. After having my first ever post deleted, if you puked, imagine me going into full panic mode when I pasted an image, posted and got that. I'm not off to a good start and I'll be going text only from here on. With all that, for all of the athletes we seem to fawn over, those are the guys with "the right stuff" and can't even imagine what that takes to do.
One of my biggest thrills growing up in Florida
Was my family driving to outside of the Cape Kennedy complex, parking on the side of the highway along with thousands of others that morning, and watching Apollo 11 take off for the moon. Twas a Big Thrill!
Was my family driving to outside of the Cape Kennedy complex, parking on the side of the highway along with thousands of others that morning, and watching Apollo 11 take off for the moon. Twas a Big Thrill!
Wow! That is an awesome moment in history that you got to witness live. I hope to witness the Starship launch when Elon sends the 1st crewed mission to Mars, although I'm likely going to need to rent/charter a boat since they're likely going to be launching the heavy boosters at sea.
MSUDOG24 tried to post an image and it spit out 5000 lines of characters in his post. I scrolled for 30 seconds to get to the bottom of the post and it made me seasick.
Sorry to insulate that it was going to be a photo of the aftermath at Ryan's Steakhouse.
Sorry to insulate that it was going to be a photo of the aftermath at Ryan's Steakhouse.
Collins was the most isolated human being in history after the others when to the surface, correct?
Yes, I suppose he was (at least at the time). He orbited about 60 miles above the moon, and very few have been anywhere where there was no other human within 60 miles of them. John Glenn and other early astronauts have been even farther away from others when they were alone in orbit (well over 100 miles) but Collins would probably feel more isolated since he was so far from Earth, and for several days.
Especially when he was orbiting alone and was on the far side of the moon. I know there was radio silence from earth when on the far side but could he still communicate with astronauts? I guess a better way of asking is was there a window when he had no contact with a soul? I remember an interview with him and when asked about what it was like to be all alone and he said his favorite part was the blissful silence.
There were no lunar communications satellites back then, so he would not be able to contact the astronauts on the surface or those back on Earth when he was on the back side. It took about 2 hours for the command module to orbit the moon, so he would be totally out of contact with anybody for close to an hour.
