Apollo 11’s ‘third astronaut’ reveals secrets from dark side of the moon | 60 Minutes Australia

here's a question likely to cause arguments at home what is humankind's greatest achievement the age of enlightenment music perhaps what about the great pyramid of giza well for many it doesn't get any more glorious than the day neil armstrong stepped foot on the moon this year marks the 50th anniversary of that remarkable feat of technology and daring and while the moonwalkers armstrong and buzz aldrin dominate our memories of that event there's a third astronaut who deserves his place in history michael collins piloted the apollo 11 command module in lunar orbit while the other two collected moon rocks and as sarah abba reports if it wasn't for him one of our greatest successes would have been a monumental failure right now 400 kilometers above earth six men and women are hurtling around the globe 16 times a day in the international space station and all you have to do is turn yourself in your reference changes just to think it's possible is mind-blowing i am working on the angie x cancer trials up here it's an extraordinary existence for the astronauts who are working on more than 200 different experiments in space but they need help back down on earth copy that all previous science has been downloaded to ground and you are go and it's here in cologne west germany that andrea boyd a remarkable aussie engineer spends her days speaking with them from the european space agency's mission control yep that sounds like a plan to us alex many thanks no worries mate yeah do they love talking to an aussie they do yeah i have to say a couple of the crews have tried to do a bit of an accent back to me which is funny um alex who was just up there uh would often put no worries mate at the end of his his calls to me and uh and yeah he'd also add um good as gold was one of his favorite phrases to say it was great 35 year old andrea always wanted a career in space luckily in her lifetime it's something that's been possible but it wasn't that long ago that space exploration was still the stuff of science fiction neil armstrong and then mike collins this year is the 50th anniversary of apollo 11 blasting off to the moon but in terms of technology it feels like a millennia has passed back in july 1969 there were no such things as mobile phones home computers or even the internet it's one small step for man [Music] one day at least for me so as neil armstrong and buzz aldrin became the first humans to ever walk on the moon their extraordinary achievement turned the pair into instant worldwide heroes but there was a third man on apollo 11. michael collins didn't make headlines for stepping onto the moon but he was the backbone of the mission [Music] did i have the best seat on apollo 11 no was i happy with the seat i did have yes i really was and to be any small part of that suited me very very well and besides i was their ticket home they couldn't get home without me so you had ultimately the biggest responsibility yes yes michael is now 88 but age hasn't affected his razor-sharp mind and quick wit she doesn't know who she is unless you do that to her okay we need to remind them constantly mike okay michael trained as a fighter pilot but always dreamt of flying in space back then it was still unknown who would make the best astronauts i mean what sort of people should they be who who should you select and all sorts of crazy notions came out of the closets for example they said well there's no air up there and mountain climbers are used to a very thin atmosphere so we maybe ought to get mountain climbers other people said well it's dangerous maybe we ought to pick bullfighters would be good [Music] during the lunar landing while neil and buzz were picking up moon rocks michael's job was to stay on board the command module orbiting the moon [Music] not since adam as any human known such solitude as mike collins is experiencing during the 47 minutes of each lunar revolution when he's behind the moon [Music] you were orbiting on the far side of the moon in absolute pitch black complete darkness yeah the food was terrible but uh i enjoyed my time behind the moon is a more rugged place and and not a very comfortable place columbia houston when you circled back to the bright side of the moon what was earth like being very close to the moon was very impressive in many ways but the moon is nothing compared to our home planet it was it it was center stage it was any little thing blue of the ocean white of the clouds little streaks of tan that we call continents it's about the size of your thumbnail if you hold it out in front one of those streaks of tan was australia we paid absolutely no attention whatsoever to australia for of the time the other one-third of the time australia owned us we needed australia you were our guidance you were part of our flight because you had this gigantic antenna at parks little old australia down under down under yes we needed it badly they were our source of information they told us where we were so australia went to the moon with us in that in that regard collector while neil and buzz definitely had the starring roles on the moon michael collins had the most important job of all he was tasked with bringing them safely home and it all came down to a single tricky maneuver re-docking the lunar module one wrong decision could have led to disaster that was a part of it that i worried the most about was if they if they didn't get off at all i couldn't go and rescue them i went home by myself if they got off into some strange orbit not the correct one then i could come and rescue them sometimes but not in other times and i had around my uh neck on a little rope a 8 by 10 notebook which had incited 18 different cases possibilities and you had to be prepared for all of them well as as best we could i confess that of those 18 there were a couple that i uh i thought were so far out there would not really ever happen and i'm not sure i could have handled them they were very complicated thankfully the reconnection was smooth and uneventful but once back down on earth instead of being able to enjoy their hero status the three astronauts were initially treated like aliens we were put into quarantine for two weeks some of our scientists were worried about the pathogens that we might have brought back from the moon they possibly would be dangerous to humankind so their solution to that was to put us inside a hermetically sealed container with gigantic colony of white mice the white mice lived we were okay white mice died we were in deep trouble of course i was checking on them i didn't i don't there were some too many of them to give names to but they became my friends and uh and the mice survived mice did beautifully yes thank you love those mice half a century on from apollo 11's groundbreaking mission space travel is almost taken for granted so from little adelaide to cologne and the international space station yes i definitely should have paid more attention to german in high school i thought when am i ever going to need this and people like andrea boyd have successfully made it their career when did you know that this is what you wanted to do pretty early i have to say star trek came on a new series when i was about 10 and i watched that every week and and adored it and learnt the word engineering so i was like all right if i do engineering one day i'll figure out how to do something with space seven years ago andrea landed the job of flight controller here at the european space agency's mission control so this is where the space magic happens absolutely so it's a very multi-national collaborative environment here are you the only australian in mission control yes i am yeah i didn't realize that until i arrived here for the astronauts it makes the accent more distinctive and it's a fun inside joke between us it's her job to support the six astronauts living on the international space station which has been orbiting earth now for nearly 20 years so you're problem solving here on earth for something that's happening in space absolutely it's the ultimate engineering i've seen them fit all of the astronauts in here about six or seven back in cologne they use this space station replica for training new astronauts so this is the astronauts office that's right so we've got the japanese laboratory the us laboratory and all of these are all attached aren't they yeah it's very important in space if you were to take this cap off it would float away and you might not find it again it's a very big space station about the size of a five bedroom house and four bedrooms worth of those are science laboratories right just keep moving forward in it all more or less stock and we're still back down again yeah ultimately for this aussie space junkie the job allows her to do and see what the rest of us can only fantasize about you really have a window to the world just from your desk here and to outer space yeah you can see just glorious views of the earth as you're going over and i i always try and look up when we're flying over australia as well and you get to see around 16 sunrises and sunsets per day from the orbital laboratory too so what other secrets can you divulge to us earthlings no we don't really have secrets in space everything that we do on the space station is broadcast live on the internet 24 7 but anytime you hear an aussie accent it's me much has changed since michael collins flew on apollo 11. but the retired astronaut still keeps a keen eye on the future of space travel and he says we need to think further far beyond the moon so mars has always been my my destination my my favorite one and uh and going back to the moon is is certainly an interesting detour but i would prefer that we set sail directly for mars and that mission is really essential in your view for the future of humankind no why do you think it's necessary then why do we need to go there just to explore flying space is not necessary i don't think it's something that we have in us we we go out at night and we look up into the sky we see things we don't know what they are about we are curious we want to see infinity and perhaps almost to visit infinity to me it's an intangible but it's a part of being a human being is this feeling of it's it's part of it's there it's there to see to go to see to touch to smell to understand [Music] hello i'm sarah arbo thanks for watching to keep up with the latest from 60 minutes australia make sure you subscribe to our channel you can also download the nine now app for full episodes and other exclusive 60 minutes content

