13 Minutes to the Moon: 7. Michael Collins: The third man

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Hello, it's Ray Winstone. I'm here to tell you about my podcast on BBC Radio 4, history's toughest heroes. I've got stories about the pioneers, the rebels, the outcasts who define tough. And that was the first time anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head. Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes wherever you get your podcast.

Eagle, Houston, we see you on the stairwell, over. In orbit, 60 miles above the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are beginning preparations for their descent to the lunar surface. They're on board Eagle. the lunar module which is just about to separate from the command module columbia Watching Eagle drift slowly away from him is command module pilot Michael Collins, who says farewell to his commander with a characteristic quip.

Somebody's upside down. There you go. One minute to TIG. You guys take care. See you later. TIG. Time of ignition. the moment when Collins will fire his engine to put more distance between him and the lunar module. A while later, Eagle's descent engine will also fire. a burst of propellant that will send the lander from 60 miles to just 50,000 feet above the moon. Michael Collins is now alone.

keeping vigilant watch over Eagle from his seat in Colombia, ready to dive down and rescue them should something go wrong. When he sealed Armstrong and Aldrin into the lunar module before separation, he knew that he might be the last person to see them alive.

that if something catastrophic happened, he would have to return to Earth alone, the sole survivor of a tragic mission. When Neil and Buzz were on the surface, I was by myself, and I felt... the responsibility for all of us, the responsibility for getting the three of us home in one piece.

We choose to go to the moon. Captain, we're going to go for landing. Eagle Houston, you're going to go for landing. Over. Plus 2.5. Plus 2.5. Hold it at 18 foot. We're going to make it, I think. Roger. Low level. 16. 60 seconds. We've had shutdown. We copy you down, Eagle. Tranquility base here. The Eagle has landed. In this episode, through an interview we recorded at his home in Florida and readings from his autobiography, Carrying the Fire, we'll get to know Michael Collins properly.

We'll follow his journey to the moon and examine his often overlooked but central role in the historic mission of Apollo 11. I'm Kevin Fong and from the BBC World Service, this... is 13 minutes to the moon. Episode 7, Michael Collins' Third Man. In Rome, the city of Michael Collins' birth, there stands an ancient temple dedicated to Apollo.

the god of the sun, archery and healing, who gave Nasa's moon program its name. There's not much left of that Roman temple today. Just three marble columns support a frieze. showing scenes of battle and a victory parade. The three columns support the great weight evenly. If one were to fall, the rest would come tumbling down. In October...

1930, in a house on the other side of Rome, Michael Collins was born, and his journey to the moon began. His father was in the army, Michael was born while he was stationed there, and... 22 years later, he followed in the family tradition, joining the military, but choosing the US Air Force rather than the Army. Michael, I'm Kevin. Fantastic to meet you. Kevin, I can remember that for about 10 seconds. I'm Mike, old deaf Mike, but make yourself at home. Today, Michael Collins lives in Florida.

and is more concerned with the quality of the fishing than with flying. Am I okay with my shoes on? Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, great. Well, they look better than my shoes, I'll trade you. We met Michael Collins at home with him greeting us as we pulled up in front. He was dressed in casual Floridian fatigues, sporting a T-shirt with running figures and the words Army 10 Miler printed on the front, evidence that despite being well into his late 80s, he still probably...

robust enough to get out of the door and do some exercise each day. Mike Collins puts his inclusion in the most famous expedition of all time down to 10% shrewd judgement and 90% luck. His preparation for Apollo 11 actually began years before he joined NASA.

He was a test pilot for the US Air Force, flying some of the most unforgiving Cold War jet fighters of the time. Mike, the skills that you learn as a test pilot, how did they help you in your life later as a selected astronaut? Before there was a space program, people really didn't know what to make of it and who to select, what kind of person would you want, and all sorts of crazy notions emerged.

It was dangerous. You might want a bullfighter. There wasn't much air up there. Maybe a mountain climber or sometimes people... in deep sea diving didn't want to return, and you wanted to make sure your astronauts returned to Earth. So you had all these crazy ideas, and someone prepared a memo. For President Eisenhower, the memo said that the best option would be to pick experimental test pilots because they were—

most apt to be familiar with a strange new flying machine and could cope with difficulties if one arose during the flight. In his book, Carrying the Fire, written in 1974, Michael pinpoints the moment he decided that he wanted to go higher, faster and further. It's read for us by the actor Kerry Shale. I certainly had had no childhood dream of flying to the moon, but the idea was damned appealing. It had been endorsed by the president, and it beat the sound barrier four ways to Sunday.

