All three astronauts believed there was a real chance such a disaster would occur. Armstrong thought his prospects were only 50-50 of making it back to Earth. And so did Collins, the pilot of Columbia and one of the world's most experienced aviators.
After doing some checking, the only people to have died in the Apollo Program were those in the command module of Apollo 1 when a fire broke out on the launchpad. Apollo 13 could've ended in tragedy had the service module's oxygen tank exploded after LM landing or on return after the LM jettisoned.
The problem for Collins was that this stage of the mission had not been tested in prior Apollo test launches.
In hindsight, Apollo was a great success with 6 lunar landings and 1 aborted mission. Whoever knows if they were just very lucky each time, or that the craft was quite reliable. Collins may have, or still might think the former, yet he might have been fairly safe all along. We'll never know.
Apparently he would disagree. :P From the article:
"At age 78, some things about current society irritate me, such as the adulation of celebrities and inflation of heroism," he said last week. Neither description fits him, he added. "Heroes abound, but don't count astronauts among them. We worked very hard, we did our jobs to near perfection, but that is what we had been hired to do."
What's the joke about the Medal of Honor recipients meeting? They all think it's a mistake for them to be around all these heroes.
Heroes are heroes precisely because they don't find their actions heroic. My take anyway.
Indeed. I always respect them for that - yes they understood the importance of the occasion. But the Apollo 11 'nauts were chosen for something more important than heroism - dependability. The guts to do the job and come home (the last one arguably being the crucial bit).
Kinda puts the word "hero" in perspective.