Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins has passed away at 90
R.I.P. Michael Collins, the astronaut on Apollo 11 who stayed in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, passed away today at the age of 90.
Collins was one of the most friendly and personable astronauts I ever met. He was always available and willing to answer questions, sometimes even willing to go an extra mile to provide you more than you asked for.
In many ways his later work as head of the Air & Space Museum was more important than his time as an astronaut. He helped make that museum and the history it documents one of the most popular in the world.
As long as humanity exists, on Earth and in space, Michael Collins will never be forgotten.
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R.I.P. Michael Collins, the astronaut on Apollo 11 who stayed in lunar orbit while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the Moon, passed away today at the age of 90.
Collins was one of the most friendly and personable astronauts I ever met. He was always available and willing to answer questions, sometimes even willing to go an extra mile to provide you more than you asked for.
In many ways his later work as head of the Air & Space Museum was more important than his time as an astronaut. He helped make that museum and the history it documents one of the most popular in the world.
As long as humanity exists, on Earth and in space, Michael Collins will never be forgotten.
Readers!
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black. Your support allows me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Only now does it appear that Washington might finally recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation or subscription:
4. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above.
Though he did much more, Milton’s line seems apropos:
They also serve who only stand and wait.
RIP
RIP to a great Man, I find it hard to comprehend how it must have felt to alone like no other human had ever been. A true hero. On a kinda related note… The Apollo astronauts seem to have ended up being kinda long lived…. Having travelled thru the van Allen belts… Perhaps “space” radiation is not the threat it is sometimes played up to be?
God Bless you General Collins. The years fly by, I was a boy in high school when you orbited the moon. Thank you for your courage and your service to our Air Force, NASA, the State Department and especially the Air & Space Museum.
The ranks of the astronauts who went to the moon, much less walked on it, are dwindling fast. I’m rooting for Elon to get us back there so that there will never again be a shortage of people who have walked on the moon.
His book (Carrying The Fire) is the best astronaut memoir I’ve ever read. Another hero from my childhood is gone. He will be missed.
I agree that Elon and others are in the process of making the accomplishments of men like Collins a bit less rare. If all goes well, we may yet see the future in space we dreamed of as Collins was circling the Moon.
Robert,
Shouldn’t it be stayed in Lunar orbit rather than stated?
RIP to a great pioneer.
The first thing I remember watching on TV was an Apollo launch.
eddie–
A most excellent sentiment!
I’m going to toss this in here—
Astronaut Clayton Anderson
Michael Malice, “Your Welcome” episode 151
April 22, 2021
https://youtu.be/i5Pbs9yzCSw
1:02:54
commodude: Yup. Thank you. Fixed.
Now, if I had my way-the stump of the LEM should be a dais with three statues upon it…a monitor behind the helmet-glass of the third-the rest of his suit stone.
Lee,
The trajectories followed by the Apollo missions did not go through the thickest parts of the Van Allen Belts either going or coming back but just their border outskirts. The passages were also quite swift. That said, you are correct that astronauts tend to exceed the life expectancies of average people born in the same year. None has yet made it to a full century, but several have gotten close. We are down to just four of the original dozen Moonwalkers, but the odds look pretty good that they all may still be with us by the time that baton is passed to those arriving there via Starship.
Of the other dozen men who got to the vicinity of the Moon, but didn’t land, half are still alive including the entire crew of Apollo 8. Tom Stafford of Apollo 10, the non-landing dress rehearsal for Apollo 11, is still with us. So are Fred Haise and Jim Lovell from Apollo 13, which was intended to land but famously did not. Lovell is a double-dipper in this category as he was also on Apollo 8. The only survivor among the six men who stood and waited while their crewmates trod the Moon is Ken Mattingly of Apollo 16.
Of the 10 surviving Apollo Moon mission veterans, Ken Mattingly is the youngest at 85 and Frank Borman is the eldest at 93, though he is only 11 days older than Jim Lovell who is also now 93.
Here’s hoping we read no more obituaries from this group before Artemis 3 touches down.