For me, the clincher came on February 20, 1962, with John Glenn's magnificent three-orbit flight aboard Friendship 7. Imagine being able to circle the globe once every 90 minutes, high above all the clouds and turbulence. way back across door to Cape. Kennedy's moon loomed a bit closer now. I was more than ready when NASA announced that it would select a new group of astronauts to supplement the Immortal Seven. Collins.

was actually turned down the first time he applied to NASA's astronaut programme. But that just made him want it more. So after a year of gaining more experience, he applied again. This time he was accepted in the class of 1963 alongside Buzz Aldrin. With Neil Armstrong already at NASA, the crew of Apollo 11 was starting to come together. Colin's first spaceflight was in 1966, Gemini 10, which saw him fly alongside John Young. The crew practised rendezvous and docking manoeuvres.

expertise that Collins would later put to use during Apollo 11. As part of his Gemini flight, Collins also undertook a successful spacewalk, although he did manage to lose a rather expensive Hasselblad camera. Here he is, safely back inside his Gemini capsule, delivering his report to Mission Control.

about like we predicted. I found that the lack of handles is a big impediment. I could hang on, but I couldn't get around to the other side, which is where I wanted to get around to. Also, I lost my EVA Hasselblad inadvertently, I'm sorry to say.

Once the Gemini program of low-Earth orbit missions was successfully concluded, FOCUS switched to Apollo and the challenges of the first moon landing. The Apollo 11 crew was named in January 1969. just after Apollo 8's triumphant lunar orbital mission. It took three astronauts to get to and then land on the Moon. The lunar module was so complex it needed both Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to fly it.

But Mike Collins' role was equally critical. He would remain in the command module, guarding their safety from high orbit while carefully maintaining their only means of return to Earth. In the run-up to launch, America's CBS News covered his training for these heavy responsibilities. While his teammates, Armstrong and Aldrin, train for their more glamorous roles as the first men on the moon...

Collins prepares for his part, orbiting the moon, feeling somewhat, as he put it, like a father whose teenagers have taken the car out alone for the first time. For if the lunar module should encounter any trouble after its lunar liftoff, Mike Collins must single-handedly fly the three-man command module to rescue them. As far as Armstrong and Aldrin are concerned, with that responsibility on Michael Collins' shoulders, they couldn't be in a safer position.

So just like those three ancient columns in the city of Collins' birth, all three astronauts were equally important. In conversation, Mike Collins told me... that as the Apollo 11 crew prepared for their historic mission, they all felt that compared to Project Gemini, this mission was going to be in an entirely different league. When I was training for a Gemini flight, it was hard work and we were doing stuff that was brand new. However, I had the feeling it was more of a localized event.

almost like perhaps a sporting event, say, whereas... On Apollo 11, I think we, the crew, felt the whole weight of the world on our shoulders in our training. We didn't fool around in any way. We worked hard night and day.

felt like people were going to watch us. If any mistake we made, particularly Russians, would be watching us. So we felt a grave responsibility, but we were... confident in our ability to learn what little bit we had to really know about that technology, and even more confident there were hundreds of people, experts on the ground, who were backing us up should we go astray. in some way. The day arrived when that confidence was put to the ultimate test. The 16th of July 1969.

Minus 15 seconds. Guidance is internal. 12, 11, 10, 9. Ignition sequence start. 6, 5, 4, 3, 2. One. Zero. All engine running. Liftoff. We have a liftoff. 32 minutes past the hour. Liftoff on Apollo 11. I just wanted to also talk about the launch itself. You're used to understanding vehicles, aircraft, with every nuance, every noise that it makes, every shake, every rattle. What was that like then?

Flying this that is essentially an experimental vehicle for the first time and having to trust it. The Saturn V rocket that propelled us to the moon was first off a gigantic piece of machinery. Aboard that gigantic machine, your sensory system filters out a lot, and it, surprisingly enough, was not particularly noisy. It was more that you were susceptible in your harness to every little sideways motion that the machine made.

If you try to hold a pencil vertically on your forefinger, you will see the problem. You can't keep it straight up. You have to make sideways motions, a lot of them. very small, spasmodic, quick motions, and we felt those more than any other sensation when the craft first left the pad. Flight fighter, we are go. Confirmed go. Apollo 11, this is Houston. You are confirmed go for orbit. Flight gang genium is go.

And a little short of three hours later, the crew of Apollo 11 were ready to light the remarkable engine on the third stage of the Saturn V. That would accelerate them from their orbit around the Earth and onward to the Moon.

