Buzz is the only one left now.
And Buzz only one who punched a guy in the face for saying moon landing was fake.
He was the loneliest man in the universe while Neil and Buzz were on the surface of the moon.
It must have been difficult to go all the way to the moon and not set foot on it. His job was difficult and uncelebrated. And there was a very real possibility that Buzz and Neil would not make it back off the moon and he would eventually have to leave them there.
The loneliest job in the solar system at the time. Shit, I see cochrane beat me to it while I was typing.
I always figured that, after three days of sharing a phone booth with two other guys, he was just glad of the elbow room 
I’m really out of it. On reading the thread title, I thought, “Well, yes, a century ago.”
Oh, that Michael Collins. 
He said in an interview that being on the other side of the moon, out of contact with the guys and with Houston, was a nice respite.
Same here.
Born in Rome, I see!: Michael Collins (astronaut) - Wikipedia
A humble man who did a difficult job well, and later served his country with further distinction in the U.S. Department of State and by leading the National Air and Space Museum.
Farewell, Maj. Gen. Collins, and may you rest in peace.
Buzz Aldrin will probably outlive Betty White AND Keith Richards.
The Byrds didn’t forget him in their tribute to the Apollo 11 mission, “Armstrong, Aldrin and Collins”:
xkcd’s respectful but whimsical take from a few years ago on “loneliest human”: [u]**https://what-if.xkcd.com/72/**[/u]
IMO most distant and loneliest are two very different ideas.
I still think his book Carrying the Fire is the best astronaut memoir.
I agree, and I’ve read many of them. BTW, my copy is signed.
Millions of people and hundreds of astronauts would have traded places with Mike Collins in a heartbeat. Is it really that tough that he was one of the 4 billion people who didn’t get to walk on the moon in 1969?
He was offered walking on the moon on another mission, and turned it down to be with his family.
I would sell their souls to walk on the moon.
President Richard M. Nixon had a speech prepared for that event, written by William Safire. Fortunately, he never had to read it to the world.
He may well have recognized the risk numbers (largely unknown to the public) and said to himself “I got lucky enough once; twice is asking for it.”
He was a good man doing a difficult task at great personal risk knowingly assumed. We can ask for little more from our heroes.
“One, plus God knows what, on this side”… now, that is the right frame of mind.
Of the crews, Collins had a place in my affection because growing up as an Army brat he spent a couple of years in San Juan when his father was commander there, and it was there that he had his first airplane flight. So one of the moon men had taken flight in our town. That was cool.
(And BTW, his uncle, his father, his brother and himself, all generals. That’s some family.)
Also, Collins quietly accepted his role as command module pilot, while there was considerable drama between Armstrong and Aldrin (mostly, it seems, at Aldrin’s instigation) about who would be first to walk on the moon.
Not that Collins got that bad a deal. He traveled to the moon, orbited the moon 30 times – mostly alone with his thoughts – and then welcomed back the first humans from the moon and returned to Earth. In 1969! Right now you couldn’t buy an experience like that for any amount of money.