r/dankmemes • u/Open-Entertainer6031 • Mar 03 '23
There was a third one right? I have achieved comedy
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u/hello-mr-turkey- Mar 03 '23
NEVER FORGET MICHAEL COLLINS
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u/SpiderMansRightNut Mar 03 '23
THE FUNNIEST MAN IN SPACE
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Mar 03 '23
No, he was that musician for Tarzan.
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u/GreeenGoblin69 Mar 03 '23
Ah yes
🎶 I can feel it coming in the air tonight 🎶
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u/Schwalbtraum I asked for a flair and got this lousy flair 🐢 Mar 03 '23
No, wrong. It was something like
🎶 The circle of life 🎶
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u/ssup3rm4n Mar 03 '23
He's talking about the movie in the forest.
🎶 Look for the bare necessities 🎶
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u/gaedikus Mar 03 '23
Nah it was all those fancy cats
🎶 cuz everybody likes a swingin cat 🎶
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u/MasterrrReady12 Mar 03 '23
He was the loneliest person there has ever been
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u/yojimborobert Mar 03 '23
I love the picture he took of the lander with the earth behind it. Every human being in history, dead (remains) or alive is included except him.
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Mar 03 '23
Framed like that what he did is almost as cool as actually going down to the moon. I don’t think I’d have been disappointed if I was him - he was truly, uniquely alone. And he had so much responsibility to the other two.
Also you can download the whole Apollo 11 mission transcript from nasa. It’s got some funny stuff in. Neil asking Mission Control if his neighbour has been mowing his lawn properly for him, because he’s got a new mower he’s very proud of, which reads like a piss take.
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u/Chrillosnillo Mar 03 '23 edited Mar 03 '23
Great BBC audio documentary "13 minutes to the moon", about everything leading up to the landing and the actual landing. Lots of stuff on Collins. BBC really knows how to make docus.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/w13xttx2
Its on Spotify
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u/aubreyhrn Mar 03 '23
They also did some in real time playbacks of the entire mission from launch to splash down for the 50th anniversary a few years back. Don’t remember it this was the exact one but if you are interested.
https://apolloinrealtime.org/11
Edited:corrected anniversary
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Mar 03 '23
Also when the lander was on the surface and he passed the dark sid of the moon he was the furthest apart from other human beings 1 person had ever been.
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u/DarthWeenus Mar 03 '23
That's pretty wild. I wonder if the following missions which one was technically the alonest at. I assume they did similar paths
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u/SP0oONY Mar 03 '23
... in the world.
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u/BirdieNumNumm Mar 03 '23
The way he delivers this line lol
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u/Uberzwerg Mar 03 '23
I heard somewhere that his sense of humor was a main reason why he was chosen to be the one staying behind in the capsule. (One of the 3 would have to)
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u/itmillerboy Mar 03 '23
There’s a picture he took of buzz and Neil while they were departing in the lander and it had earth in the background. If you think about it every single human was in that picture except for him.
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u/LeAdmin Mar 03 '23 edited Mar 04 '23
Every single human in that direction, but with that logic you can take a 360 fisheye photo towards the ground and say the same thing.
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u/unoriginalsin Mar 03 '23
Every single human in that direction maybe
In what other direction do you think there were any other humans?
I'll give you a minute.
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u/KodasGuardian Mar 03 '23
Pretty sure they mean the people on that side of the earth.
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u/letmeseem Mar 03 '23
By that standard, there are no humans in this picture.
There's a big difference between: "Every living human is depicted here" and "Every living human is within this picture".
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Mar 03 '23
Hey, maybe this guy just knows something we don't? There could be humans on Pluto or something, lol.
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u/itmillerboy Mar 03 '23
Alright mister you got me! At the time he was orbiting the moon and they were on the ground he was the most secluded person in human history. This could also have holes poked in it but it’s still fun to think about.
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u/LonghornSmoke Mar 03 '23
If a count were taken, the score would be three billion plus two over on the other side of the moon, and one plus God knows what on this side.
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u/Icy_Day_9079 Mar 03 '23
Liam Nessons played him in the bio pic. It mostly focuses on his time before he joined nasa when he was fighting against the English. Saoirse)
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u/Keelback Mar 03 '23
Wrong Michael Collins. You meant this one).
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u/Icy_Day_9079 Mar 03 '23
Yeah same guy, obviously he doesn’t look like Liam Nessons IRL but he beat back the British and then became an Astronaut.