Translunar Injection, TLI. Apollo 11, this is Houston. You are go for TLI, over. Roger out. They were off, leaving Earth orbit at 25,000 miles per hour. We are on our way to the moon now, with one more hurdle behind us. but only if this thing continues to burn. If it shuts down prematurely, we will be in deep yogurt. on an oddball trajectory that will require some fancy computations on Houston's part and some swift and accurate work on ours, using our service module engine to get back to Earth.

Out of the window, the crew can see signs of the blazing inferno from the booster engine, which is catapulting them beyond Earth's gravitational clutches. I am amazed that I can see evidence of the engine operating as it is mounted on the tail of the Saturn, 110 feet behind us. As far as I can recall, no one has ever seen anything. like the constant flashes and insistent fireflies I see out of my window.

Neil Armstrong did most of the flying to the moon, but Mike Collins was at the controls for a crucial moment. The docking of the command module and the lunar module, a manoeuvre to remove Eagle... from where it had been stowed in the rocket. He'd practiced docking on Gemini 10, but this was different. The command module first had to separate from the Saturn booster and then flip around to face it head on.

so it could be used to drag the lunar module out. When we launched, our lunar module was hidden away inside the upper stage of the Saturn V. So my job was to accelerate the command module, move a little bit away from the rocket, and then make a 180-degree turn, come back, and with my... probe find the drogue, which was the apparatus that I had to hit as a target, and I pulled out backwards and withdrew the lunar module.

The cabin of the lunar module is wafer thin and the vehicles are travelling at thousands of miles an hour. Collins has to close with precision. Failure to dock. or any damage to the fragile lunar module here will mean the end of their mission to land on the moon. As I get close, the visibility is beautiful. The sun is back over my shoulder.

and now the lunar module fills my window with unlikely-looking gold foil, flat gray surfaces, tubular legs, and iridescent window panes. I tense up as it comes closer. Flies like a spacecraft instead of a simulator. Flies like a spacecraft instead of a simulator, says Collins to his commander. In his voice, you can hear the intense focus on the job in hand.

Both hands are working now, my left deciding whether we move up or down, left or right, in or out. My right holds us steady and pointed in the right direction. Buzz and Neil are helpless spectators, since only I am in a position to align. It must be a strange sensation for them to be so close to this great lumbering scrap pile in the sky. to know we are about to collide with it, but when, where, and how.

We are so close now that the exhaust gases from our rocket control motors are impinging on the lunar module and causing its thin skin to ripple rhythmically like wind blowing over a Kansas wheat field. The whole level quivers every so often. It all looks good. Thrust toward it. Ah, that felt good, that gentle kiss. Computer mode to free. Fire one gas bottle to retract the probe.

Bang! The latches slam into position down there in the tunnel and we are docked. The command and lunar modules are now joined, nose to nose, still hurtling together towards the moon. The onboard guidance computer...

sitting alongside Collins, is now in the driving seat. I would say that the heart of Apollo, from a technical point of view, was the guidance and navigation system. That was not my... long suit. I stayed as far away from that inertial system as I could. I spoke to it as an English major. I spoke to it with verbs and nouns. It was mechanized to work with verbs and nouns. So I memorized, like a fool, certain things that I wanted to read.

balance my inertial platform, I would say verb 16, noun 20, enter. Beyond that, I didn't want to know any more about it, and I hoped it didn't know anything about my deficiencies. Now, tens of thousands of miles away from home, Neil Armstrong steals a glance back at planet Earth. Ahead of them lies the moon, still two days away. Day four has a decidedly different feel to it. Instead of nine hours sleep, I get seven, and fitful ones at that.

Despite our concentrated attempt to conserve our energy on our way to the moon, the pressure is overtaking us. Or me, at least. I feel that all of us are aware that the honeymoon is over. and that we are about to lay our little pink bodies on the line. Our first shock comes as we swing ourselves around so as to bring the moon into view. We have not been able to see the moon for nearly a day now.

and the change in its appearance is dramatic, spectacular, and electrifying. The moon I have known all my life, that two-dimensional small disk in the sky, has gone somewhere. to be replaced by the most awesome sphere I have ever seen. To begin with, it is huge, completely filling our window. Second, it is three-dimensional. The belly of it... bulges out toward us in such a profound fashion that I almost feel I can reach out and touch it.

It is between us and the sun, creating the most splendid lighting conditions imaginable. The sun casts a halo around it, shining on its rear surface. and the sunlight which comes cascading around its rim serves mainly to make the moon itself seem mysterious, emphasizing the size and texture of its dimly lit. and pockmarked surface.

