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If Mike Collins was fired by any particular ambition in his early years, he managed to conceal the fact. Even as a test pilot, and a member of a traditionally no-nonsense profession, he remained relaxed and easygoing. "He lived from day to day and didn't care too much about the future," recalls Bill Dana, a classmate of Collins' at West Point and a fellow test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base. Adds Dana: "He didn't really take hold until he got into the space program." That happened in 1963 when NASA accepted his application to be an astronaut. Collins is married to the former Patricia Finnegan of Boston. They have three children: Kathleen, 10, Ann, 7, and Michael Jr., 6.
Collins is a master of the dry style of humor that is characteristic of many of the astronauts. How did his wife feel about his latest and most hazardous space assignment? Replied Collins: "She gets a little bit happier every time. However, I think she's reached a peak in happiness now, and I'm going to just leave her right where she is." He is also the most philosophical member of the crew, especially about his own motives for venturing into space. "I really think the key is that man has always gone where he could, and he must continue," Collins said. "He would lose something terribly important by having that option and not taking it."
Men Apart
The Apollo 11 crew has been in full-time training since January, spending 12-hr. days often seven days a week going over and over the 294-page flight plan, rehearsing every move they will make in flight simulators, checking and re-checking the command module and lunar module. They practiced a single maneuver—the powered descent to the lunar surface—at least 150 times. Flight Surgeon Berry was seriously concerned about their grueling schedule. He feared that the men might become so tired that their resistance to disease would be dangerously low and that they would catch the flu or one of the gastrointestinal disturbances that afflicted three of the previous four Apollo crews. If that happens, says Berry, "I'll have the whole world on my back demanding proof that they are not down with some moon bug." Berry publicly discouraged Richard Nixon from dining with the astronauts on the eve of their flight, lest the President pass on germs. When the crew members made their final pre-launch public appearance at a press briefing in Houston eleven days before liftoff, they entered the room wearing rubber masks to cover their mouths and noses and sat within a tentlike glass canopy. Both precautions were designed to reduce the risk of infection.
In a way, the barrier that set Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins apart from their questioners was highly appropriate. When—if all goes well—the three make their next public appearance, they will do so as mankind's first voyagers to an extraterrestrial body. They are only men, chosen for their role by fate as well as by their own unquestionable talents. But by virtue of their momentous experience, they will also be men set apart from their fellows.