USS Hornet (CV-12) 27 March 1967. She reached Japan exactly a month later and departed the Sasebo base on 19 May for the war zone. She operated in Vietnamese waters throughout the first half of 1967. "Hornet" recovered the astronauts from the first moon landing mission, Apollo 11, on 24 July 1969. President Nixon was on board to welcome the returning astronauts back to Earth, where they lived in quarantine aboard "Hornet" prior to transfer to the Lunar Receiving Laboratory at Houston. The first steps on Earth of returning moonwalkers Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, with Command Module Pilot Michael Collins, are marked
Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys insights into his astronaut colleagues, including Neil Armstrong ("I can't offhand think of a better choice to be the first man on the moon") and Buzz Aldrin ("would make a champion chess player; always thinks several moves ahead"). Collins was originally going to title the book "World in my Window", but he later decided that was "too corny". After discussing it with his editor, they decided to use three words to describe spaceflight. Collins decided on "Carrying the Fire". In his review for "TIME" magazine, Robert Sherrod calls it "the best-written book yet by any of the astronauts". As an