Arriving at the Moon, they have to slow their progress with pinpoint accuracy to allow themselves to be captured into lunar orbit. They are only the third crew in history to attempt this manoeuvre. They're on the Moon's far side now. out of contact with mission control, and there is no room for complacency. From Apollo 11's onboard recording, you can hear Armstrong and Collins call in unison as they press the proceed button to fire the spacecraft's engine.

to break their speed. When the moment finally arrives, The big engine instantly springs into action and reassuringly plasters us back in our seats. The acceleration is only a fraction of one G, but it feels good nonetheless. For six minutes, we sit there peering. intent as hawks, at our instrument panel, scanning the important dials and gauges, making sure the proper thing is being done to us. When the engine shuts down, we discuss the matter with our computer and I read out the results.

I take back any bad things I said about MIT. What I mean is that the accuracy of the overall system is phenomenal. Out of a total of nearly 3,000 feet per second, we have velocity errors in our body axis coordinate system of only one tenth of one foot per second in each of the three directions. That is one accurate burn. Safe in orbit, the crew turn their attention from the numbers on MIT's computer display to the window and the vista beyond. Michael Collins is in exuberant mood.

Hello, Moon. How's your old backside? Well, I have to vote with the 10 crew. That thing is brown. Yep. Good. Pandemic. But when I first saw it at that other circle, it really looked great. OK, now we've got some things to do. Things to do. Armstrong, as always, a master of understatement. He often played the straight man opposite the more jokey Mike Collins. Here the pair are, a few hours later, pointing their cameras at the moon and talking to Capcom Bruce McCandless in Houston about the view.

and uh... maps of...

Just over four days after launch, the moment of separation had come. Collins sealed the hatch between his command module and the lunar lander, isolating himself from his two crewmates. And then Armstrong... Cut Eagle free. Eagle, Houston, we see you on the stairwell, over. Roger, Eagle, I'm done. Roger, how does it look? Eagle has wings. Roger.

Bidding Armstrong farewell Michael Collins resumed his responsibilities aboard Columbia, certain in the knowledge that his commander was absolutely the right person for the task that lay ahead and the prestige that would follow. He was the best possible choice. He was the ideal man to represent our country, our planet, in being the first to walk on the moon. Neil was an extremely intelligent man and a man of many talents, very broad-based. He was a student of history.

specifically the history of science, and I have seen him time and time again use that knowledge to his advantage. He lived in a shell. He didn't always emerge from that shell, but if you picked a subject that he enjoyed and you went at it the right way, he would. pop out of that shell with this gigantic grin and he'd be a wonderful companion until he felt the obligation to retreat once more into his shell.

He just had an extremely broad viewpoint, exposure, and was a wonderful representative of our country and our planet. With Armstrong and Aldrin now preparing for the first of their engine burns to set them on course for the lunar surface, Michael Collins was now on his own. I know that I did not have the best seat of the three on Apollo, but I was perfectly delighted with the seat that I had. And when I was by myself, I didn't feel like, you know.

number three distant person, I felt very much involved. I felt I was essential to the safe return of Neil and Buzz. I felt... the responsibility for all of us, the responsibility for getting the three of us home in one piece. So I was gravely concerned, but I was gravely concerned, if you will, from...

from liftoff to touchdown and earth, and I didn't do anything any differently. I just tried to do my job as best I could. And that job didn't stop just because Armstrong and Aldrin had now departed. If anything it was about to become much more involved. Collins had committed to memory multiple manoeuvres that he could be called upon to perform in an emergency.

These would test his piloting skills to their very limits, some requiring him to swoop down from high orbit above the moon to rescue an ailing lunar module. If something went wrong with the landing... If Armstrong was forced to abort, if the ascent engine malfunctioned or the guidance system failed, Collins' crewmate's survival would depend almost entirely upon his skills, some of which...

had only been tested in theory. If for example the lunar module were slightly late getting off, I could not... change my speed. I was zinging by overhead at my orbital speed. That could not be changed. The mathematicians got together and put their heads together and they came up with like... 17 other conditions where one malfunction or another would cause one or the other of us to either get too high, too low, too slow, too fast, too late.

too early, or probably the worst, too much off to the right or too much off to the left. I ended up with a big notebook, an 8x10 book, which I kept tied around my neck, which included 18 of those variations. And that was kind of a nightmare. I mean, some of those were so obscure. that we had never trained for them, and had we needed to enforce those, I'm not sure I would have been able to do it right. With Eagle on its way to the lunar surface, Cullens was by himself.

Interviewers often fall into the trap of asking him about this and their imagined sense of his cosmic isolation. But in carrying the fire, Michael Collins is clear. He was indeed alone, but never lonely. I don't mean to deny any feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon. I am alone now. Truly alone. And absolutely isolated from any known life. I am it. If a count were taken, the score would be...