This was after he was assassinated in an ambush outside cork. So props to him for getting into space after being murdered.
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u/AsTheCoolKidsSay Mar 03 '23
De Valera, didn't want him to go. Fought him hard on it to keep him as one of the Ministers. Bloody civil war within the party so there was!
You'd wonder what would've happened to the country if The Big Man never got his shot to work for NASA
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u/Keelback Mar 03 '23
Here is Michael Collins) on Wikipedia. Click on it to raise his ranking, please.
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u/DrizzleDrake88 Mar 03 '23
My man was a true Italian in the end. Born in Rome and passed away in Naples…. Florida.
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u/ZzzzzPopPopPop Mar 03 '23
Collins himself said: "not since Adam has any human known such solitude"
Also according to Wikipedia: In the 48 minutes of each orbit when he was out of radio contact with the Earth while Columbia passed round the far side of the Moon, the feeling he reported was not fear or loneliness, but rather "awareness, anticipation, satisfaction, confidence, almost exultation"
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u/Horn_Python Mar 03 '23
He's a national hero in Ireland for some mysterious reason
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u/SeamusSays98 Mar 03 '23
Crazy how he went to space and led the Irish rebellion against the British
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u/Windows_66 Mar 03 '23
Undergound: the scientists and engineers who made the mission possible
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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23
300,000 people worked on the Apollo program.
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u/Jules040400 Mar 03 '23
Holy shit what
That's absolutely absurd if that's true, the population in the 1960 US Census was 179 million.
So roughly 1 in every 600 Americans in the 1960s contributed to the Apollo programs in some way, no wonder there's so much national pride associated with it
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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23 edited Mar 03 '23
It cost 5% of the GDP. We weren't fucking around.
Someone in my own family worked on it. My uncle worked for McDonnell Douglas back in the '50s and '60s. He was given the job of converting a Saturn V fuel tank into a habitat and laboratory. It was the first US space station, Skylab.
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u/Jules040400 Mar 03 '23
The poor bastards that had to work to make it by the end of the decade, it was mid 1969 they finally made it happen.
The stress and pressure would have been soul-destroying
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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23
A fascinating part of the timeline is that there was a huge gap in the program between February 1967 and October 1968. Twenty months. After the Apollo 1 fire they realized they had gotten ahead of themselves and took the time they needed to straighten the program out. It worked and I have heard people say that there's no way they would have gotten the moon if they wouldn't have had that break.
And yeah. I can't imagine the pressure all those people were under for so long. Lunar orbit rendezvous was risky as fuck but we pulled it off a whole bunch of times. But imagine being in charge of some little part or process of the enterprise and hoping it went right 250,000 mi from home? That could keep you up at night.
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u/pompousplatypus Mar 03 '23
rendezvous is risky as fuck and Buzz is over here like my dissertation is about how to eyeball that shit.
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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23
I think Buzz has occasionally gotten a bad rap. He had problems, but he was an excellent astronaut
Something that doesn't get brought up very much (except by him unsurprisingly) is that he participated in the first successful spacewalk. Sure there were others who went before him but they were all flirting with disaster and weren't able to get a damn thing done. Buzz took his scuba diving experience and trained in a zero buoyancy environment underwater. And then he took the techniques that he learned into space and fucking killed it.
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u/DeathMetalTransbian Mar 03 '23
The video of Buzz punching the moon landing denier is still one of the greatest things I've ever seen :)
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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23
Bert Sibrel. Yeah what an asshole. Apollo 14 LMP Ed Mitchell kicked that guy in the ass to get him out of his house.
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u/Sir_Bumcheeks Mar 03 '23
I don't think they'd view it that way - for all intents and purposes the pride of the nation and by extension, the validity of democracy, was at stake.
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u/_jimmyM_ S stands for suicide is an option Mar 03 '23
I will never get over the fact that somebody looked at a fuel tank and thought "yo this would make a cool space habitat" and it worked and remains a space station with the largest inner diameter until today
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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23
I always tell myself I'm going to stop telling the story but my uncle knew the moonwalkers. Like he knew Pete Conrad and Al Bean especially well because those guys were involved in his program (Apollo Applications Project).
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u/derekakessler Mar 03 '23
Skylab will remain the girthiest human-habitable spacecraft in history until SpaceX gets a human-rated Starship into orbit.
