Neil Armstrong: A Life of Flight (28 page)

A telescopic camera caught this picture of
Apollo 8
’s reentry into Earth’s atmosphere. Only fire could be seen, blinding white flames within a red sheath leaving a burning trail 125 miles long. (NASA)

Apollo 8
traded its speed for heat. The hotter the fire flowing from the heat shield the slower the spacecraft, and suddenly they were safely two miles above the Pacific, in sight of Christmas Island, and three large parachutes streamed away, blossoming wide and full.

The world cheered.

The astronauts returned to a thundering ovation.

The road to the moon was open.

Neil Armstrong, Mike Collins, and Buzz Aldrin: the misfits at the rollout of their
Apollo 11
Saturn V rocket. (NASA)

FIFTEEN

THE MISFITS

The talk around NASA was the first “moon landers” had been selected. All eyes focused on Deke Slayton, and on January 4, 1969, he called Mike Collins and Buzz Aldrin into his office. Neil was already there.

“I’ll get right to the point,” the director of flight crew operations began. “Neil will be commanding
Apollo 11
, and we’d like you, Mike, to be the command module pilot.” He shifted his eyes to Aldrin. “Buzz we’d like you to handle the lunar module and shepherd the experiments.

“It’s conceivable you guys could make the first landing on the moon,” he told them soberly. “We want you to train that way.”

Collins and Aldrin grinned like Tennessee mules eating briars as stoic Neil Armstrong, long a devotee of Zeno of Elea, a pupil of Parmenides who was unmoved by joy or grief, stood without expression. Neither Collins nor Aldrin had a clue Deke and Neil had been meeting during
Apollo 8
.

“Mike, you, Jim Lovell, and John Young are at the front of the line when it comes to handling the command module,” Deke continued. “You’ll be taking care of your crew’s only ride home,” he said grinning, “and if I were Neil and Buzz I’d keep you happy.”

They all laughed and Mike said, “I’ll keep the home fires burning, Boss.”

Deke nodded, turning again to Aldrin. “Buzz, your spacewalk on
Gemini 12
was a classic, rid us of lots of problems. That was a great job, and we’re convinced you can do the same as
Apollo 11
’s lunar module pilot.”

“You’ll get the best I have, Boss,” Buzz nodded.

“Good, we want you to know every bolt and washer in that LM [pronounced Lem], and if it gets a gut ache, I want you to be ready with the Alka-Seltzer.”

“I will, Deke,” Buzz assured him once again.

“As commander Neil will make all the decisions, asking of course for your input. He’ll have a full working knowledge of both ships and Neil has come a long way in mastering the landing of a lunar module primarily with the LLTV, and Buzz,” Deke cleared his throat, “we want you to use that MIT sheepskin of yours to please the science boys with the experiments. You’ll be setting them up, and the science guys would like for them to work for decades—we want them chirping back their data to every interested scientist on Earth.”

“Yes, sir.”

“We won’t let you down, Boss,” said Mike, adding his own assurance.

“It’s going to be a great flight whatever the mission turns out to be,” the newly appointed
Apollo 11
commander added. “We’ll be ready, Deke.”

The director of flight crew operations offered his hand for each of them to shake, believing he had a solid crew to make the first landing on the moon.

The NASA brass was in full agreement with Deke’s decision. The boys at the top—considering the era they were all boys—were sure that if Neil were the first on the moon he would not cheapen that honor by enriching himself. The world would not see a chain of “Neil Armstrong’s Moon-Burger Drive-ins,” or toothpaste endorsements. This American son, who began earning his own way at age ten, would honor the historic gift with deserving dignity. This alone, disregarding the fact that Neil Armstrong was arguably the best pilot in the astronaut corps, was reason enough to give him the job. If problems cropped up and
Apollo 11
had to be waved off,
Apollo 12
had a commander who wasn’t too shabby himself. His name was Pete Conrad and no one would argue Pete couldn’t fill Neil’s shoes—certainly not Neil. Either, along with the likes of John Glenn, James Lovell, Alan Shepard, Dave Scott, John Young, and Gene Cernan would serve America well as its first ambassador to a place other than Earth. No one was more aware of this fact than Neil, who would spend his life believing any one of his astronaut brethren could have performed as well as he did.

*   *   *

NASA announced the
Apollo 11
crew five days later following White House ceremonies for the
Apollo 8
astronauts. Outgoing president Lyndon Johnson awarded Frank Borman, Jim Lovell, and Bill Anders medals and the
Apollo 8
crew received standing ovations at a joint meeting of Congress.

Neil was pleased with Mike’s and Buzz’s selection even though many in the space family regarded the
Apollo 11
crew as the “Misfits.”

Socially that description may be true. Neil and Mike and Buzz weren’t pals. They saw little of each other while not at work; they even drove their own separate cars to the job. But Neil knew when it came to Apollo’s command module there was no one out there who could best Mike Collins. The same was true when it came to Buzz Aldrin. Who was going to compete with Buzz in the smarts department? He graduated third in his West Point class. He was an F-86 combat pilot in Korea with a couple of kills. Those pilots were simply the best, and Buzz received a doctor of science degree in astronautics from MIT, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Who better for the lunar module and setting up experiments on the moon?

Neil’s roots were in rural Ohio—well planted with small-town comfort, security, privacy, and most important to him proven values.

This was also true for the original Mercury Seven astronauts.