Three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon. And one, plus God only knows what, on this side. I feel this powerfully. Not as fear or loneliness. but as awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exaltation. From Colin's vantage point... The spidery gold and silver-coloured spacecraft carrying Armstrong and Aldrin was receding from view. He kept his eyes fixed firmly upon it. The lunar module sweeps down farther and farther below me.

picking up speed as it goes, so that at the time of power descent initiation, it will be about 220 miles in front of me. After that, the situation changes very swiftly. As the eagle slows down, I will start gaining on it and will whiz by overhead so that I will be about 200 miles ahead of it at the instant of touchdown. I will try to keep them in sight as long as possible.

Because if they have to abort, it would be nice for me to know where they have gone, helping to determine which one of my 18 rendezvous cases applies. As the Eagle approaches Powered Descent Initiation, I am still hanging in there, peering out through the sextant at a minuscule dot. The module is nearly invisible and looks like any one of a thousand tiny craters, except that... It is moving. Finally, as it passes the hundred mile mark, I lose it.

It's easy in talking about Apollo 11's historic first landing on the Moon to focus too keenly on the lunar module and the actions of Armstrong and Aldrin in their cramped cabin. But at home on Earth lay hundreds and thousands of engineers and scientists who were all vital to the success of the mission. And in those final 13 minutes of descent, circling above the moon was Collins.

the linchpin that held those two worlds together. Apollo 11's third man, comfortable in his solitude and as essential in every moment of the mission as either Armstrong...

or Aldrin. We'll hear from Mike Collins again, in Episode 8, as we follow Eagle as it begins its powered descent to the surface. A note of warning, it's going to be a bumpy ride. From the very start, it all teeters on the edge of failure. OK, offline controllers, go, no, go for power descent. Spacecraft communications are absolutely lousy. We can't communicate to them, they can't communicate to us. There are fears the spacecraft is accelerating dangerously. It's an oh my gosh.

If it grows by another 15 feet per second, I got to abort. Boom, we sure got my attention, and not when you say you're halfway to your abort limits. And the computer controlling Eagle issues warning alarms, which shock the crew, mission control. and the scientists who programmed it. There was something happening inside the computer that we did not understand. My mind was, that's it, we're not going to land. 13 Minutes to the Moon is an original podcast from the BBC World Service.

13 Minutes to the Moon is produced by Chris Browning and Andrew Luck Baker. Our theme music is by Hans Zimmer. Extra production and research effort is by Sue Norton and Madeleine Finlay. The series editor... is Rami Zabar, and the podcast editor is John Manel. You heard extracts from the book Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins, published by Farah, Staus and Giroux, and they were read for us by Kerry Shale. We're also grateful to NASA and CBS News for archive material.

And of course, big thanks to you for telling us what you think of the series. If you haven't done so already, let your views be known by posting your comments, ratings and reviews. Our hashtag is 13 Minutes to the Moon. That's all as one word. And don't forget, there's our website where you'll find Apollo documents, photos and videos, including an animation about Mike Collins and Neil Armstrong. That's at bbcworldservice.com slash 13 minutes. I'm Kevin Fong. Thanks for listening.

And now, some suggested listening. Death in Ice Valley has been one of the BBC World Service's most successful podcasts. And now it's back with an update. She's laying with her head down there. Fake passports, the wigs, the unprescripted glasses. There are somebody living who knows more about this case. I'm Mari Tegroff. And I'm Neil McCarthy. And we've been trying to find answers to an unsolved mystery. Why all this secrecy? It was like a cover-up.

now one year on we're back with an update on the case yes with new leads to follow from you our listeners this is maybe the first lead of evidence we have in Almost 48 years. More on the original investigation. They were being told, don't work it anymore or don't go into that. And maybe even a brand new eyewitness. I feel I'm it.

That's a special episode of Death in Ice Valley, recorded live in Bergen in Norway from the BBC World Service and NRK. Catch up with the whole series now and you'll also find our new episode. Just search for Death in Ice Valley. wherever you get your podcasts. Who drives the world forward? The one with the answers or the one asking the right questions? At Aramco, we start every day by asking how. How can innovation help deliver reliable energy to the world?

How can technology help develop new materials to reshape cities? How can collaboration help us overcome the biggest challenges? To get to the answer, we first need to ask the right question. Search Aramco powered by how. Hello, it's Ray Winstone. I'm here to tell you about my podcast on BBC Radio 4, history's toughest heroes.

I've got stories about the pioneers, the rebels, the outcasts who define tough. And that was the first time anybody ever ran a car up that fast with no tires on. It almost feels like your eyeballs are going to come out of your head. Tough enough for you? Subscribe to History's Toughest Heroes wherever you get your podcast.