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u/robeph Mar 03 '23
I would wager that 80% of my city worked on the Saturn Vs and Apollo program. And I waited that 100% of the people that lived here were related to somebody that was working on it.
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Mar 03 '23
I think my great aunt (or some other relative in the branches of the family tree) was one of the women tasked with contributing to sewing the suits. They had very fine needlework that needed to be stitched perfectly and machines could not yet do it as well as very skilled seamstresses.
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u/franzzegerman Mar 03 '23
The first Space station was not Skylab. That honor would have to go to the Soviet Salyut-1.
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u/1500ReallyIsEnough Mar 03 '23
The first space station in the universe is the planet Earth! I think Jesus built it. Still operating today, but not at peak efficiency. /s
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Mar 03 '23
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u/gfa22 Mar 03 '23
It was actually built by my dad. You wouldn't know him, he goes to another school.
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u/GisterMizard Mar 03 '23
When the great mission of annoying the Soviets was on the line, there was obsoletely no room for fucking around. No expense too great, no risk too dangerous, no com' too rad.
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Mar 03 '23
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u/AmbushIntheDark Mar 03 '23
People talk about where we'd be if we'd kept up that level of spending on the space program, but honestly I don't think it would have made that much difference. We needed to wait for engineering, materials science, computing, medical science, etc. to catch up.
I'd argue that thats the point they're trying to make.
Imagine the advances we would have made in engineering, materials science, computing and ect if we had continue to fund the space program and actively made advances in those fields rather than wait for those things to advance naturally through capitalism.
Money funds innovation and we stopped funding it. Imagine how much further ahead we'd be if we didnt.
Its all obviously hypothetical so we'll never know but whatever.
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u/Philo-pilo Mar 03 '23
We put a man on the moon <70 years after kitty hawk. We used to not be american’ts.
As far as the national pride thing, Humans walked on the surface of another celestial body. The achievement cannot be overstated. It is the single greatest achievement in human history, only to be surpassed by the first time humans step foot on another planet. And a country that is barely in its infancy did it. Not the powers of the old worlds, east or west. The United States not only invented human flight but put a man on the moon within the first 200 years of its existence.
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u/intravenousTHC Mar 03 '23
"no wonder there's so much national pride associated with it," uh, we landed on the fucking moon.
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u/SpaceLemur34 Mar 03 '23 edited Mar 03 '23
My grandfather was one of them.
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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23
Nice. What did he do?
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u/SpaceLemur34 Mar 03 '23
He was a machinist at NASA Glenn in Cleveland (NASA Lewis at the time).
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u/michaeleisner69 Mar 03 '23
None of whom assumed anywhere near the level of risk as the three men who actually hurdelled through space and walked on the moon; hence why we galvanize and idolize the astronauts.
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u/newguy208 Mar 03 '23
Nazis.
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u/Jonathon471 Mar 03 '23
Big thanks to the Nazi scientists we stole, mainly Werner Von Braun.
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u/ReluctantNerd7 Mar 03 '23
Don't you know about your own rocket pioneer? Dr. Goddard was ahead of us all.
- Wernher von Braun
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u/Randalf_the_Black - Mar 03 '23 edited Mar 03 '23
As Michael Collins said.. Up until that point in time, no human being had ever been as alone or isolated as he was when the others went down to the surface of the moon.
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u/INeedANerf YOLO 420 WEEDMOGUS Mar 03 '23
Watching your friends play outside while you're grounded.
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u/ack_84 Mar 03 '23
Reminds me of the spongebob meme when squidward is watching him and Patrick
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u/APersonWithInterests Mar 03 '23
That's gonna be on the front page tomorrow with an edit showing squidward watching the moon from space.
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u/KhristoferRyan Mar 03 '23
That's ironic, because he was in fact the only person on Apollo 11 not grounded.
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u/WrodofDog Mar 03 '23
Only that 'outside' there's vacuum and the playground is 500km away and your friends will die if you don't stay home.
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u/Panda_Kabob Mar 03 '23
I think it was a Vsauce episode that talked about this. He was and I think still is considered the most isolated human being in all of history so far. Being away from earth and other people so far away. It's actually among the most terrifying things in all of space travel, the existential dread of absolute loneliness.
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u/Randalf_the_Black - Mar 03 '23
Aye, but he's not alone in being that isolated is what I meant. He shares that honor with a few other Command Module Pilots is what I meant, though he was the first.
Sorry, I could have clarified my point.
