Michael Collins (astronaut) Michael Collins (astronaut) Michael Collins (born October 31, 1930) (Major General, USAF, Retired) is an American former astronaut and test pilot. Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963, he flew into space twice. His first spaceflight was on Gemini 10, in which he and Command Pilot John Young performed two rendezvous with different spacecraft and undertook two extra-vehicular activities (EVAs, also known as spacewalks). His second spaceflight was as the Command Module Pilot for Apollo 11. While he stayed in orbit around the Moon, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin left in the Lunar Module to
The Return (Aldrin and Barnes novel) The Return (Aldrin and Barnes novel) The Return is a 2000 novel written by Buzz Aldrin and John Barnes. The book details a fictional account of the future of space travel, specifically space tourism. Although set in the near future, it now seems somewhat dated as events that happened shortly after its release, such as the "Columbia" disaster and recent space tourism advances such as SpaceShipOne and Virgin Galactic, are not included. Most of the corporations within the novel have fictional names; however, it is often quite clear that they are references to real corporations such as Boeing, Lockheed Martin,