Michael Collins ( astronaut ) Michael Collins ( born October 31 , 1930 ) is an American former astronaut and test pilot . Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963 , he flew into space twice . His first spaceflight was " Gemini 10 " , in which he and command pilot John Young performed two rendezvous with different spacecraft and Collins undertook two EVAs . His second spaceflight was as the command module pilot for " Apollo 11 " . While he orbited the Moon , Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the first manned landing on the lunar surface . He is one of only 24 people to have flown to the Moon . Prior to becoming an astronaut , he had attended the United States Military Academy , and from there he joined the United States Air Force and flew F - 86 s at Chambley - Bussieres Air Base , France . He was accepted to the U . S . Air Force Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base in 1960 . He unsuccessfully applied for the second astronaut group , but was accepted for the third group . After retiring from NASA in 1970 he took a job in the Department of State as Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs . A year later he became the director of the National Air and Space Museum . He held this position until 1978 when he stepped down to become undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution . In 1980 he took the job as Vice President of LTV Aerospace . He resigned in 1985 to start his own business . He is married to Patricia Collins , and they have three children : Kate , Ann , and Michael . Childhood and education . Michael Collins was born in Rome , Italy on October 30 , 1930 , to U . S . Army Major General James Lawton Collins , who served in the Army for 38 years . For the first 17 years of his life , Michael Collins called Rome ; Oklahoma ; Governors Island , New York ; Puerto Rico ; San Antonio , Texas ; and Alexandria , Virginia home . He took his first ride in a plane in Puerto Rico aboard a Grumman Widgeon . His father often told of how his own first plane ride had been in 1911 with Frank Lahm in the Philippines . He studied for two years in the Academia del Perpetuo Socorro . After the United States entered World War II , the family moved to Washington , D . C . where Collins attended St . Albans School . His mother wanted him to enter into the diplomatic service , but he decided to follow his father , two uncles , brother and cousin into the armed services , and received an appointment to the United States Military Academy , which also had the advantage of being free of tuition and other fees . He finished 185th out of 527 cadets in 1952 , the same class as Ed White . His decision to join the United States Air Force for his active service was based on both the wonder of what the next 50 years might bring in aeronautics , and also to avoid accusations of nepotism had he joined the Army where , among other things , his uncle , General J . Lawton Collins , was the Chief of Staff of the United States Army . The Air Force Academy was only in its initial construction phase , and would not graduate its first class for several years . In the interim , graduates of the Military Academy , Naval Academy ( such as fellow astronaut Tom Stafford ) and the Merchant Marine Academy were eligible for Air Force commissions . Military service . After entering the Air Force , Collins completed flight training at Columbus Air Force Base , Mississippi in the T - 6 Texan , then moved to San Marcos Air Force Base and James Connally Air Force Base , Texas . He was chosen for advanced day fighter training at Nellis Air Force Base , Nevada , flying F - 86 Sabre s . This was followed by an assignment to the 21st Fighter - Bomber Wing at George Air Force Base , California , where he learned how to deliver nuclear weapons . He transferred with the 21st when it was relocated to Chaumont - Semoutiers Air Base , France in June 1954 . During a NATO exercise in the summer of 1956 , Collins was forced to eject from an F - 86 after a fire started aft of the cockpit . He was safely rescued and returned to Chaumont AB , where a wait of several hours ensued , as the base ' s flight surgeon had joined search parties looking for Collins . Collins met Patricia Finnegan , his future wife , in an officers ' mess . She was from Boston , Massachusetts , and was working for the Air Force service club . After getting engaged , they had to overcome a difference in religion . Collins was nominally Episcopalian , while Finnegan came from a staunchly Roman Catholic family . Collins ' s father had been raised a Catholic , but converted to Protestantism when he married ; the rest of his family remained Catholic . After seeking permission to marry from Finnegan ' s father , and delaying their wedding when Collins was redeployed to West Germany during the 1956 Hungarian Revolution , they married in the summer of 1957 . Daughter Kate Collins , born in 1958 , is a successful actress . After Collins was reassigned to the United States , he attended an aircraft maintenance officer course at Chanute Air Force Base , Illinois . He would later describe this school as " dismal " in his autobiography . Upon completing the course , he was posted to a Mobile Training Detachment ( MTD ) and travelled to Air Force bases , training mechanics on the servicing of new aircraft . Test pilot . With the help of his time as a member of an MTD , Collins accumulated over 1 , 500 hours of flying , the minimum required for