Michael Collins (astronaut)

• 1. Introduction

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  Michael Collins orbited the Moon thirty times in July 1969 and never set foot on it. While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the Sea of Tranquillity, Collins flew alone in the command module Columbia, cut off from Earth for 48 minutes on every pass around the far side. Mission Control noted in that day's log that 'not since Adam has any human known such solitude.' Collins disagreed. He felt exhilaration, not loneliness. 'Awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation,' he wrote later.

  How does a man come to be that particular person, in that particular seat, at that particular moment? The answer runs through a Roman childhood, an Air Force career built on near-misses and gunnery prizes, a spacewalk that went sideways, and a cervical disc that nearly ended his Apollo career before it began. And after the Moon, Collins built a museum, wrote what one journalist called the best account of what it is like to be an astronaut, and quietly painted watercolors of the Florida Everglades. The solitary man in the command module turns out to have had one of the fullest lives in the history of spaceflight.

• 2. A Military Childhood

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  Collins was born on the 31st of October 1930, in Rome, Kingdom of Italy, where his father James Lawton Collins served as the U.S. military attaché. For the first 17 years of his life, the family moved constantly as the Army reassigned his father: Rome, Oklahoma, Governors Island, Fort Hoyle near Baltimore, Fort Hayes near Columbus, Puerto Rico, San Antonio, and Alexandria, Virginia. Collins later described himself as probably the only astronaut who had never been a Boy Scout.

  In Puerto Rico, a pilot of a Grumman Widgeon let the young Collins take the controls for part of a flight. He wanted to fly again, but World War II began shortly after, and the opportunity vanished. He studied for two years at the Academia del Perpetuo Socorro in San Juan before the family moved to Washington, D.C., where he attended St. Albans School and graduated in 1948.

  His mother wanted him in the diplomatic service. Collins instead chose the military, following his father, two uncles, his brother, and a cousin. His father and older brother had both graduated from West Point, in 1907 and 1939 respectively. Collins graduated on the 3rd of June 1952, finishing 185th of 527 cadets. One of his classmates was Ed White, who would become both a fellow astronaut and, tragically, a colleague Collins would mourn.

  The choice of the Air Force over the Army was partly practical: joining the Army, where his brother was already a colonel and his father had reached major general, risked accusations of nepotism. His uncle, General J. Lawton Collins, had been the Chief of Staff of the United States Army. The Air Force offered Collins a way to serve on his own terms.

• 3. Fire and Ice at Edwards

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  Basic flight training began for Collins in August 1952 at Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi, and he moved through a series of bases before earning his wings at James Connally Air Force Base in Waco, Texas. He arrived at Nellis Air Force Base, Nevada, for advanced day-fighter training in September 1953. Eleven people were killed in accidents during the 22 weeks he was there.

  An assignment in January 1954 to the 21st Fighter-Bomber Wing at George Air Force Base, California, was followed by a move to Chambley-Bussières Air Base in France in December 1954. At a 1956 NATO exercise, Collins was forced to eject from an F-86 near Chaumont-Semoutiers AB after a fire broke out aft of the cockpit. That same year, he won first prize in a gunnery competition.

  At Chambley-Bussières he met Patricia Mary Finnegan of Boston, a graduate of Emmanuel College who was working as a social worker for the Air Force service club. They had to overcome a difference in religion before marrying in 1957, and their wedding was actually delayed when Collins was redeployed to West Germany during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution. They had a daughter, actress Kate Collins, in 1959, a second daughter Ann in 1961, and a son Michael in 1963.

  The Mobile Training Detachment posting that followed his return to the United States let Collins accumulate the 1,500 flying hours required for the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base. He was accepted into Class 60C on the 29th of August 1960, alongside Frank Borman, Jim Irwin, and Tom Stafford. Collins was a heavy smoker who quit in 1962 after a bad hangover; the next day he spent what he called the worst four hours of his life in the co-pilot's seat of a B-52 Stratofortress, going through the initial stages of nicotine withdrawal. It was John Glenn's Mercury Atlas 6 flight on the 20th of February 1962, that convinced him to apply to NASA.

• 4. Gemini 10 and the Spacewalk Problem

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  Collins was selected in 1963 as part of NASA's third group of 14 astronauts, a cohort younger and better educated than the first two groups but with fewer flying hours on average. Of the thirty astronauts chosen across all three groups, only Collins and William Anders were born outside the United States. Collins received the specialization he requested: pressure suits and extravehicular activities.

  Gemini 10 lifted off from Launch Complex 19 at Cape Canaveral at 17:20 local time on the 18th of July 1966, with John Young as mission commander. The mission called for rendezvous with two Agena Target Vehicles, two spacewalks, and 15 scientific experiments. A navigational error by Collins during the first rendezvous burned excess propellant, forcing Mission Control to cancel the multiple docking objective. The Agena 10 engine then boosted the spacecraft to a new altitude record: 764 km above the Earth, surpassing the previous record set by Voskhod 2.

  For the first spacewalk, Collins stood up through the hatch to photograph the Milky Way, but the EVA ended early when lithium hydroxide, normally used to scrub carbon dioxide from the cabin, was accidentally fed into both astronauts' suits, causing their eyes to water. During the second EVA, attached to a 49-foot umbilical, Collins became the first person to perform two spacewalks in the same mission. He had difficulty reentering the spacecraft and needed Young to pull him back in. The micrometeorite collector he retrieved later drifted out of the capsule and was lost.

  The duo splashed down in the Atlantic at 16:06 on the 21st of July 3.5 nautical miles from the recovery ship, completing nearly all the mission's major objectives. The experience of spacewalking taking far longer than expected would stay with Collins as he moved toward a much larger mission.

