People invariably asked Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins, who died Wednesday, how he felt orbiting behind the far side of the Moon, cut off from his home world, while his two crewmates made history landing on the lunar surface for the first time.
“Mr. Collins, weren’t you the loneliest man in the whole lonely history of this lonely planet in your lonely orbit behind the lonely Moon? Weren’t you by yourself terribly lonely?” is how he recently phrased the inevitable question.
For 50 years, his answer rarely varied: “No.” It was comfortable in the Apollo 11 command module he piloted, he would say. Out of radio contact periodically, he enjoyed the respite from chatter with Mission Control. There was hot coffee right at hand and music if he wanted. “I had this beautiful little domain,” he usually said.
It was their lifeboat. Without Mr. Collins tending the orbiting command module in their absence, his moonwalking crewmates Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin wouldn’t have returned home alive.
