My name is Mike Collins I was the command module pilot on Apollo 11 which
was the first lunar landing in 1969, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin being my two compatriots there.
There was a lot of polarization in 1969 just as there is today.
One difference was President John F Kennedy who is very clear in his stated mandate
to land the man on the moon and return him safely to the earth by the end of the decade.
So there was no doubt about what we were going to do and when we were supposed to do it.
Now the how of it was up to us and that's what we spent a decade working very hard at
to achieve the first lunar landing
before the end of the decade just as he said.
Well I don't know if he was a good leader or not he's in many ways he was
wonderful for the space program and I liked him, I never met him I but I
admired him as a person.
We were not friendly with the Soviet Union, Paris Air Show was a neutral
territory, I expected perhaps a tinge of hostility from them
I got none, we concentrated more on the fact that we had similarities in our background
rather than political and different systems in our background.
They flew airplanes, we flew airplanes, we lived in the sky they lived in the sky.
We concentrated more on those similarities than our political differences.
And as people I got along very well with Pavel Belyayev [Konstantin Feoktistov], I believe his name was
He seemed like someone that I could go out and have a beer with on very friendly terms
and with for the moment at least we forgot the the latent hostility
between the United States and the Soviet Union.
We felt that the eyes of the world of the were upon us it was something that we had every
opportunity to mess up to make a mistake, we were, at least I was uptight in that
regard I was trying to do everything exactly as I had been trained to do.
And I knew that if I messed up somehow there would be not only national but
international repercussions because of that.
I think that Americans were very proud of the of the space program
the fact that we successfully landed on the moon.
However was not to be all in the end all of their existence
people's lives go on, space program happened, it receded
into the background, it did not change the United States fundamentally
nor could it we didn't try to change anything fundamentally we were proud to
be part of the country it did have some problems at the time but relatively
minor and the spacecraft was the space program excuse me was a relatively small
indicator of change.
In quarantine we had a large colony of white mice the scientists were worried
that we brought back pathogens, dangerous pathogens from the moon
and therefore the ultimate success of our mission depended on the health of these
white mice so you know I just sort of made fun of that here and there
but it was a real consideration, if the white mice had died or something we
uh-oh had brought back something very very dangerous, how dangerous I don't know.
I think Neil said well the chances of our doing that were
infinitesimally small but the implications of the dangers of our doing
it were infinite. I mean at the other end.
Meaningful beyond all belief if he took a tiny number and you multiply it by a
huge number what did you get I don't know I got some kind of quantity that
the authorities thought were worth building this gigantic building full of
white mice to ascertain that's all and and so I like to make fun of them yeah I
like to say you know when it's all over and done with the success of Apollo
was not of men it was you know the a famous book 'Of Mice And Men?'
It was really of mice okay? The success of Apollo 11 depended on mice, okay?
In going to the moon as I did on Apollo 11 people usually want to know what I
thought of the moon, how impressed I was, moon, moon, moon and of course that was
our destination and I was mightily impressed to see it or in its entirety
by myself behind the moon oh it was a wonderful experience.
However far more important than the moon I thought was my view of the Earth, tiny little object
we can blot it out with your thumbnail but it pops right back when
you move your hand and there it is blue and white, tiny shiny, a smear of rust
where those things we call continents and our home, the main show
never mind the moon okay goodbye moon there is the earth it is a whole show
and it's fragilities the quality I mean the blue and the white and all of that I
expected that but somehow it projected an aura of fragility that I,
I did not expect that was totally strange but the more I thought of it on
their way back from the moon the more I realize ooh
fragile it is Earth is very very fragile and we have so many ways of interrupting
or negating that fragility in so many different technical ways today we have
to be very careful we're not taking really top-notch care of the of
our Earth and we should do a better job, people in all countries, persuasions,
politics etc we need to get united behind an Earth fragility movement.
You know I'd be a liar a fool if I said I had the best seat on Apollo 11.
However I can say with absolute truths and equanimity I'm happy with the seat
that I had I was proud to be a part of Apollo 11 it was the culmination of
President John F Kennedy's dream of putting a man on the moon and we did it
on Apollo 11. I was an integral part of it, I was Neil and Buzz's meal ticket home
I was happy to have the seat that I had
I worked for six years at the Smithsonian Institution in Washington
specifically for the Air and Space Museum for the first four of those six
years and it was a wonderful project to bring a museum
into the National Mall there, I've always been a fan of the
Smithsonian I'm also a fan of Washington DC and I was fan of this Bicentennial
because that's what President Kennedy had said that he wanted us to do.
So I kind of linked the two together a man on the moon by the end of the decade a
museum on the mall by the Bicentennial and in those years I was trying to get
money from the Congress to achieve that and linking those two things together
was helpful the main help I had was a senator named Barry Goldwater he was a
wise man up on Capitol Hill and he was a great assistance and in all the
circumventions of the a political process and
and how to translate that into money to get this museum built which we did get built
just barely in time for the Bicentennial and forty million dollar
project came in on one time and below price
Well climate change is one reality that is is gaining credence in that it is a
reality and not just some mad scientist somewhere has decided that his backyard
is a little bit hotter than it was a decade ago it's a real problem and it's
a real problem especially for the lateral parts of our civilization
Miami Beach for example is starting to experience rising seas that are oh my gosh
affecting the price of real estate you know that will get people's attention
and as things like that spread across our society some of these environmental
concerns will become a matter of reality and of great importance
and so I back the people who are trumpeting the alarms today in saying we're going
to have to do something about our various patterns of human consumption
to mitigate the the encroaching oceans and the rising thermometers.
After the flight of Apollo 11 we were privileged to make an around-the-world
trip and I was flabbergasted by the reception that we got as we went from place to place.
People everywhere felt that they were closely involved with that.
I guess they were the news coverage of it was phenomenal.
But it wasn't 'you Americans finally did this' that and the other
it was 'we humans finally left the surface of this planet'.
'We moved into space, we did it' and there was a unity
there was an emotional unity that I would like to see recreated.
Now how you recreate that I do not know perhaps a flight to Mars would help along those lines
Well my hope is that NASA will increase the importance of going to Mars sometime soon.
I used to joke after the flight of Apollo 11 that they sent me to the wrong planet
tthat NASA should be renamed the National Aeronautics And Mars Administration.
And I do think our focus should be on Mars.
An extremely complex undertaking, makes the Apollo program look like
child's play, it's a two-year round-trip because of the juxtaposition of the
orbits of the Earth and of Mars but it's the closest thing that we have
to a sister planet and I really am very happy that we seem to be pointed in that direction.