13 Minutes to the Moon: 7. Michael Collins: The third man

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Speaker 5 Eagle Duster, we see you on a sterile over.

Speaker 10 In orbit, 60 miles above the moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin are beginning preparations for their descent to the lunar surface.

Speaker 13 They're on board Eagle, the lunar module which is just about to separate from the command module, Columbia.

Speaker 5 Roger Hines and look, hey, you'll go ahead and please.

Speaker 5 Rog.

Speaker 5 Looking good.

Speaker 18 Watching Eagle drift slowly away from him is command module pilot Michael Collins, who says farewell to his commander with a characteristic quip.

Speaker 14 TIG.

Speaker 19 Time of ignition.

Speaker 18 The moment when Collins will fire his engine to put more distance between him and the lunar module.

Speaker 7 A while later, Eagle's descent engine will also fire.

Speaker 21 a burst of propellant that will send the lander from 60 miles to just 50,000 feet above the moon.

Speaker 22 Michael Collins is now alone, keeping vigilant watch over Eagle from his seat in Columbia, ready to dive down and rescue them should something go wrong.

Speaker 9 When he sealed Armstrong and Aldrin into the lunar module before separation, he knew that he might be the last person to see them alive.

Speaker 19 He understood that if something catastrophic happened, he would have to return to Earth alone, the sole survivor of a tragic mission.

Speaker 26 When Neil and Buzz were on the surface, I was by myself, and I felt the responsibility for all of us, the responsibility for getting the three of us home in one piece.

Speaker 27 We choose to go to the moon.

Speaker 5 Cap Conworth, go for landing. Nigel Hughes, you're a go for landing.
Over at 10 plus two heading on the 1202 program alarm. Holding that 18 foot, we're going to make it a thing.

Speaker 5 Roger, low level, 16, 60 seconds. We've had shutdown.
We copy you down, Eagle.

Speaker 5 Tranquility base, here. The Eagle has landed.

Speaker 24 In this episode, through an interview we recorded at his home in Florida and readings from his autobiography, Carrying the Fire, we'll get to know Michael Collins properly.

Speaker 29 We'll follow his journey to the moon and examine his often overlooked but central role in the historic mission of Apollo 11.

Speaker 25 I'm Kevin Fong and from the BBC World Service, this is 13 Minutes to the Moon.

Speaker 33 Episode seven Michael Collins Third Man

Speaker 33 Softaman

Speaker 12 In Rome, the city of Michael Collins' birth, there stands an ancient temple dedicated to Apollo, the god of the sun, archery and healing, who gave NASA's moon program its name.

Speaker 30 There's not much left of that Roman temple today.

Speaker 9 Just three marble columns support a frieze showing scenes of battle and a victory parade.

Speaker 29 The three columns support the great weight evenly.

Speaker 30 If one were to fall, the rest would come tumbling down.

Speaker 31 In October 1930 in a house on the other side of Rome, Michael Collins was born and his journey to the moon began. His father was in the army.

Speaker 25 Michael was born while he was stationed there.

Speaker 29 And 22 years later, he followed in the family tradition, joining the military, but choosing the U.S.

Speaker 6 Air Force rather than the Army.

Speaker 15 Michael, I'm Kevin. Fantastic.
To meet you.

Speaker 38 Kevin,

Speaker 38 I can remember that for about 10 seconds.

Speaker 38 I'm Mike, all deaf, mine. But make yourself at home and pick what you're doing.

Speaker 31 Today, Michael Collins lives in Florida and is more concerned with the quality of the fishing than with flying.

Speaker 37 Am I okay with my shoes on?

Speaker 38 Yeah, okay.

Speaker 38 Great. They look better than my shoes.
I'll train you.

Speaker 24 We met Michael Collins at home, with him greeting us as we pulled up in front.

Speaker 12 He was dressed in casual Floridian fatigues, sporting a t-shirt with running figures and the words Army Ten Mila printed on the front, evidence that despite being well into his late eighties he's still probably robust enough to get out of the door and do some exercise each day.

Speaker 30 Mike Collins puts his inclusion in the most famous expedition of all time down to ten per cent shrewd judgment and ninety per cent luck.

Speaker 31 His preparation for Apollo 11 actually began years before he joined NASA.