As John Glenn put it, “Growing up in a small town gives kids something special. They learned how to make their own decisions, and maybe,” Glenn added, “maybe it’s no accident that people in the space program, a lot of them come from small towns.”

“The small towns I grew up in were slow to come out of the Depression,” Neil said. “But we weren’t deprived. My father’s annual salary was about $2,000, and we never had much money around. But to some of my friends, the fact my father had a job meant that the Armstrongs were rich.

“I got my first job when I was ten. I was paid only ten cents an hour. I was happy to get it. I cut grass at the Upper Sandusky’s historic Old Mission Cemetery, and I never had the first complaint that I was only ten from its occupiers,” he laughed, “and even though I had to cut grass ten hours to make a dollar, I was the only boy around with a dollar.”

Mike Collins was the sort of man Neil naturally enjoyed rubbing elbows with—a good-humored man who enjoyed a joke while being thoughtful and articulate and learned. Neil knew Mike was born in Italy and for the first 17 years of his life, he called Rome; Oklahoma; Governors Island, New York; Puerto Rico; San Antonio, Texas; and Alexandria, Virginia, home. This alone settled the question of who was the most cosmopolitan member of the
Apollo 11
crew, the one who often kidded Neil about being from a small town, which Neil countered by telling Mike that those who live out among the cows and chickens think that people who live in crowded streets and the hustle and bustle are the ones with the problems. Neil would add that anyone who lives elbow to elbow with thousands of others was missing the good sense and judgment to come in out of the rain.

*   *   *

As a son of an army attaché in Rome, Mike Collins was born on Halloween October 31, 1930, to Virginia Stewart Collins, a cultured, educated woman, and to Major General James L. Collins, a man who fought with General John J. Pershing in the Philippines, and again in 1916 when the Mexican Revolutionary Pancho Villa raided Columbus, New Mexico. Mike’s father and General Pershing chased Villa into Mexico, tracking him for seven months only to be called back with the outbreak of World War I.

But it was Mike’s uncle who became the better known. J. Lawton Collins, “Lightning Joe” as he was called, was one of General Dwight David Eisenhower’s field commanders in World War II. General “Lightning Joe” would later become chief of staff of the United States Army from August 1949 to August 1953, serving as the Army’s senior officer throughout the Korean War while Mike’s older brother, James L. Collins Jr., graduated from West Point and became a field artillery battalion commander in World War II. He won a boatload of medals—the Purple Heart, Bronze Star, Silver Star, Distinguished Service Medal, and Legion of Merit. In 1965 Mike’s brother would become a brigadier, later a major general, and after Mike Collins completed his tour as an astronaut, he would carry on his family’s tradition in the military by receiving stars for his shoulders, too. Before he retired from the Air Force Reserves he received the rank of major general.

As a boy Mike’s two older sisters, Virginia and Agnes, mostly ignored their younger sibling who would finally know what an extended homelife felt like with the beginning of World War II. That’s when Mike’s family moved to Washington, D.C., where they lived for the duration of the war.

The skinny athletic 12-year-old attended the Episcopal preparatory school, St. Albans, where he captained the school’s wrestling team and in spite of his size played guard on the football team.

Mike, who was popular among his teachers and the other kids, was usually in the middle of practical jokes and fun stuff, and when graduation was behind him, in the tradition of his family, he attended West Point.

In a class of 527 cadets, Mike Collins graduated 185th in 1952, modestly admitting his record was respectable but nothing to shout about, and he joined the Air Force to avoid accusations of nepotism had he joined the Army where his uncle was chief of staff.

Mike completed his flight training and moved on for advanced-day fighter training flying F-86 Sabres and learning how to deliver nuclear weapons all the while inching his way into test-pilot school.

While flying NATO duty in the summer of 1956, Collins was forced to eject from an F-86 after a fire started aft of the cockpit. He was safely rescued. Soon after he met Patricia Finnegan, his future wife. They had three children, two daughters and a son, and once Mike had accumulated over 1,500 hours of flying, he was assigned to the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards.

He was there when NASA named its third group of astronauts in June 1963. Mike found his name on the list and in three years he went into space with John Young on
Gemini 10
where they docked successfully with the Agena and he took a spacewalk and recovered a micrometeorite package.

But John Young and Mike Collins just didn’t recover one micrometeorite package—they recovered two by finding and rendezvousing with the old
Gemini 8
Agena that Neil Armstrong and Dave Scott had to abandon.

All of it had been a whirlwind ride for Mike Collins who was a confirmed optimist.

“I’m not at all convinced that everything is going to work out well,” Mike Collins would say, “but on the other hand, there’s nothing wrong in thinking it should.”

*   *   *

Like his crewmates,
Apollo 11
’s Lunar Module Pilot Edwin Eugene “Buzz” Aldrin Jr. was born in 1930. He was born a few months earlier than Neil and Mike on January 20, in Glen Ridge, New Jersey.

Buzz was the third child and only son of his mother Marion, whose maiden name was “Moon,” and his father Gene Aldrin, a hard-to-please man who studied physics at Clark University under Dr. Robert Goddard, the father of American rocketry. In 1918, Buzz’s father earned a master’s degree at MIT in electrical engineering before becoming a pilot in the Army Air Corps, serving as an aide to General Billy Mitchell, who was regarded as the father of the Air Force and lobbied for the ability of bombers to sink battleships.