Maybe most solitudinous?
Speaking of XKCD, here’s his statistical projection of survivorship among Apollo astronauts who actually walked on the moon:
And here’s the full list of Apollo astronauts who have walked on the moon, with dates of death where applicable:
Currently at four still alive, compared to XKCD’s prediction of three. Sadly on track.
one reason Armstrong was picked for the mission was he almost crashed in a test rocket and he recovered to land safely. NASA folks saw the problem and assumed there was very little chance of landing safely. Also he was no longer in the military on Apollo 11 , he was a Navy vet.
From what I’ve read it was just being in the right place in the rotation. The flight order of the crews were already picked (mostly by just two men, Slayton and Shepherd) before they knew how many flights would be made before the first attempted landing. The health of other astronauts could also affect the order. If Frank Borman had caught a cold the previous December, Armstrong would have had to settle for the first lunar orbital flight. So would Collins, if he hadn’t suffered a herniated disc the previous summer.
I immediately thought of that episode also. Thanks for hunting it up.
if I count the stairsteps correctly, the 5 → 4 survivors transition was “due” in 2019 +/- ~3 years. So we’re running slightly late = to the good. Nevertheless the countdown to zero continues with not much fuze left to burn.
That so far we’re tracking ordinary public actuarial tables so well despite their radiation exposure says a) they were a very healthy set of specimens to begin with, and b) the rad impact is not as horrific as was perhaps feared at the time. Although IIRC every mission was lucky WRT solar flares and such. That luck can be true for short missions like Apollo, but can’t be true for long-duration ones.
Another inspirational figure gone. Someone had to stay in the ship. They always asked him about walking on the moon, but never about being the only orbiter. Right stuff indeed.
He was my favorite astronaut. Not only was his attitude stellar–as pointed out by many of you–he seemed, in many ways, “too funny for NASA.” I mean this as a joke. I find his light-hearted commentary a breath of fresh air, when so many around him (administrators, other astronauts) were so…“heavy, man.” (His words, from “Carrying the Fire.”)
But he got extra flight time that his crew mates didn’t!
And he even (along with his shipmates) got a mineral named after him!:
It’s really chilling to watch it. Watch This Incredibly Convincing Deepfake of Richard Nixon | NowThis - YouTube
Not appearing in this photo: Michael Collins
Brian
Neither did Jethro Tull in “For Michael Collins, Jeffery, & Me”
“The loneliest man in the world”…
Except for the Maytag repairman. 
A lovely little 2019 interview with Collins, including some stuff I hadn’t heard before:
To make it more explicit, on Facebook someone captioned this picture, “Every human whoever lived is in the frame of this image, except Michael Collins.”
I hope at least one of those 12 men is still alive when we do it again, whether it’s NASA, Elon Musk, or some other entity that sends them there.
That was a good article, thank you for that.
“I’m with you, LEM”…though, between the composing of the song and its release, NASA had shortened the acronym to just “LM” (lunar module, sans “excursion.”)
I was born after this picture was taken. How am I in the picture?
You have to look very, very carefully. Maybe squinting would help…?
That thought-provoking statement was first made and well-publicized back when the pic was fresh and I was a kid.
The goof who repeated it last month is a goof.