An
astronaut who got screwed -- he stayed in the main capsule of
Apollo 11 while
Neil Armstrong and
Buzz Aldrin got to be the first and second
people to walk on the
moon.
Michael Collins was born in 1930. He attended West Point and after graduating, joined the U.S. Air Force. He became first a fighter pilot, then a test pilot for new aircraft, and was selected to be an astronaut in 1963. He was part of the Gemini 10 mission in 1966 and showed himself to be good at extravehicular activity in a space suit. After that, he was Command Module Pilot for Apollo 11 in 1969, controlling the re-docking maneuver which got Armstrong and Aldrin's lunar module connected to the command module after their moon landing. Collins, of course, had to stay in the command module to control this maneuver.
In 1970, Collins left NASA and the regular Air Force as a colonel, becoming a reserve officer and Assistant Secretary of State for Public Affairs for a brief period. In 1971 he became director of the National Air and Space Museum, and in 1978, Undersecretary of the Smithsonian Institution for two years. In 1982, Collins retired from the Air Force completely, working for LTV Aerospace & Defense Co. until 1985 when he started his own consulting firm. He's also written several books: First to the Moon (with Edwin Aldrin, Neil Armstrong, Gene Farmer
and Dora Jane Hamblin), 1970; Carrying the Fire: An Astronaut's Journeys, 1974; Flying to the Moon and Other Strange Places, 1976; and Lift Off: The Story of America's Adventure in Space, 1988
Source: http://imagine5.com/bios/Collins.html