Skip to Main Content
HBS Home
  • About
  • Academic Programs
  • Alumni
  • Faculty & Research
  • Baker Library
  • Giving
  • Harvard Business Review
  • Initiatives
  • News
  • Recruit
  • Map / Directions
Alumni
  • Login
  • Volunteer
  • Clubs
  • Reunions
  • Bulletin
  • Class Notes
  • Help
  • Give Now
  • Stories
  • Alumni Directory
  • Lifelong Learning
  • Careers
  • Programs & Events
  • Giving
  • …→
  • Harvard Business School→
  • Alumni→
  • Stories→

Stories

Stories

18 Jul 2019

Apollo 11 Astronaut Michael Collins Reflects on the 50th Anniversary of the Moon Landing

Topics: Engineering-AerospaceHistory-GeneralLeadership-General
ShareBar

In celebration of the 50th anniversary of 1969’s successful Apollo 11 voyage, Michael Collins (AMP 69, 1974) has been sharing his memories of the famous, three-man moon mission.

Collins played a critical support role while Buzz Aldrin and Neil Armstrong landed their lunar module and took their “one giant leap for mankind.” Here’s how his experience is described in a recent Atlantic article on the anniversary:

He didn’t witness the landing; his spacecraft sped on after he dropped off the two other astronauts, and the view from that height is nothing but craters. He did hear Armstrong’s voice crackle over the radio, telling Mission Control he and Aldrin made it. Collins circled the moon, completely alone, for more than a day. He listened as his fellow astronauts walked around the jagged terrain in their puffy white suits, unpacked science instruments, and scooped rocks into boxes. The voices vanished every couple of hours, as Collins’s command module slipped behind the moon, where neither the astronauts nor Mission Control could reach him. The views were stunning all around. But for Collins, the finest sight was the lunar module returning, a small dot moving in the distance, a speck of black against the gleaming gray. Soon Neil and Buzz would be back inside. They could all go home.


In an interview in Popular Science, Collins, now 88, discusses his route to mission, which included a West Point education followed by a stint as an Air Force pilot before joining NASA. “It wasn’t like all of sudden I was lying on my back one night looking up into the night sky and, bingo, next thing you know I was on the moon,” Collins told the magazine. “It was a very long, stair step system of progression.”

The interview also touches on Collins’s orbit around the moon—a 21-hour-long solo trip during which he was cut off from communications with Mission Control for almost an hour and a half. Collins notes that he is frequently asked about his mental state during that period, but responds that he had a pretty clear focus:

You know what was on my mind when he asked me that? White mice. We were locked up in these big fancy series of rooms. But there was the white mice room. If the white mice died, we were in deep trouble [because it meant that we had brought back a deadly pathogen].

So, when they were asking about me being lonely, I kept thinking ‘what the hell are they talking about?’ I was worried about those white mice at the time, worried about something sensible. Neil, Buzz, and I went to the moon and back. Was it a success or a failure? It all depended on those white mice.


READ MORE

ShareBar

Post a Comment

Related Stories

    • 03 Oct 2019
    • Skydeck

    Skydeck Live: Galactic Returns

    Re: Laetitia Garriott de Cayeux (MBA 2004)
    • 28 Sep 2017
    • Los Angeles Times; Bloomberg

    Alumni-Founded Aerospace Pioneer Orbital Acquired for $7.8 Billion

    Re: Dave Thompson (MBA 1981); Bruce Ferguson (MBA 1979); Scott Webster (MBA 1981)
    • 11 Apr 2017
    • Making A Difference

    Keeping the Missions Under Control

    Re: Norman Knight (GMP 9)
    • 02 Feb 2017
    • Making A Difference

    A Vision for the Earth

More Related Stories

 
 
 
 
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
  • Explore
ǁ
Campus Map
External Relations
Harvard Business School
Teele Hall
Soldiers Field
Boston, MA 02163
Phone: 1.617.495.6890
Email: alumni+hbs.edu
→Map & Directions
→More Contact Information
  • Make a Gift
  • Site Map
  • Jobs
  • Harvard University
  • Trademarks
  • Policies
  • Accessibility
  • Digital Accessibility
  • Terms of Use
Copyright © President & Fellows of Harvard College