Speaker 29 He was a test pilot for the U.S.

Speaker 30 Air Force, flying some of the most unforgiving Cold War jet fighters of the time.

Speaker 41 Mike, the skills that you learned as a test pilot, how did they help you in your life later as a selected astronaut?

Speaker 26 Before there was a space program,

Speaker 26 People really didn't know what to make of it and who to select. What kind of person would you want?

Speaker 26 And And all sorts of crazy notions emerged.

Speaker 26 It was dangerous. You might want a bullfighter.

Speaker 26 There wasn't much air up there. Maybe a mountain climber or sometimes people

Speaker 26 in deep sea diving didn't want to return and you wanted to make sure your astronauts returned to Earth. So you had all these crazy ideas and someone prepared a memo for President Eisenhower.

Speaker 26 The memo said that

Speaker 26 the best option would be to pick experimental test pilots because

Speaker 26 they were

Speaker 26 most apt to be familiar with a strange new flying machine and could cope with the difficulties if one arose during the flight.

Speaker 16 In his book, Carrying the Fire, written in 1974, Michael pinpoints the moment he decided that he wanted to go higher, faster, and further.

Speaker 42 It's read for us by the actor Kerry Shale.

Speaker 1 I certainly had had no childhood dream of flying to the moon, but the idea was damned appealing. It had been endorsed by the president, and it beat the sound barrier for Ways to Sunday.

Speaker 1 For me, the clincher came on February 20th, 1962, with John Glenn's magnificent three-orbit flight aboard Friendship 7. Ignition, the size 6 vehicle has looked it up.
Oh, maybe go and it free.

Speaker 1 You have a go, at least seven orbits.

Speaker 1 Imagine being able to circle the globe once every 90 minutes, high above all the clouds and turbulence. This friendship seven can see clear back of big cloud pattern way back across toward the Cape.

Speaker 1 Beautiful sight.

Speaker 1 I have a beautiful view out the window of the coast at present time, just departing can see the way down across Florida. Cannot quite.
Kennedy's moon loomed a bit closer now.

Speaker 1 I was more than ready when NASA announced that it would select a new group of astronauts to supplement the Immortal 7.

Speaker 34 Collins was actually turned down the first time he applied to NASA's astronaut program, but that just made him want it more.

Speaker 7 So after a year of gaining more experience, he applied again.

Speaker 39 This time he was accepted in the class of 1963 alongside Buzz Aldrin.

Speaker 24 With Neil Armstrong already at NASA, the crew of Apollo 11 was starting to come together.

Speaker 20 Collins' first spaceflight was in 1966, Gemini 10, which saw him fly alongside John Young.

Speaker 42 The crew practiced rendezvous and docking maneuvers, expertise that Collins would later put to use during Apollo 11.

Speaker 23 As part of his Gemini flight, Collins also undertook a successful spacewalk, although he did manage to lose a rather expensive Hasselblad camera.

Speaker 2 Here he is, safely back inside his Gemini capsule, delivering his report to Mission Control. All systems looking good.

Speaker 5 Okay, Yusuf, this is Gemini 10.

Speaker 5 Everything outside is about like we've predicted. I found that the lack of handholds is a big impediment.

Speaker 5 I could hang on, but I couldn't get around to the other side, which is where I wanted to get around to. Also, I lost my EVA hassle plat inadvertently, I'm sorry to say.

Speaker 5 I'm getting ready now to do some work.

Speaker 8 Once the Gemini program of low-Earth orbit missions was successfully concluded, focus switched to Apollo and the challenges of the first moon landing.

Speaker 21 The Apollo 11 crew was named in January 1969, just after Apollo 8's triumphant triumphant lunar orbital mission.

Speaker 11 It took three astronauts to get to and then land on the moon.

Speaker 16 The lunar module was so complex it needed both Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin to fly it. But Mike Collins' role was equally critical.

Speaker 16 He would remain in the command module, guarding their safety from high orbit while carefully maintaining their only means of return to Earth.

Speaker 16 In the run-up to launch, America's CBS News covered his training for these heavy responsibilities.

Speaker 27 While his teammates Armstrong and Aldrin train for their more glamorous roles as the first men on the moon, Collins prepares for his part, orbiting the moon, feeling somewhat, as he put it, like a father whose teenagers have taken the car out alone for the first time.

