Michael Collins (astronaut) At the end, Alan Shepard, the Chief of the Astronaut Office, asked the fourteen to rank their fellow astronauts in the order they would want to fly with them in space. Collins picked David Scott in the number one position. After this basic training, the third group were assigned specializations, with Collins receiving his first choice of pressure suits and extravehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks). His job was to monitor the development and act as a liaison between the Astronaut Office and contractors. He was bothered by the secretive planning of Ed White's EVA on Gemini 4, because
Chinese as a foreign language in 2001, while the later has not been found so far—Ricci made the transcription system developed in 1598, and in 1626 it was finally published, with minor modifications, by another Jesuit Nicolas Trigault in a guide for new Jesuit missionaries. The system continued to be in wide use throughout the 17th and 18th century. It can be seen in several Romanized Chinese texts (prepared mostly by Michael Boym and his Chinese collaborators) that appeared in Athanasius Kircher's "China Illustrata". The earliest Chinese grammars were produced by the Spanish Dominican missionaries. The earliest surviving one is by Francisco Varo (1627–1687). His