Eng Vocab Test

WASHINGTON -

As Mr Neil Armstrong and Mr Buzz Aldrin took their famous walk on the moon, a third member of the team sat alone in the mother ship plagued by terrors of returning to Earth alone.

It was the secret terror that gripped astronaut Michael Collins throughout the Apollo 11 project 40 years ago. As his spacecraft, Columbia, swept over the lunar surface, Mr Collins - the mission's third and largely forgotten crew man - waited for a call from fellow astronauts Mr Armstrong and Mr Aldrin to say their lander craft had successfully blasted off the moon.

The message would banish Mr Collins' deepest fear: That he would be the only survivor of an Apollo 11 disaster and return to Earth "a marked man".

That the normally icy-cool astronaut was so obsessed by such an outcome puts a fresh perspective on the celebrations that will absorb the United Stats as it commemorates the moment on July 21, 1969 that an American first walked on another world.

Yet all the time, all three astronauts believed there was a real chance such a disaster would occur. Mr Armstrong thought his prospects were only 50-50 of making it back to Earth. And so did Mr Collins. In a note written at the time, he revealed that he was now "sweating like a nervous bride" as he waited to hear from the Eagle.

"My secret terror for the last six months has been leaving them on the Moon," he wrote. "If they fail to rise from the surface, or cash back into it, I am not going to commit suicide; I am coming home, forthwith, but I will be a marked man for life and I know it."

But his worst fear did not materialise. He returned, untouched by global notoriety.

In fact, Mr Collins was forgotten. not that he holds grudges. "It was an honour," he said last week. In fact, he was the unsung hero of Apollo 11 mission. The great American aviator Charles Lindergh wrote to Mr Collins, saying his role was one of "greater profundity ... you have experienced an aloneness unknown to man before".

"I am now truly alone and absolutely alone from any known life. I am it," he wrote in his capsule. Such solitude would have unnerved most people. But not Mr Collins. He says the emotion that he experienced most during his day alone in lunar orbit was of exultation.

He emerged from the post-Apollo years unscathed. Mr Aldrin lapsed into alcoholism and depression, while Mr Armstrong became a virtual recluse. Both men subsequently divorced. By contrast, Mr Collins is still with his wife, Patrica, whom he married in 1958.

After his return to Earth, Mr Collins gave up space travel and pursued a career in bureaucracy and business.

As to his claim to fame, that was simple fate, he added. "Neil Armstrong was born in 1930. Buzz Aldrin was born in 1930. and Milk Collins, 1930. We came along at exactly thee right time. We survived hazardous careers and were successful in them. But in my own case at least, it was 10 per cent shrewd planning and 90 per cent blind luck. Put 'Lucky' on my tombstone."


Legend: Bold means might come out, Bold&Underline means comfirm will test.

Wednesday, July 29, 2009, 8:00 PM
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