the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School at Edwards Air Force Base , California . He successfully applied and reported on August 29 , 1960 , becoming a member of Class 60 - C ( which included future astronauts Frank Borman and Jim Irwin ) . Following months of intensive training , Collins was one of the few chosen for a position in fighter operations . Collins used to smoke heavily , but decided to quit in 1962 after suffering a particularly bad hangover . The next day , he spent what he described as the worst four hours of his life in the right - hand seat of a bomber flicking switches while going through the initial stages of nicotine withdrawal . The turning point for Michael Collins in his decision to become an astronaut was the Mercury Atlas 6 flight of John Glenn on February 20 , 1962 , and the thought of being able to circle the Earth in 90 minutes . He immediately applied for the second group of astronauts that year . To raise their numbers , the Air Force sent their best applicants to a " charm school " . Medical and psychiatric examinations at Brooks Air Force Base , Texas and interviews at the Manned Spacecraft Center in Houston followed . In mid - September he found that he had not been accepted , something that was a blow even though he did not really expect to be accepted . Collins still rates the second group of nine as the best group of astronauts ever selected by NASA . That same year the USAF Experimental Flight Test Pilot School became the USAF Aerospace Research Pilot School , as the Air Force tried to enter into the research of space . Collins applied for a new course offered into the basics of spaceflight ( other students included Charles Bassett , Edward Givens and Joe Engle ) . Along with classwork they also flew up to about 90 , 000 feet in F - 104 Starfighter s . As they passed through the top of their huge arc , they would experience a brief period of weightlessness . Finishing this course he returned to fighter ops in May 1963 . At the start of June of that year , NASA once again called for astronaut applications . Collins went through the same process as with his first applications , though he did not take the psychiatric evaluation . He was at Randolph Air Force Base , Texas on October 14 when Deke Slayton called and asked if he was still interested in becoming an astronaut . Charlie Bassett was also accepted in the same group . Space program . For the third group of astronauts , training began with a 240 - hour course of the basics of spaceflight . Fifty - eight hours of this was devoted to geology , something that Collins did not readily understand and in which he never became very interested . At the end , Alan Shepard , who was head of the astronaut office , asked the fourteen to rank their fellow astronauts in the order they would want to fly with them in space . Collins picked David Scott in the number one position . After this basic training , the third group were assigned specializations , with Collins receiving his first choice of pressure suits and EVA ( spacewalk ) . His job was to monitor the development and act as something of a go - between for the Astronaut Office and the contractors . As such he was annoyed when during the secretive planning of Ed White ' s EVA on " Gemini 4 " , he was not involved . In late June 1965 , Collins received his first crew assignment , the backup pilot for " Gemini 7 " . He was the first of the 14 to receive a crew assignment , though would not be the first to fly ; that honor went to David Scott on " Gemini 8 " . Collins never rated himself with the super athletes of the NASA Astronaut Corps , like his fellow backup crew member Ed White , but he still tried to keep in shape , especially in the run up to " Gemini 7 " , when he could have been called upon to spend 14 days in space . Gemini 10 . After the successful completion of " 7 " , Collins was assigned to the prime crew of " Gemini 10 " with John Young , with White moving onto Project Apollo . Their three - day mission called for them to rendezvous with two different Agena Target Vehicle s , undertake two EVAs , and perform 15 different experiments . The training went smoothly , as the crew learned the intricacies of orbital rendezvous , controlling the Agena and , for Collins , EVA . For what was to be only the fourth ever EVA , underwater training was not undertaken , mostly because Collins just did not have the time . To train to use the nitrogen gun he would use for propulsion , a super smooth metal surface about the size of a boxing ring was set up . He would stand on a circular pad that used gas jets to raise itself off the surface . Using the nitrogen gun he would practise propelling himself across the " slippery table " . For the three day flight , Collins received $ 24 . 