Speaker 27 For if the lunar module should encounter any trouble after its lunar liftoff, Mike Collins must single-handedly fly the three-man command module to rescue them.

Speaker 27 As far as Armstrong and Aldrin are concerned, with that responsibility on Michael Collins' shoulders, they couldn't be in a safer position.

Speaker 33 So just like those three ancient columns in the city of Collins' birth, all three astronauts were equally important.

Speaker 32 In conversation, Mike Collins told me that as the Apollo 11 crew prepared for their historic mission, they all felt that compared to Project Gemini, this mission was going to be in an entirely different league.

Speaker 26 When I was training for a Gemini flight,

Speaker 26 it was hard work and we were doing stuff that was brand new. However, I had the feeling it was more of a localized event,

Speaker 26 almost like perhaps a sporting event, say.

Speaker 26 Whereas

Speaker 26 On Apollo 11, I think we, the crew, felt the whole weight of the world on our shoulders in our training. We didn't fool around in any way.
We worked hard night and day.

Speaker 26 We felt like people were going to watch watch us. If any mistake we made, particularly Russians, would be watching us.

Speaker 26 So we felt a grave responsibility, but

Speaker 26 we were confident in our ability to learn what little bit we had to really know about that technology.

Speaker 26 And even more confident, there were hundreds of people, experts on the ground, who were backing us up should we go astray in some way.

Speaker 17 The day arrived when that confidence was put to the ultimate test the 16th of July 1969

Speaker 44 T-minus 15 seconds guidance is internal 12 11 10 9 ignition sequence start

Speaker 44 six five four

Speaker 45 three

Speaker 38 two

Speaker 44 one

Speaker 45 zero all engine running liftoff we have a liftoff 32 minutes past the hour Liftoff on Apollo 11.

Speaker 45 Tower cleared. We got a roll appropriate.

Speaker 41 I just wanted to also talk about the launch itself. You're used to understanding vehicles, aircraft, with every nuance, every noise that it makes, every shake, every rattle.

Speaker 39 What was that like then, flying this, that is essentially an experimental vehicle for the first time and having to trust it?

Speaker 26 The Saturn V rocket that propelled us to the moon was, first off, a gigantic piece of machinery. Aboard that gigantic machine,

Speaker 26 your sensory system

Speaker 26 filters out a lot, and

Speaker 26 it, surprisingly enough, was not particularly noisy.

Speaker 26 It was more that you were susceptible in your harness to every little sideways motion that the machine made.

Speaker 26 If you try to hold a pencil vertically on your forefinger, you will see the problem. You can't keep it straight up.
You have to make sideways motions, a lot of them.

Speaker 26 Very small, spasmodic, quick motions. And we felt those more than any other sensation when the craft first left the pad.

Speaker 45 Flight Fighter, we are go. Confirmed go.
Apollo 11 Mrs. Houston you are confirmed goal for the flight gangster genius.

Speaker 7 And a little short of three hours later the crew of Apollo 11 were ready to light the remarkable engine on the third stage of the Saturn V.

Speaker 31 That would accelerate them from their orbit around the Earth and onward to the Moon.

Speaker 36 Translunar Injection, TLI.

Speaker 36 Apollo 11, this is Houston.

Speaker 38 You are go for TLI. Over

Speaker 38 Apollo 11, thank you.

Speaker 38 Roger out.

Speaker 38 Trust.

Speaker 38 Ignition. Apollo to 15.

Speaker 38 Make a firm ignition and the

Speaker 38 go.

Speaker 16 They were off, leaving Earth orbit at 25,000 miles per hour.

Speaker 1 We are on our way to the moon now, with one more hurdle behind us. But only if this thing continues to burn.
If it shuts down prematurely, we will be in deep yogurt.

Speaker 1 On an oddball trajectory that will require some fancy computations on Houston's part and some swift and accurate work on ours using our service module engine to get back to Earth.

Speaker 13 Out of the window the crew can see signs of the blazing inferno from the booster engine which is catapulting them beyond Earth's gravitational clutches.

Speaker 1 I am amazed that I can see evidence of the engine operating as it is mounted on the tail of the Saturn, 110 feet behind us.

Speaker 1 As far as I can recall, no one has ever seen anything like the constant flashes and insistent fireflies I see out of my window.