Channel: 60 Minutes Australia

Views: 11,947,638

Keywords: 60 Minutes, 60 Minutes Australia, Liz Hayes, Charles Wooley, Tara Brown, Liam Bartlett, Allison Langdon, Ellen Fanning, Ray Martin, Jana Wendt, Jeff McMullen, Jennifer Byrne, Mike Munro, Richard Carleton, Tracey Curro, Peter Harvey, George Negus, Ian Leslie, Gerald Stone, Sarah Abo, moonwalkers, moon, conspiracy, Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, moon landing, Michael Collins, Apollo 11, spacecraft, lunar orbit

Id: SWVgUwMTHEU

Length: 13min 11sec (791 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 03 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Tileren]

And if the mice died?

[u/tugrumpler]

Aldrin later said it was pretty much a stunt. After all their spacesuits had been exposed on the moon and the crap on them was transferred inside the ascent module and then into the orbiter and back to earth. The hatch was popped and all that air came out. The rescue teams that helped them out of the capsule were wearing ppe which was jettisoned into the ocean where it sank to the bottom presumably. If earth was going to get contaminated it had already happened.

[u/leftoverscience]

The quarenteen unit was just a repurposed airstream trailer. It wasn't even airtight. The crew, frustrated that they couldn't see their families, watched ants eating crumbs from their table.

The actual trailer was lost for decades until it was found being used as a fish hatery in rural Alabama. It now sits beneath a saturn V rocket (the only remaining complete article) at the US space and rocket center in Huntsville, AL.

[u/AJEDIWITHNONAME]

What if they gave the mice a cookie?

[u/CrieDeCoeur]

And if the mice were immune to a moon-virus? Hmm? What then?

[u/Konradia]

Sounds like the government watched the Andromeda Strain!

[u/acqz]

Well? Did they make it?

[u/Aurex86]

What if the mice died of unrelated causes?