00 in travel reimbursement . For his first EVA Collins did not leave the Gemini capsule , but stood up through the hatch with a device that resembled a sextant . In his biography he said he felt at that moment like a Roman god riding the skies in his chariot . Apollo . Shortly after " Gemini 10 " , Collins was assigned to the backup crew for the second manned Apollo flight , with commander Frank Borman , command module pilot ( CMP ) Thomas Stafford and Collins as lunar module pilot ( LMP ) . Along with learning the new Apollo Command / Service Module ( CSM ) and the Apollo Lunar Module ( LM ) , Collins received helicopter training , as these were thought to be the best way to simulate the landing approach of the LM . After the completion of Project Gemini , it was decided to cancel the Apollo 2 flight , since it would just repeat the " Apollo 1 " flight . In the process of crews being reassigned , Collins was moved to the CMP position , since his new crew was Borman , Collins and William Anders . Deke Slayton had decided that the CMP should have some spaceflight experience , something that Anders did not have . Three years later , this change would be the reason Michael Collins orbited the Moon while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on its surface . Staff meetings were always held on Fridays in the Astronaut Office and it was here that Collins found himself on January 27 , 1967 . Don Gregory was running the meeting in the absence of Alan Shepard and so it was he who answered the red phone to be informed that there was a fire in the Apollo 1 CM . When the enormity of the situation was ascertained , it fell on Collins to go the Chaffee household to tell Martha Chaffee that her husband was dead . The Astronaut Office had learned to be proactive in informing astronauts ' families of a death quickly , because of the death of Theodore Freeman in an aircraft crash , when a newspaper reporter was the first to his house . Following the delays to training as Frank Borman took part in the fire investigation , the crew of what would become " Apollo 8 " started back . It would be the first manned flight of the Saturn V and only its third launch . They would use the S - IVB third stage to boost them into a highly elliptical Earth orbit with a high point of 4 , 000 miles . During this time Collins and David Scott were sent by NASA to the Paris Air Show in May 1967 . There they met cosmonauts Pavel Belyayev and Konstantin Feoktistov , with whom they drank vodka on the Soviet ' s Tupolev Tu - 134 . Collins found it interesting that some cosmonauts were doing helicopter training like their American counterparts , and Belyayev said that he hoped to make a circum - lunar flight soon . The astronauts ' wives had accompanied them on the trip , and Collins and his wife Pat were somewhat forced by NASA and their friends to travel to Metz where they had been married ten years before . There , they found a third wedding ceremony had been arranged for them ( ten years previously they had already had civil and religious ceremonies ) . Medical problems . During 1968 , Collins noticed that his legs were not working as they should , first during handball games , then as he walked down stairs , his knee would almost give way . His left leg also had unusual sensations when in hot and cold water . Reluctantly he sought medical advice and the diagnosis was a cervical disc herniation , requiring two vertebra e to be fused together . The surgery was performed at Wilford Hall Hospital at Lackland Air Force Base , Texas , and he spent three months in a neck brace . It also removed Collins from the crew of " Apollo 9 " and moved Jim Lovell up to the prime crew . When the " Apollo 8 " mission was changed from a CSM / LM in Earth orbit , to a CSM - only flight around the Moon , both prime and backup crews for the " Apollo 8 " and " Apollo 9 " swapped places . Apollo 8 . Having trained for the flight , Collins was made a CAPCOM ( " capsule communicator " ) , an astronaut stationed at Mission Control responsible for communicating directly with the crew during a mission . As part of the Green Team , he covered the launch phase up to translunar injection , the rocket burn that sent Apollo 8 to the Moon . The successful completion of the first manned circum - lunar flight was followed by the announcement of the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong , Buzz Aldrin , and Michael Collins . At that time in January 1969 , it was not certain this would be the lunar landing crew , depending on the success of Apollo 9 and Apollo 10 testing the Lunar Module . Apollo 11 . As CMP , Collins ' s training was completely different from that for the LM and lunar EVA and was sometimes done without Armstrong or Aldrin being present . Along with simulators , there were size measurements for pressure suits , centrifuge training to simulate the 10 g reentry , and practicing docking with a huge rig at NASA Langley Research Center , Hampton , Virginia , just to name a few . Since he would be the active participant in the rendezvous with the LM , Collins compiled a book of 18 different rendezvous schemes for different scenarios including where the LM did not land , or launched too early or too late . This book ran for 117 pages . The famous was the creation of Collins . Jim Lovell , the backup commander , mentioned the idea of eagles , a symbol of the United States . Collins liked the idea and found a photo in a " National Geographic " magazine , traced it and added the lunar surface below and Earth in the background . The idea of an olive branch , a symbol of peace , came from a computer expert at the simulators . The call sign " Columbia " for the CSM came from Julian Scheer , the NASA Assistant Administrator for Public Affairs . He mentioned the idea to Collins in a conversation and Collins could not think of anything better . It was during the training for " Apollo 11 " that Collins told Deke Slayton that he did not want to fly again . Slayton offered to get him back into the crew sequence after the flight , and according to Collins , this would probably have been as backup commander of " Apollo 14 " followed by commander of " Apollo 17 " . During his day of solo flying around the Moon , Collins never felt lonely . Although it has been said that " not since Adam has any human known such solitude " , Collins felt very much a part of the mission . In his autobiography he wrote that " this venture has been structured for three men , and I consider my third to be as necessary as either of the other two " . During the 48 minutes of each orbit that he was out of radio contact with Earth , the feeling he reported was not loneliness , but rather " awareness , anticipation , satisfaction , confidence , almost exultation " . After spending so much time with the CSM , Collins felt compelled to leave his mark on it , so during the second night following their return from the Moon , he went to the lower equipment bay of the CM and wrote : In a July 2009 interview with " The Guardian " , Collins revealed that he was very worried about Armstrong and Aldrin ' s safety . He was also concerned that , in the event of their deaths on the Moon , he would be forced to return to Earth alone and , as the mission ' s sole survivor , be regarded as " a marked man for life " . Post - NASA activities . After being released from a 21 - day quarantine , the crew embarked on a 45 - day " Giant Leap " tour across the United States and around the world . Prior to this trip NASA Administrator Thomas O . Paine had told Collins that Secretary of State William P . Rogers was interested in appointing Collins to the position of Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs . After the crew returned to the U . S . in November , Collins sat down with Rogers and accepted the position on the urgings of President Richard Nixon . A year later , Collins left this position to become director of the National Air and Space Museum . He held this position until 1978 , when he stepped down to become undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution . That same year , he retired from the U . S . Air Force with the rank of Brigadier General . In 1974 he attended the Harvard Business School and in 1980 he became Vice President of LTV Aerospace in Arlington , Virginia . He resigned in 1985 to start his own consulting firm , Michael Collins Associates . Collins wrote an autobiography in 1974 entitled " " . It is " generally regarded as the best account of what it is like to be an astronaut . " He has also written " Liftoff : The Story of America ' s Adventure in Space " ( 1988 ) , a history of the American space program , " Mission to Mars " ( 1990 ) , a non - fiction book on human spaceflight to Mars , and " Flying to the Moon and Other Strange Places " ( 1976 ) , revised and re - released as " Flying to the Moon : An Astronaut ' s Story " ( 1994 ) , a children ' s book on his experiences . Along with his writing , he has painted watercolors mostly relating to his Florida Everglades home , or aircraft that he flew ; they are rarely space - related . Until recently he did not sign his paintings to avoid them increasing in price just because they had his autograph on them . Collins was a long - time Trustee of the National Geographic Society and presently serves as Trustee Emeritus . He has been awarded the NASA Distinguished Service Medal , Air Force Distinguished Flying Cross , Air Force Command Pilot Astronaut Wings , Presidential Medal of Freedom , and Congressional Gold Medal . Together with Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin , he received the Collier Trophy in 1969 and the Hubbard Medal of the National Geographic Society in 1970 . The International Astronomical Union honored him by naming an asteroid after him , 6471 Collins . Collins and his Apollo 11 crewmates were the 1999 recipients of the Langley Gold Medal from the Smithsonian Institution . Also , like the other two Apollo 11 crew members , he has a lunar crater named after him . Collins lives with his wife , Pat , in Marco Island , Florida , and Avon , North Carolina . " Carrying the Fire " is dedicated to her . Collins is one of the astronauts featured in the documentary " In the Shadow of the Moon . " He also contributed to the book of the same name . In 1989 , some of his personal papers were transferred to Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University . He had a small part as " Old Man " in the 2010 movie , " Youth in Revolt " . In popular culture . English rock group Jethro Tull has a song " For Michael Collins , Jeffrey and Me " , which appears on the " Benefit " album from 1970 . The song compares the feelings of misfitting from vocalist Ian Anderson ( and friend Jeffrey Hammond ) with the astronaut ' s own , as he is left behind by the ones who had the privilege to walk on the surface of the Moon . In the 1996 TV movie " Apollo 11 " , Collins was played by Jim Metzler . In the 1998 HBO miniseries " From the Earth to the Moon " , he was played by Cary Elwes . In the 2009 TV movie " Moon Shot " , he was played by Andrew Lincoln . The 2002 mockumentary " Opération lune " portrays the reason for Collins ' retirement from public life as his deep disappointment at not having set foot on the Moon , and his current whereabouts as unknown . American rock group The Byrds has a song " Armstrong , Aldrin , and Collins " , a ballad of the Apollo 11 Moon landing , on the album " Ballad of Easy Rider " . In Chapter 6 of Naoki Urasawa ' s manga series 20th Century Boys , the characters express sympathy that Collins made it all the way to the moon without ever setting foot on the lunar surface .