• 5. The Loneliest Seat on Apollo 11

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  A cervical disc herniation discovered in 1968 required Collins to have two vertebrae fused at Wilford Hall Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base, Texas. He spent three months in a neck brace and was removed from the prime crew of Apollo 9. Jim Lovell replaced him. Once recovered, Collins was assigned as command module pilot for Apollo 11.

  His Apollo 11 training was largely separate from Armstrong and Aldrin's. He practiced docking at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and compiled a 117-page book of 18 different rendezvous schemes to cover every contingency, including scenarios where the lunar module failed to land or launched off the Moon too early or too late. He also designed the mission patch: he traced a painting by artist Walter A. Weber from a National Geographic Society book called Water, Prey, and Game Birds of North America, adding the lunar surface and the Earth behind the eagle. The olive branch the eagle carries came from a suggestion by a computer expert at the simulators. The call sign Columbia was proposed by Julian Scheer, the NASA Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs.

  Apollo 11 lifted off from Launch Complex 39A at the Kennedy Space Center on the 16th of July 1969, at 13:32 UTC. An estimated one million spectators watched from the highways and beaches nearby. The launch was televised live in 33 countries. On July 19 at 17:21:50 UTC, the spacecraft passed behind the Moon and fired its engine to enter lunar orbit.

  When Eagle separated from Columbia on July 20 at 17:44:00 UTC, Collins inspected the lunar module visually as it rotated before him to confirm the landing gear had deployed correctly. After Aldrin and Armstrong completed their surface EVA, Collins slept so he could be rested for the rendezvous. He had also prepared for contingencies in which he would fly Columbia down to meet Eagle. During his two nights back from the Moon, he went to the lower equipment bay and wrote on the spacecraft: 'Spacecraft 107 - alias Apollo 11 - alias Columbia. The best ship to come down the line. God Bless Her. Michael Collins, CMP.' Columbia splashed down in the Pacific Ocean, 2,660 km east of Wake Island, at 16:50 UTC on July 24. The total mission duration was eight days, three hours, 18 minutes, and 35 seconds.

• 6. Building a Museum From the Ground Up

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  After retiring from NASA in 1970, Collins took a brief position as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs, managing the State Department's Bureau of Public Affairs with a staff of 115 and a budget of $2.5 million. He took over during the Vietnam War, the Cambodia invasion, and the Kent State shootings. At a 1970 commencement speech at Saint Michael's College in Vermont, he told graduates that the nation's insularity was part of its problem: 'Farmers speak to farmers, students to students, business leaders to other business leaders, but this intramural talk serves mainly to mirror one's beliefs, to reinforce existing prejudices, to lock out opposing views.' He secured President Nixon's permission to leave and was succeeded in the position by Carol Laise in October 1973.

  The job he moved to had a clearer goal. Congress had authorized a National Air Museum back on the 12th of August 1946, but had never appropriated construction funding. The Sputnik crisis and the Space Race had built public pressure; the display of the Freedom 7 and Friendship 7 Mercury capsules drew 2,670,000 visitors to the Arts and Industries Building in 1963 alone. A Moon rock exhibition after Apollo 11 attracted 200,000 visitors in a single month. Senator Barry Goldwater gave an impassioned Senate speech for museum funding on the 19th of May 1970.

  With Collins lobbying hard, Congress approved $13 million plus $27 million in contract authority on the 10th of August 1972. The $40 million budget was lower than Collins had hoped for. Architect Gyo Obata of the St. Louis firm Hellmuth Obata and Kassabaum designed the building with Tennessee marble facades to match the National Gallery of Art. Ground broke on the 20th of November 1972. To meet the 4th of July 1976 Bicentennial deadline, the building was constructed horizontally rather than vertically so interior work could proceed concurrently. All contracts were awarded within a year of the start of design.

  The museum opened three days ahead of schedule on the 1st of July 1976, with President Gerald Ford presiding. Over one million visitors passed through in the first month. Visitors entering the Milestones of Flight Hall saw Columbia alongside the Wright Flyer, the Spirit of St. Louis, and Glamorous Glennis. Collins held the directorship until 1978, attained the rank of major general in the Air Force Reserve in 1976, and retired from the Reserve in 1982.

• 7. Life on the Ground

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  Collins wrote his autobiography, Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys, in 1974. A New York Times writer described it as generally regarded as the best account of what it is like to be an astronaut. He followed it with Liftoff: The Story of America's Adventure in Space in 1988, Mission to Mars in 1990, and a children's book, Flying to the Moon and Other Strange Places, in 1976, later revised as Flying to the Moon: An Astronaut's Story in 1994.

  Along with writing, Collins painted watercolors, mostly of the Florida Everglades or aircraft he had flown. Space subjects were rare in his paintings. He did not initially sign them, not wanting his autograph to inflate their price. He completed the Harvard Business School's Advanced Management Program in 1974, became vice president of LTV Aerospace in 1980, and resigned in 1985 to found his own consulting firm, Michael Collins Associates.

  He lived with his wife Pat on Marco Island, Florida, and in Avon, North Carolina. Pat died in April 2014. Collins died of cancer on the 28th of April 2021, in Naples, Florida, at the age of 90. Buzz Aldrin, who became the last surviving member of the Apollo 11 crew, said that wherever Collins had been or would be, he would 'always have the Fire to Carry us deftly to new heights and the future.' On the 30th of January 2023, Collins' ashes were interred at Arlington National Cemetery. The International Astronomical Union had already marked his place in the solar system: asteroid 6471 Collins bears his name.