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Anyways, RIP.
Collins' 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…
> Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of abandoning his crewmates to die on the moon and fly back to Earth himself. He would have died in orbit then, just a little bit closer to the rest of mankind. There was no was way for him to return to solid Earth unless the lunar module came back. He was dependent on the outcome of the Lunar…
I'm not sure what you're basing that on. The Apollo 11 flight plan, available on the NASA website [1], shows LM jettison before TEI burn. That indicates that the LM was not needed for TEI. If for some reason the LM did not come back from the surface of the Moon, the CSM could still execute the TEI burn.
[1] https://www.hq.nasa.gov/alsj/a11/a11fltpln_final_reformat.pd...
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> There was no was way for him to return to solid Earth unless the lunar module came back. Where did you get that idea from? This is the first time I see someone claiming something like that.
Probably from the film Apollo 13 , which depicts (likely wise) hesitance to fire the SPS due to suspected damage and instead firing midcourse correction burns with the LEM descent stage while attached to the CSM. By contrast, during the otherwise normal Apollo 11, SPS was responsible for returning Collins and the CSM to Earth (TEI) whether he retrieved Armstrong and Aldrin or not. The latter case was a rehearsed abor…
Collins' 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…
Sorry to correct you. But the first person alone in lunar orbit was John Young during the Apollo 10 mission
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Meanwhile no one had ever been as far from other life as he was on that flight. Xkcd has a good fact check on this: it's just about plausible that some Polynesian or Antarctic explorer, the last survivor of a doomed expedition, was the furthest from any other human. But more likely it is the CSM commanders. I note you say "other life" rather than "other humans", which would make it more clear cut in favour of Colli…
It's plausible. The moon's width is 2,158.8 miles, and I could imagine an explorer being >3000 miles from another human
Collins' 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…
I read an article some time ago about the opposite scenario. I searched for the article just now but didn't find it; would be curious if anyone has a link. I remembered it something like this (but see soarfourmore's reply for a correction): what if the command module pilot became incapacitated but was still alive? The lunar module could still dock with the command module, but the astronauts would not be able to get i…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Collins was largely powerless to help if something went wrong. If that did happen, he would have been faced with the choice of abandoning his crewmates to die on the moon and fly back to Earth himself. He would have died in orbit then, just a little bit closer to the rest of mankind. There was no was way for him to return to solid Earth unless the lunar module came back. He was dependent on the outcome of the Lunar…
> There was no was way for him to return to solid Earth unless the lunar module came back. I'm not sure what you're basing that on. The Apollo 11 flight plan, available on the NASA website [1], shows LM jettison before TEI burn. That indicates that the LM was not needed for TEI. If for some reason the LM did not come back from the surface of the Moon, the CSM could still execute the TEI burn. [1] https://www.hq.nasa.…
Collins' 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…
I read an article some time ago about the opposite scenario. I searched for the article just now but didn't find it; would be curious if anyone has a link. I remembered it something like this (but see soarfourmore's reply for a correction): what if the command module pilot became incapacitated but was still alive? The lunar module could still dock with the command module, but the astronauts would not be able to get i…