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On July 20, 1969, NASA’s Apollo 11 spaceflight landed the first two men – Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin – on the Moon. Armstrong became an overnight sensation, burying the US flag into the
lunar surface and bringing an end to the Space Race with the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, command module pilot Michael Collins orbited the moon inside space shuttle Columbia, waiting more than
21 hours for his colleagues to return before they headed to Earth.
However, unlike Armstrong and Aldrin, Collins was not a decorated pilot.
James Donovan claimed during his new book “Shoot For the Moon” that his desire to explore space came much later in life.
He wrote: “In April 1957, Collins developed a yen to be a test pilot and attend the air force’s school at Edwards AFB.
“In August 1960, along with another air force pilot named Frank Borman and several other top aviators, he began the gruelling eight-month course.
Despite the sneers of some of his Edwards comrades
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“After graduation in the spring of 1961, he was assigned to fighter operations, which is what he yearned for.
“At Edwards, he developed a passing acquaintance with a hotshot test pilot named Neil Armstrong.
“But the less desirable jobs he was given left him unfulfilled.”
Mr Donovan went on to reveal how Collins decided he wanted to take things one step further and apply to be a part of the Apollo programme.
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He continued: “In 1962, two months after John Glenn’s three-orbit triumph, NASA called for an additional group of astronauts, and Collins applied – despite the sneers of some of his Edwards
comrades about the lack of actual flying.
“He underwent the five days of physical exams and the weeklong battery of psychological and stress tests.
“He had gotten the highest score on the Miller Analogies Test, which measures verbal abilities, but he had scored lower on mathematical reasoning and engineering tests.”
However, despite the set-back, Collins got what he wanted in the end.
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Mr Donovan continued: “Over the next year, he worked to improve his knowledge of the new cutting-edge aircraft, and in June 1963, when the call went out for another group of astronauts, he
applied again and his scores were better.
“Deke Slayton phoned him in mid-October and casually asked if he might still be interested in joining the group,
“On January 9, 1969, Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins were announced publicly as the crew of Apollo 11.”
However, Collins wasn’t the only on to take stick, apparently.
The team of Apollo was made up of highly intelligent and highly skilled pilots, but Mr Donovan revealed some of them used to give Aldrin cruel nicknames.
He wrote: “Small talk was a foreign language to Buzz, and one he never mastered.
“Even fellow astronauts dreaded sitting next to ‘Dr Rendezvous’ at dinner, since the conversation usually became a one-sided lecture on Aldrin’s favourite topic, orbital mechanics.
“He once spent hours lecturing an astronaut’s wife on the subject.”
The book goes on to claim there were worse nicknames, too.
It adds: “One friend said: ‘Aldrin is a professor who is always on’.
“One newspaper referred to him by a nickname that some at NASA had used – the Mechanical Man.
“One flight planner commented: ‘I sometimes think he could correct a computer’.
“If a computer could talk, he might have sounded like Aldrin.”
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