Michael Collins

Collins was command module pilot of Apollo 11 (16-24 July 1969), the first lunar landing mission. He stayed in lunar orbit aboard Columbia, alone for more than 21 hours, while Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin descended to the Moon in Eagle, and after their ascent from the surface he performed the final docking manoeuvres that rejoined the crew for the return to Earth.

In July 1966 he piloted Gemini 10 with John Young, a three-day flight that rendezvoused and docked with one Agena target vehicle and then, using that Agena's engine, rendezvoused with a second Agena left in orbit. Collins made two periods of extravehicular activity, a stand-up in the open hatch and a tethered spacewalk in which he retrieved a micrometeorite experiment from the second Agena; the National Air and Space Museum describes him as the first person to perform two spacewalks on one mission.

After leaving NASA he directed the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum from 1971 to 1978. The building was approved but unfunded when he arrived; he secured the funding with Senator Barry Goldwater's support, broke ground in 1972 and led the team that opened the museum on the National Mall on 1 July 1976. The museum says his 1974 memoir Carrying the Fire is still regarded by many as the best astronaut memoir ever written.

On the second Gemini 10 spacewalk Collins pushed off toward the second Agena, lost his grip on the smooth rim of its docking cone and drifted away from the experiment package. About five metres from the spacecraft he had to decide quickly between pulling on the coiling umbilical and using the hand-held gun; he chose the gun, used a series of squirts to reach the spacecraft and then the Agena again, and retrieved the micrometeorite package. He gave up installing the replacement for fear of losing the one he held, and afterwards needed Young's help to get untangled from the umbilical.

This is consistent with improvising a workable fix when the planned approach failed, though the task took longer than planned and the umbilical later tangled around him. Resourcefulness

After Eagle's ascent and rendezvous, Collins docked Columbia to it under autopilot control, making the final adjustments after Armstrong's rough alignment. When he fired the bottle that retracts the docking probe, a yaw oscillation built between the two vehicles; he took manual control, thought he might have to let the lunar module go and try again, and the latches fired six to eight seconds after the bottle. In the 1969 technical debrief he said he had never given the oscillations a fair chance to develop and that waiting before firing might be better, but added that he was not sure he would do it differently, since it depended on what caused them; Armstrong's debrief describes the same moments from inside the lunar module.

This is consistent with a pilot who reviewed his own docking practice candidly after the fact while saying the cause was unclear, though the account is his own debrief. Belief Updating

Collins's first application to become a NASA astronaut was rejected in 1962; the letter said he did not meet the special requirements of the astronaut program, as he later recalled it. He applied again the next year and was selected in October 1963 with NASA's third group of astronauts, which put him on the path to Gemini 10 and Apollo 11.

This is consistent with a candidate who treated a rejection as a reason to apply again, though both news accounts rest on his own memoir. Persistence