Michael Collins was the third astronaut on the Apollo 11 mission. He was trained in 18 different emergency rescue rendezvous. He admitted that though he had done some amazing things, he’d been dreading the Apollo 11 mission for six months, because he didn’t know what would happen if he would have to leave his fellow astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin. If the two astronauts couldn’t get back into the spacecraft from the moon, Collins wasn’t willing to commit suicide. He felt he’d be a marked man for the rest of his life.
He would help Armstrong and Aldrin in any way he could, but he wouldn’t die up there. It wasn’t a shocking stream of thoughts coming from Collins. Mission Controls and his fellow crew, Armstrong and Aldrin, all knew there were certain conditions in where Collins would have to light up the motor and return home without them. It wasn’t new information to them. It was a scary realization and reality check, though.