Died: April 28, 2021. MICHAEL COLLINS became fed up with answering the question about once having been the loneliest man in the universe as he circled the Moon in 1969. Eventually, he cautioned interviewers that he would throw them out of the room if the question was put to him. What that suggests is the Apollo 11 astronaut had a rocket fuse that could go off at any time. But that wasn’t the case at all. Collins, it transpires, was simply irritated by the repetition. “I wasn’t lonely while I waited for the docking procedure”, he once explained. “I was alone. But that’s not the same thing. I was happy to be in the spaceship, happy to do my job.”