Buzz Aldrin reflecting on fear, bravery and valor in the New York Times:

“I don’t think anybody astronauts or otherwise is born with some kind of right stuff. It’s something you work into.”

To learn about bravery, ask a man who walked on the moon.

That article also got me thinking about Michael Collins. Talk about your unsung hero. He went all the way to the moon and stayed in the Command Module (incidentally named Columbia) orbiting the moon alone, to make sure they’d be coming back to Earth. Imagine what must have been going through his head while Neil and Buzz were hopping around Mare Tranquillitatis — The Sea of Tranquility. On the far side of the Moon no communications were possible. One man in a tin eggshell whose orbit defined the furthest frontier of humanity’s reach. With all the Moon and space behind him, no one has ever been so far from home. The loneliness and awe of those 26 and half hours must be unprecedented in all of human history.

Five months later Michael Collins resigned from NASA and the Air Force.