Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journey

by Michael Collins

As we counted down to S—IVB ignition for TLI, a hush fell over Mission Control. TLI was what made this flight different from the six Mercury, ten Gemini, and one Apollo flights that had preceded it, different from any trip man had ever made in any vehicle. For the first time in history, man was going to propel himself past escape velocity, breaking the clutch of our earth’s gravitational field and coasting into outer space as he had never done before. After TLI there would be three men in the solar system who would have to be counted apart from all the other billions, three who were in a different place, whose motion obeyed different rules, and whose habitat had to be considered a separate planet. The three could examine the earth and the earth could examine them, and each would see the other for the first time. This the people in Mission Control knew; yet there were no immortal words on the wall proclaiming the fact, only a thin green line, representing Apollo 8 climbing, speeding, vanishing—leaving us stranded behind on this planet, awed by the fact that we humans had finally had an option to stay or to leave—and had chosen to leave.