I feel bad for Collins, at best he got the "also participated" award in the public mindshare - and this despite that fact he was left more alone than any man in history, locked about the dark side of the moon, wondering if he was going home alone.
Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
121–130 of 191 posts
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#122I feel bad for Collins, at best he got the "also participated" award in the public mindshare - and this despite that fact he was left more alone than any man in history, locked about the dark side of the moon, wondering if he was going home alone.
It's hard to imagine that bitter-sweetness he must've felt. At the same time, how could he ever complain. Maybe he took no issue, but I'm sure everyone in the program was hoping to be the first man.
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#123Collins' role in Apollo 11 is often minimized in the public conciseness, but I find it particularly fascinating from a human perspective. In certain ways it seems even scarier than Armstrong's and Aldrin's jobs. They at least had more direct control over their success in landing on the moon. Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of…
All of humanity in one picture except for Michael Collins: https://www.reddit.com/r/spaceporn/comments/63ztoy/all_of_hu...
The OG anti-selfie.
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#124Earlier quoted context omitted.
Apollo 15, 16 and 17 did perform nominal EVAs from the command module after the lunar landing, to retrieve film cassettes. To this day they are the only 3 deep space EVAs ever made. All others have been either in Earth orbit or on the moon.
To clarify, they were transearth EVAs, so they were not even during orbit around the moon. I recall seeing some upscaled videos on youtube of this which looked pretty unearthly. https://www.history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-30_Extravehic...
links to some vids:
https://www.drewexmachina.com/2017/12/17/a-history-of-deep-s...
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#125It turns out that https://xkcd.com/893/ was posted almost ten years ago. Although he didn't actually get to walk on the moon, he still went there.
I compared it with real data, the prediction is remarkably accurate:
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#126I feel bad for Collins, at best he got the "also participated" award in the public mindshare - and this despite that fact he was left more alone than any man in history, locked about the dark side of the moon, wondering if he was going home alone.
It's hard to imagine that bitter-sweetness he must've felt. At the same time, how could he ever complain. Maybe he took no issue, but I'm sure everyone in the program was hoping to be the first man.
I can't imagine that he took issue; these guys generally seemed to put the mission before the self.
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#127Earlier quoted context omitted.
Sorry to correct you. But the first person alone in lunar orbit was John Young during the Apollo 10 mission
I'm unclear on what you are correcting. I didn't state he was the first to do a lunar orbit in his own spacecraft, but he was the first to do it without any other nearby craft. As far as I'm aware, the lunar module and the command module were never actually that far apart during Apollo 10. So while they were separated, the distance between the two was measured in hundreds of miles rather than the thousands of miles t…
Some mission parameters are at:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apollo_10#Mission_parameters
The lunar orbit of the LM (Lunar Module) and CSM (Command-Service Module) had a period of 2.15 hours. The interval during which the LM orbited separately from the CSM was 8 hours 10 minutes, or about 3.8 orbits. Thus, at times both craft would have been on the far side of the moon. While the LM was in its lower orbit I don't know how much shorter its orbital period would have been, or whether it "lapped" the CSM during the time between closest approach and redocking.
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#128Earlier quoted context omitted.
To clarify, they were transearth EVAs, so they were not even during orbit around the moon. I recall seeing some upscaled videos on youtube of this which looked pretty unearthly. https://www.history.nasa.gov/SP-4029/Apollo_18-30_Extravehic...
links to some vids: https://www.drewexmachina.com/2017/12/17/a-history-of-deep-s...
I found one upscaled and interpolated to 24fps:
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#129Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's plausible. The moon's width is 2,158.8 miles, and I could imagine an explorer being >3000 miles from another human
I'm too lazy to do the math, but what's the point-to-point distance (through the planet) of points that are 5000km along the surface?
Assuming a spherical earth, it's 4873 km.
Re: Michael Collins, Apollo 11 astronaut, has died
#130Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The would not know at that point whether the CM pilot had his spacesuit helmet on or not, so they wouldn't know until they opened the hatch whether they had just killed him. There were windows on the command module to look in, and if they weren't sure if he was responsive/unresponsive, they could tap iron onto the command module to let Collins know they were there and spacewalking. It's an interesting thought proce…
Found it! https://spaceflightblunders.wordpress.com/2017/04/07/lunar-o... From the article, I was wrong about not knowing whether the CMP was alive: "Unless there was a very serious issue with the CM’s communications systems, NASA would know of the CMP’s fate immediately. Every astronaut wears biomedical sensors at all times, as part of their constant-wear garment. This telemetry is sent to the flight surgeon." More…
You can survive vaccuum for a brief period of time.