Speaker 19 Neil Armstrong did most of the flying to the moon.

Speaker 30 But Mike Collins was at the controls for a crucial moment, the docking of the command module and the lunar module, a maneuver to remove Eagle from where it had been stowed in the rocket.

Speaker 16 He'd practiced docking on Gemini 10, but this was different.

Speaker 19 The command module first had to separate from the Saturn booster and then flip around to face it head-on, so it could be used to drag the lunar module out.

Speaker 26 When we launched, our lunar module was hidden away inside the upper stage of the Saturn V.

Speaker 26 So my job was to accelerate the command module, move a little bit away from the rocket, and then make a 180-degree churn, come back and with my probe find the drogue, which was the apparatus that I had to hit as a target, and I pulled out backwards and withdrew the lunar module.

Speaker 24 The cabin of the lunar module is wafer thin and the vehicles are traveling at thousands of miles an hour.

Speaker 11 Collins has to close with precision.

Speaker 19 Failure to dock or any damage to the fragile lunar module here will mean the end of their mission to land on the moon.

Speaker 1 As I get close, the visibility is beautiful.

Speaker 1 The sun is back over my shoulder and now the lunar module fills my window with unlikely looking gold foil, flat grey surfaces, tubular legs and iridescent window panes. I tense up as it comes closer.

Speaker 5 Flies like a spacecraft instead of a simulator.

Speaker 13 Flies like a spacecraft instead of a simulator, says Collins to his commander.

Speaker 39 In his voice you can hear the intense focus on the job in hand.

Speaker 1 Both hands are working now, my left deciding whether we move up or down, left or right, in or out. My right holds us steady and pointed in the right direction.

Speaker 1 Buzz and Neil are helpless spectators, since only I am in a position to align.

Speaker 1 It must be a strange sensation for them to be so close to this great lumbering scrap pile in the sky, to know we are about to collide with it, but when, where,

Speaker 14 and how.

Speaker 1 We are so close now that the exhaust gases from our rocket control motors are impinging on the lunar module and causing its thin skin to ripple rhythmically like wind blowing over a Kansas wheat field.

Speaker 5 The whole level quivers ever so often.

Speaker 1 It all looks good. Thrust toward it.

Speaker 11 Ah, that felt good, that gentle kiss.

Speaker 1 Computer mode to free. Fire one gas bottle to retract the probe.

Speaker 14 Bang.

Speaker 1 The latches slam into position down there in the tunnel and we are docked.

Speaker 19 The command and lunar modules are now joined, nose to nose, still hurtling together towards the moon.

Speaker 7 The onboard guidance computer, sitting alongside Collins, is now in the driving seat.

Speaker 26 I would say that the heart of Apollo, from a technical point of view, was the guidance and navigation system. That was not my long suit.

Speaker 26 I stayed as far away from that inertial system as I could.

Speaker 26 I spoke to it as an English major. I spoke to it with verbs and nouns.
It was mechanized to work with verbs and nouns. So I memorized, like a a fool, certain things.

Speaker 26 If I wanted to rebalance my inertial platform, I would say verb 16, noun 20, enter.

Speaker 26 Beyond that, I didn't want to know any more about it, and I hoped it didn't know anything about my deficiencies.

Speaker 18 Now, tens of thousands of miles away from home, Neil Armstrong steals a glance back at planet Earth. So I can see North America, Alaska, United States, Canada, Mexico, and Central America.

Speaker 21 Ahead of them lies the moon, still two days away.

Speaker 1 Day four has a decidedly different feel to it. Instead of nine hours sleep, I get seven, and fitful ones at that.

Speaker 1 Despite our concentrated attempt to conserve our energy on our way to the moon, the pressure is overtaking us, or me at least.

Speaker 1 I feel that all of us are aware that the honeymoon is over, and that we are about to lay our little pink bodies on the line.

Speaker 1 Our first shock comes as we swing ourselves around so as to bring the moon into view.

Speaker 1 We have not been able to see the moon for nearly a day now, and the change in its appearance is dramatic, spectacular, and electrifying.

Speaker 1 The moon I have known all my life, that two-dimensional small disk in the sky, has gone somewhere, to be replaced by the most awesome sphere I have ever seen.

