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things.'

Before the mission Collins had admitted that 'I would be either a liar or a fool if I said that I think I have the best of the three seats on Apollo 11... but I'm an integral part of the operation and happy to be going in any capacity.' 5 For the rest of the world, Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were just names in a newspaper – in Russia, Pravda had taken to calling Neil 'the Czar of the Ship' – but for Michael, Neil and Buzz were the only people who had shared everything he had been going through since Christmas. Now that the two of them were about to begin the key part of their mission, the time was fast approaching when he would have to bid them farewell. All that remained to be done was for the command module to be held still while Armstrong punched computer buttons as he finely tuned the AGS.
Collins: 'I have 5 minutes and 15 seconds since we started. Attitude is holding very well.'
Aldrin: 'Roger, Mike. Just hold it a little bit longer.'
Collins: 'No sweat, I can hold it all day. Take your sweet time. How's the czar over there? He's so quiet.'
Armstrong: 'Just hanging on – and punching.'
Collins: 'All I can say is, beware the revolution. You cats take it easy on the lunar surface. If I hear you huffing and puffing, I'm going to start bitching at you.
Aldrin: 'OK Mike.'
After Buzz finished setting up a 16mm film camera in his window, at 12.44pm Michael pushed a button releasing the latches holding the two spacecraft together. Excess oxygen immediately escaped from the tunnel, gently pushing the two spacecraft apart. From that moment Neil and Buzz were flying aboard a vehicle in which it would be impossible to come home.
Mission Control: ' Eagle , Houston. We see you on the steerable [antenna]. Over.'
Armstrong: 'Roger. Eagle is undocked.'
Mission Control: 'Roger. How does it look, Neil?'
Armstrong: 'The Eagle has wings.'
Mission Control: 'Roger.'

With the two spacecraft flying in formation, 60 feet apart, Collins took a careful look out of the small window directly in front of the left-hand couch. 6 He had made a trip to the Grumman factory specifically to see what the lunar lander should look like once the legs were properly extended. Now, as Neil slowly rotated the LM, it seemed to Michael that with its legs locked in position Eagle was 'the weirdest-looking contraption ever to invade the sky'. 7 A minute before he was due to move off to a greater distance, Collins embroidered the truth a little.
Collins: 'I think you've got a fine-looking flying machine there, Eagle , despite the fact you're upside-down.'
Armstrong: 'Somebody's upside-down.'
Armstrong: 'See you later.'
Collins: 'OK, Eagle . One minute until ignition. You guys take care.'

Firing his forward thrusters for eight seconds, Michael flew the command module away from the LM; at the same time Neil and Buzz tested the all-important rendezvous radar by locking on to Columbia 's transponder. Once Columbia was a thousand feet away, Armstrong and Aldrin were ready to begin the first part of the descent to the surface, a manoeuvre known as descent orbit insertion (DOI). To put themselves on the correct approach route, the burn would have to be made while they were out of radio contact with Houston – like so many other key moments of the mission. In igniting their engine on the far side of the Moon, the spacecraft would enter an elliptical orbit. At its lowest point, this would bring Eagle down to just 50,000 feet (or 8.3 miles) above a spot 260 miles east of the landing site. 8 One hour and six minutes after undocking, the ground gave permission for DOI, and ten minutes later the two spacecraft slipped out of contact, at the beginning of the fourteenth orbit.
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On a steaming day in Houston, the crew's homes were crowded with visitors. Through the squawk boxes, everyone had overheard Neil and Buzz preparing the LM- but the technical jargon was sometimes hard to understand. 'Better than 90 per cent of what families could ever hope to hear on this