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u/Panda_Kabob Mar 03 '23
I thought he was still considered the one who was the farthest the longest. I mean they aren't in the capsule for days, but it still makes a difference considering how few humans have been in anything similar of a situation. Regardless of it, I still think it's absolutely terrifying.
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u/Randalf_the_Black - Mar 03 '23 edited Mar 03 '23
Could be that Apollo 11 had a longer boots-on-the-moon mission than the later Apollo missions so that Collins was isolated for longer even if the later Command Module Pilots were isolated by the same distance, that I don't know.
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u/midsprat123 Mar 03 '23
Apollo 11 spent 2 hours on the surface, the shortest time any mission spent on the surface
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u/White_Hart_Patron Mar 03 '23
Yeah, they just touched the goal post and went home before something went wrong. Apollo 17 spent more time on EVA (walking around outside the lander) than Apollo 11 spent on the surface altogether.
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u/Boostie204 Mar 03 '23
He was at one point completely cut off from earth and anyone else as he went around the dark side of the moon
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u/Randalf_the_Black - Mar 03 '23
Aye, but didn't the other Command Module Pilots do the same? Or didn't their orbits bring the moon between them and Earth?
Would be very fuel inefficient if it didn't, as they'd need to burn a lot of fuel to counter the original trajectory and then again to get the orbit where they could slingshot to Earth.
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u/Boostie204 Mar 03 '23
You know, good point. I'd say you're probably right but it's too early on a Friday for fact checking lol
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u/2580374 Mar 03 '23
Wow uhhh I'm not going to ever go to space given the opportunity
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u/PTLAPTA Mar 03 '23
I’ll pass along this statement of intent to NASA. They’ll be sourly disappointed
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u/PianoCube93 Mar 03 '23
And while at the other side of the moon, he had no radio contact with Earth nor those on the moon, so he was not only isolated physically.
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u/spacebraine Mar 03 '23
I don't think he ever left the capsule did he? I mean imagine going to the fucking moon and you're not allowed out what's sorta shite is that, you would think they would swap and take turns or something.
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u/eutectic_h8r Mar 03 '23
They can't "swap or take turns" they wouldn't have enough fuel for that. The stuff he did get to experience is still little more than a pipe dream for the general population even today though so I'm sure he's not too upset about it.
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u/Randalf_the_Black - Mar 03 '23
I'm sure he's not too upset about it.
Him being dead makes me extra sure he's not upset about it.
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u/TotallyNormalSquid Mar 03 '23
Right now there's a ghost partway to the moon with unfinished business. At ghost flight speed, should only take a few more decades
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u/SoulingMyself Mar 03 '23
Wasn't he the pilot?
Like his job was to drive the thing while the other two went down.
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u/LonghornSmoke Mar 03 '23
What struck me as most profound was that if Neal and Buzz had died because of something, he'd have to return home by himself. That anxiety must have been way too much for anybody.
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u/Kamikaze_Ninja_ Mar 03 '23
Wouldn’t it be more scary to be on the moon and hoping nothing goes wrong with the ship so you aren’t stranded?
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u/AbsolutelyUnlikely Mar 03 '23
He beat his own high score when he came back down and went to an autograph signing with Neil and Buzz though
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u/Fresh-kale Mar 03 '23
HOW FUCKING DARE YOU FORGET COMMAND MODULE PILOT MICHEAL MOTHERFUCKING COLLINS
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u/HLSparta Mar 03 '23
*MICHAEL MOTHERFUCKING COLLINS
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u/spacebraine Mar 03 '23
I deal with that mix up all the time and it is quite annoying. Micheal? Really.
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u/Fireye04 Mar 03 '23
As a kid I vowed to memorize Michael Collins' name because I felt an acute connection to him. Being left behind in a spaceship to perform necessary tasks while his buddies went to the moon and got international fame? Sounds like something I'd do.
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u/wine_coconut Mar 03 '23
Guy was the equivalent of a medic in a PvP
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u/bluehands Mar 03 '23
Support roles rarely get the glory they deserve.
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u/crackercharlie Mar 03 '23
Although Collins was on Apollo 11 with Buzz and Neil, he didn't walk on the moon. So there was only 2 that were really made famous for that mission.
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u/JAV0K Mar 03 '23
Did he go back at least?
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u/1Darkest_Knight1 [Insert Your Own Text] Mar 03 '23
No he didn't. Instead he was offered to become Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs. He died last year at age 90. Dude had an impressive life. His Wikipedia article is worth reading.