Speaker 1 To begin with, it is huge, completely filling our window. Second, it is three-dimensional.
The belly of it bulges out toward us in such a profound fashion that I

Speaker 1 I almost feel I can reach out and touch it. And the moon is there, boy, in all its splendor.

Speaker 1 It is between us and the sun, creating the most splendid lighting conditions imaginable. The sun casts a halo around it, shining on its rear surface.

Speaker 1 And the sunlight which comes cascading around its rim serves mainly to make the moon itself seem mysterious, emphasizing the size and texture of its dimly lit and pockmarked surface.

Speaker 13 Arriving at the moon, they have to slow their progress with pinpoint accuracy to allow themselves to be captured into lunar orbit.

Speaker 35 They are only the third crew in history to attempt this maneuver.

Speaker 30 They're on the moon's far side now, out of contact with mission control, and there is no room for complacency.

Speaker 9 From Apollo 11's onboard recording, you can hear Armstrong and Collins call in unison as they press the proceed button to fire the spacecraft's engine to break their speed.

Speaker 1 When the moment finally arrives, the big engine instantly springs into action and reassuringly plasters us back in our seats. The acceleration is only a fraction of 1G, but it feels good nonetheless.

Speaker 1 For six minutes, we sit there peering, intent as hawks, at our instrument panel, scanning the important dials and gauges, making sure the proper thing is being done to us.

Speaker 1 When the engine shuts down, we discuss the matter with our computer and I read out the results.

Speaker 1 I take back any bad things I ever said about MIT.

Speaker 38 That's a beautiful bird. Got him, I guess.

Speaker 1 Woo! I take back any bad things I said about MIT.

Speaker 1 What I mean is that the accuracy of the overall system is phenomenal.

Speaker 1 Out of a total of nearly 3,000 feet per per second, we have velocity errors in our body access coordinate system of only one-tenth of one foot per second in each of the three directions.

Speaker 1 That is one accurate burn.

Speaker 7 Safe in orbit, the crew turn their attention from the numbers on MIT's computer display to the window and the vista beyond. Michael Collins is in exuberant mood.

Speaker 45 Hello, Boone. How's your all backside?

Speaker 45 Well, I have to vote with a 10 crew. That thing is brown, yeah.

Speaker 45 But when I first saw it at that other sign,

Speaker 45 it really looked great.

Speaker 45 Okay, now we've got some things to do.

Speaker 19 Things to do.

Speaker 33 Armstrong is always a master of understatement.

Speaker 16 He often played the straight man opposite the more jokey Mike Collins.

Speaker 20 Here the pair are, a few hours later, pointing their cameras at the moon and talking to Capcom Bruce McCandless in Houston about the view.

Speaker 20 We're getting a beautiful picture of Langrenus now with its rather conspicuous central peak.

Speaker 20 Sea of fertility doesn't look very fertile to me. I don't know who named it.

Speaker 20 Well, it may have been named by

Speaker 20 a gentleman whom this crater was named after, Langrenus. Langrenus was a cartographer to the King of Spain and

Speaker 20 made

Speaker 20 one of the early reasonably accurate maps of the moon.

Speaker 20 All right, your Edward. Very interesting.

Speaker 20 Amen to red.

Speaker 13 Just over four days after launch, the moment of separation had come.

Speaker 24 Collins sealed the hatch between his command module and the lunar lander, isolating himself from his two crewmates.

Speaker 14 And then, Armstrong cut Eagle free.

Speaker 5 Eagle, Houston, we see you on the sterile over.

Speaker 5 Roger, Eagle, undone.

Speaker 5 Roger, how does it look? The angle has wings. Roger.

Speaker 5 Like you gotta find a flying machine there, Eagle, despite the fact you're upside down.

Speaker 5 Somebody's upside down.

Speaker 5 Hey, you go. One minute to take.
You gotta take care.

Speaker 5 See you later.

Speaker 33 Bidding Armstrong farewell, Michael Collins resumed his responsibilities aboard Columbia, certain in the knowledge that his commander was absolutely the right person for the task that lay ahead and the prestige that would follow.

Speaker 26 He was the best possible choice. He was the ideal man to represent our country, our planet, in being the first to walk on the moon.

Speaker 26 Neil was an extremely intelligent man and a man of many talents, very broad-based.

