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| Michael Collins, command module pilot of the Apollo 11 lunar landing mission. |
While Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin received the honors of being the first and second man to walk on the moon, their other crew member had to wait in the ship! This man, Michael Collins, may have had the toughest assignment of all! Collins had to wait behind in the mothership all alone while Armstrong and Aldrin explored the lunar surface. While the other two were down below, Collins also passed behind on the dark side of the moon (the furthest distance any human has been from Earth!) - and out of radio communication for quite some time. If something had gone wrong with the lunar lander’s engine, Buzz and Neil could have easily been stranded to die on the surface of the moon.
This would have meant that Collins would have had to pilot the ship back to Earth by himself! He also believed that such a tragedy would have left him a “marked” man for life, since he would have returned as the lone survivor. Fortunately, the Apollo 11 mission was a success and President Richard Nixon did not have to read the speech he had prepared in case of a tragedy!
While he may end up getting less recognition in the history books, the legendary airman Charles Lindburgh wrote to Collins telling him that his mission had "greater profundity ... you have experienced an aloneness unknown to man before".
