A lot is said and written about the 12 men who walked on the surface of the moon. We hear comparatively little about the six who didn't go quite that far.

Michael Collins was the first human to experience that most profound isolation of orbiting the moon's far side alone, cut off from his entire race, and he has often admitted that it changed him.

As a lifelong loner with a philosophical bent, I've often imagined what that must be like. Alone, in darkness, surrounded by a vast unknown. Even with the command module pilot's solo mission, how often would those minutes seem stretch into an eternity? How many times would I just stop and ponder the notion that, no matter how hard I tried, I could neither see nor communicate with another human being?

@mikey

"This, however, could not be further from the truth, he explained during an interview with Bob Cabana, the director of NASA’s Kennedy Space Center on Tuesday. “I was always asked ‘Wasn’t I the loneliest person?’” he said. “The answer was ‘No, I felt fine’.”"

https://www.foxnews.com/science/apollo-11-astronaut-michael-collins-coffee

@sda My reference was Chaikin's _A Man on the Moon_, where Collins speaks of something more akin to a spiritual experience rather than loneliness. But the sense of isolation from humanity resonates far more strongly in me than being closer to God.