Speaker 26 He was a student of history, specifically the history of science.

Speaker 26 And I have seen him time and time again use that knowledge to his advantage.

Speaker 26 He lived in a shell.

Speaker 26 He didn't always emerge from that shell, but if you picked a subject that he enjoyed

Speaker 26 and you went at it the right way, he would pop out of that shell with this gigantic grin and he'd be a wonderful companion until he felt the obligation to retreat once more into his shell.

Speaker 26 He just had an extremely broad viewpoint, exposure, and is a wonderful representative of of our country and our planet.

Speaker 31 With Armstrong and Aldrin now preparing for the first of their engine burns to set them on course for the lunar surface, Michael Collins was now on his own.

Speaker 26 I know that I did not have the best seat of the three on Apollo, but I was perfectly delighted with the seat that I had.

Speaker 26 And when I was by myself, I didn't feel like

Speaker 26 number three distant person. I felt very much involved.
I felt I was essential to the safe return of Neal and Buzz.

Speaker 26 I felt the responsibility for all of us, the responsibility for getting the three of us home in one piece. So I was gravely concerned, but

Speaker 26 I was gravely concerned, if you will, from

Speaker 26 from liftoff to touchdown on earth, and I didn't do anything any differently. I just tried to do my job as

Speaker 26 best I could.

Speaker 9 And that job didn't stop just because Armstrong and Aldrin had now departed.

Speaker 20 If anything, it was about to become much more involved.

Speaker 9 Collins had committed to memory multiple maneuvers that he could be called upon to perform in an emergency.

Speaker 31 These would test his piloting skills to their very limits.

Speaker 7 Some requiring him to swoop down from high orbit above the moon to rescue an ailing lunar module.

Speaker 31 If something went wrong with the landing, if Armstrong was forced to abort, if the ascent engine malfunctioned or the guidance system failed, Collins' crewmate's survival would depend almost entirely upon his skills, some of which had only been tested in theory.

Speaker 26 If, for example, the lunar module were slightly late getting off,

Speaker 26 I could not change my speed. I was zinging by overhead at my orbital speed.
That could not be changed. The mathematicians got together and put their heads together and they came up with like

Speaker 26 17 other conditions where one malfunction or another would cause one or the other of us, other of us, to either get too high, too low, too slow, too fast, too late, too early, or probably the worst, too much off to the right or too much off to the left.

Speaker 26 I ended up with a big notebook, an 8x10 book, which I kept tied around my neck, which included 18 of those variations.

Speaker 26 And that was kind of a nightmare. I mean, some of those were so obscure that we had never trained for them.
And had we

Speaker 26 needed to enforce those, I'm not sure I would have been able to do it right.

Speaker 24 With Eagle on its way to the lunar surface, Collins was by himself.

Speaker 31 Interviewers often fall into the trap of asking him about this and their imagined sense of his cosmic isolation.

Speaker 19 But in Carrying the Fire, Michael Collins is clear.

Speaker 21 He was indeed alone, but never lonely.

Speaker 1 I don't mean to deny any feeling of solitude. It is there, reinforced by the fact that radio contact abruptly cuts off at the instant I disappear behind the moon.

Speaker 1 I am alone now.

Speaker 14 Truly alone.

Speaker 1 And absolutely isolated from any known life.

Speaker 1 I am it.

Speaker 1 If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one

Speaker 11 plus God only knows what on this side.

Speaker 1 I feel this powerfully, not as fear or loneliness, but as

Speaker 1 awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exaltation.

Speaker 35 From Colin's vantage point, the spidery gold and silver-colored spacecraft carrying Armstrong and Aldrin was receding from view.

Speaker 32 He kept his eyes fixed firmly upon it.

Speaker 1 The lunar module sweeps down farther and farther below me, picking up speed as it goes. So that at the time of power descent initiation, it will be about 220 miles in front of me.

Speaker 1 After that, the situation changes very swiftly.

Speaker 1 As the eagle slows down, I will start gaining on it and will whiz by overhead, so that I will be about 200 miles ahead of it at the instant of touchdown.

Speaker 1 I will try to keep them in sight as long as possible, because if they have to abort, it would be nice for me to know where they have gone, helping to determine which one of my 18 rendezvous cases applies.