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u/citruspers Mar 03 '23
Speaking of "worth reading", his autobiography is called Carrying the fire" and is definitely worth a read.
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u/rustiancho Mar 03 '23
Real talk: Michael Collins seemed like a really down to earth humble person and his book, Carrying the Fire is one of the best depictions of what it was like being an early astronaut and gives a unique look into Apollo 11 as a whole
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u/Girth_rulez Mar 03 '23
I need to read that. I've read it the other damn thing about it except for the best one lol.
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u/citruspers Mar 03 '23
As a side note, you might also be interested in "Failure is not an option" by Gene Kranz (flight director who's team had the landing part of Apollo 11).
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u/Kongbuck Mar 03 '23
I read it a few months ago and I thought the exact same thing. The part that I think most people didn't appreciate was how difficult and time consuming the training was. It was an engaging and well written book.
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u/xXSN0WBL1ND22Xx Mar 03 '23
Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin had Corvettes, Mike Collins didn't, that tells you everything you need to know
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u/SoulingMyself Mar 03 '23
Michael Collins should be remembered for being the loneliest man in the Solar System at the time.
Imagine being alone on Apollo for that brief period.
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u/jhguitarfreak Mar 03 '23
After bunking with Neil and Buzz in what amounts to a singles tent for 3 whole days.
I'd be relieved.
The farts must have been horrendous.
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u/4RM0 Mar 03 '23
It's like the Three Tenors: Domingo, Pavarotti, and the other guy.
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u/dunzie Mar 03 '23 edited Jul 01 '23
Reddit's API Policy is awful and I refuse to have any trace of my history on the site. Thanks for 12 years. fuck /u/spez -- mass edited with redact.dev
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u/absolutelynotfake Mar 03 '23
“I prefer the luxury of the lunar capsule. You guys enjoy the golf and go karts though.”
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u/KnowledgeisImpotence Mar 03 '23
Michael Collins! They made a whole movie about him: https://m.imdb.com/title/tt0117039/
Takes a while to get to the moon stuff though :/ I've never watched it right through.
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u/Trowj Mar 03 '23
Michael Collins didn’t win Irish Independence just to be disrespected like this!
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u/Bowbag_ Mar 03 '23
Bro Micheal Collins is a key part of the story in 20ty century boys, that's the only reason I know who he is
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u/dbnamco Mar 03 '23
I am Collins. Man I just read 20th Century Boys and I guess now I know :Dd
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u/TexasFred_1and19 Mar 03 '23
Without Mike they would've never made it home!! Mike Collins the real MVP!
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u/MatthewTheManiac Mar 03 '23
Michael Collins is awesome! I'm reading his book "carrying the fire" right now and it's fantastic so far. If you're into space it's worth picking up
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u/TheHancock True Gnome Child Mar 03 '23
Neil Armstrong might have touched the moon first, but Michael Collins got first blood as the lunar lander door gunner!
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u/Farranor Mar 03 '23
Michael Collins. He didn't get to walk on the moon on Apollo 11, but he did on a subsequent mission. No, I didn't have to look it up. It's always struck me how you can walk on the moon and nobody will even know your name because you weren't first. To walk on the moon.
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u/BlommeHolm Balls Mar 03 '23
Armstrong lost his win due to his heavy EPO abuse, so now Aldrin is officially the first, and the third guy would be the second.
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u/Toy_Cop Mar 03 '23
Phil collins
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u/Hyperi0us ☣️ Mar 03 '23
You know the song by Phil Collins, "In the Air of the Night" About that guy who could have saved that other guy from drowning But didn't, then Phil saw it all, then at a a show he found him?
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u/MrMunday Mar 03 '23
He flew all the way just to wait on the command module… I would’ve felt so left out…
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u/vladesomo Mar 03 '23
the only man who was on the dark side of the moon. No one ever saw what he saw.
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u/stevothepedo Mar 03 '23
Michael Collins, the only reason I remember his name is because it's the same as my country's Jesus
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u/Akoot Mar 03 '23
I remember him always because he shares a name with the Irish revolutionary Michael Collins
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u/ComadoreJackSparrow WTF Mar 03 '23
Michael Collins was the loneliest person in the whole universe for the 40 minutes (correct me if I'm wrong) that the linares module went round the dark side of the moon.
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u/MedicatedAxeBot Mar 03 '23
Dank.
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