Speaker 1 As the eagle approaches powered descent initiation, I am still hanging in there, peering out through the sextant at a minuscule dot.

Speaker 1 The module is nearly invisible and looks like any one of a thousand tiny craters, except that it is moving.

Speaker 1 Finally, as it passes the hundred mile mark,

Speaker 1 I lose it.

Speaker 19 It's easy in talking about Apollo 11's historic first landing on the moon to focus too keenly on the lunar module and the actions of Armstrong and Aldrin in their cramped cabin.

Speaker 39 But at home on Earth lay hundreds and thousands of engineers and scientists who were all vital to the success of the mission.

Speaker 21 And in those final 13 minutes of descent, circling above the moon was Collins, the linchpin that held those two worlds together.

Speaker 39 Apollo 11's third man, comfortable in his solitude and as essential in every moment of the mission as either Armstrong or Aldrin.

Speaker 19 We'll hear from Mike Collins again.

Speaker 22 in episode 8 as we follow Eagle as it begins its powered descent to the surface.

Speaker 11 A note of warning, it's going to be a bumpy ride.

Speaker 10 From the very start, it's all teeters on the edge of failure.

Speaker 27 Okay, all-flight controllers, go to go for powered descent.

Speaker 47 Retro. Spacecraft communications are absolutely lousy.
We can't communicate to them. They can't communicate to us.

Speaker 21 There are fears the spacecraft is accelerating dangerously.

Speaker 46 I said, oh my gosh, if it grows by another 15 feet per second, I got to abort.

Speaker 47 Boom. we sure got my attention, and that one you say you're halfway to your abort limits.

Speaker 10 And the computer controlling Eagle issues warning alarms, which shock the crew, mission control, and the scientists who programmed it.

Speaker 47 There was something happening inside the computer that we did not understand.

Speaker 1 My mind was, that's it.

Speaker 1 We're not going to land.

Speaker 10 13 Minutes to the Moon is an original podcast from the BBC World Service.

Speaker 10 Hi, it's Big Mike Collins there. Well, you got a little bit of hello there, Sports fans.
You got a little bit of me, plus Neil's in the center couch, and Buzz is doing the camera work this time.

Speaker 10 Yeah, Neil's standing on his head again. He's trying to make me nervous.

Speaker 21 13 Minutes to the Moon is produced by Chris Browning and Andrew Luck Baker.

Speaker 8 Our theme music is by Hun Zimmer.

Speaker 7 Extra production and research effort is by Sue Norton and Madeline Finley.

Speaker 42 The series editor is Rami Zabbar and the podcast editor is John Minnell.

Speaker 1 You heard extracts from the book Carrying the Fire by Michael Collins, published by Farah, Staus and Giroux, and they were read for us by Kerry Shale.

Speaker 42 We're also grateful to NASA and CBS News for archive material.

Speaker 16 And of course, big thanks to you for telling us what you think of the series. If you haven't done so already, let your views be known by posting your comments, ratings and reviews.

Speaker 39 Our hashtag is 13 Minutes to the Moon.

Speaker 14 That's all as one word.

Speaker 16 And don't forget, there's our website where you'll find Apollo documents, photos and videos including an animation about Mike Collins and Neil Armstrong.

Speaker 10 That's at bbcworldservice.com slash 13 minutes.

Speaker 8 I'm Kevin Fong.

Speaker 34 Thanks for listening.

Speaker 21 And now, some suggested listening.

Speaker 29 Death in Ice Valley has been one of the BBC World Service's most successful podcasts, and now it's back back with an update.

Speaker 38 She was laying with

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Speaker 51 A happy place comes in many colors. Whatever your color, bring happiness home with Certapro Painters.
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Speaker 51 Each Certapro Painters business is independently owned and operated. Contractor license and registration information is available at Certapro.com.

Speaker 3 Sucks! The new musical has made Tony award-winning history on Broadway. We demand to be home! Winner, best score!

Speaker 4 We demand to be seen! Winner, best book!

Speaker 3 We demand to be quality! It's a theatrical masterpiece that's thrilling, inspiring, dazzlingly entertaining, and unquestionably the most emotionally stirring musical this season. Suffs!

Speaker 3 Playing the Orpheum Theater, October 22nd through November 9th. Tickets at BroadwaySF.com.