--- title: Neil Armstrong: The Spaceflight That Almost Killed Him description: The flight that nearly killed Neil Armstrong, on Episode 2 of the podcast 'Countdown.' canonical: https://time.com/4880012/neil-armstrong-apollo-gemini-nasa/ author: Jeffrey Kluger article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2017-07-31T16:48:52.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T16:47:33.115Z article:section: Science og:title: On TIME's Podcast 'Countdown:' The Flight that Nearly Took Neil Armstrong's Life og:description: The flight that nearly killed Neil Armstrong, on Episode 2 of the podcast 'Countdown.' og:url: https://time.com/4880012/neil-armstrong-apollo-gemini-nasa/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4130883ec6a9e59d/6988d67eab6d77abaa6af0bb/170720_neil-armstrong.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 3000 og:image:height: 1688 og:image:alt: 170720_Neil Armstrong og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: On TIME's Podcast 'Countdown:' The Flight that Nearly Took Neil Armstrong's Life twitter:description: The flight that nearly killed Neil Armstrong, on Episode 2 of the podcast 'Countdown.' twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4130883ec6a9e59d/6988d67eab6d77abaa6af0bb/170720_neil-armstrong.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # On TIME's Podcast 'Countdown:' The Flight that Nearly Took Neil Armstrong's Life > Sponsored content. 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It reaches 40,000 subscribers with a 34.2% open rate and a 2.1% click rate as of August 2026. #### Where can I follow the energy transition as a business story? Future Proof covers climate and energy as an economic and business story rather than only an environmental one. It publishes every Friday and is free at time.com/newsletters. #### Who writes Future Proof? Justin Worland, a senior correspondent at TIME and an award-winning climate journalist, writes Future Proof. #### Is Future Proof free? Yes. Future Proof is free at time.com/newsletters.  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Jul 31, 2017 4:48 PM UTC  A portrait of Neil Armstrong aboard the Lunar Module Eagle on the lunar surface just after the first moon walk. A portrait of Neil Armstrong aboard the Lunar Module Eagle on the lunar surface just after the first moon walk.NASA—Corbis via Getty Images  by [Jeffrey Kluger](https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/)  ## Jeffrey Kluger Editor at Large Jul 31, 2017 4:48 PM UTC Live with history long enough and it starts to seem immutable. In 2019, a full 50 years will have elapsed since Neil Armstrong became the first man on the moon; the near-half-century that has gone by since that transformative July night in 1969 has made it nearly impossible to conceive of anyone else in Armstrong’s role. Imagining Pete Conrad or John Young as first men on the moon (instead of the third and ninth, respectively) seems as odd as imagining James Madison as the first President. But the fact is, in the mid-1960s, when NASA was flying the two-man Gemini spacecraft that preceded the three-man Apollo, Conrad and Young and more than a dozen other men had just as good a chance as Armstrong of getting the prime seat on the prime mission. Armstrong even had a worse chance than the rest of them—or at least he did on March 16, 1965, when he and his co-pilot Dave Scott took off aboard Gemini 8, both men’s rookie ride into space. Gemini 8 was supposed to be a three day mission that would include a rendezvous and docking with an unmanned spacecraft, and a pair of spacewalks by Scott. Instead it was all over in less than 11 hours, and the most memorable thing the two men accomplished was the simple business of staying alive. That flight, only four years into America’s now-long history of flying human beings in space, was the the first time NASA came close—horribly close—to losing a crew during a mission. The near-miss was owed to a very simple mechanical breakdown that almost pushed both the Gemini spacecraft and the astronauts themselves beyond the point that either could survive. The fact that they did survive was due to the quick thinking and nimble piloting of Armstrong and Scott, and to the men at the consoles in Mission Control, who knew enough to offer whatever guidance they could during the unfolding crisis and then stand back and let the pilots work. That was enough—enough so that four years later Armstrong would indeed walk on the moon and, two years after that, so would Scott. Episode Two of the TIME podcast Countdown tells the story of Armstrong’s and Scott’s harrowing day, and of what it took for them to get out of it with their lives. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/4880012/neil-armstrong-apollo-gemini-nasa/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/4880012/neil-armstrong-apollo-gemini-nasa/"},"headline":"On TIME's Podcast 'Countdown:' The Flight that Nearly Took Neil Armstrong's Life","datePublished":"2017-07-31T16:48:52.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T16:47:33.115Z","description":"The first man on the moon nearly wasn't","url":"https://time.com/4880012/neil-armstrong-apollo-gemini-nasa/","keywords":["Podcast","NASA","emergency","neil armstrong"],"thumbnailUrl":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4130883ec6a9e59d/6988d67eab6d77abaa6af0bb/170720_neil-armstrong.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","author":[{"@type":"Person","name":"Jeffrey Kluger","jobTitle":"Editor at Large","url":"https://time.com/author/jeffrey-kluger/"}],"articleSection":"Science","image":[{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/blt4130883ec6a9e59d/6988d67eab6d77abaa6af0bb/170720_neil-armstrong.jpg?branch=production&width=1200&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=1200:675&height=675","width":1200,"height":675,"headline":"170720_Neil Armstrong","caption":"Neil Armstrong Aboard the Eagle, 1969","creditText":"NASA—Corbis via Getty Images","representativeOfPage":true}],"publisher":{"@type":"Organization","name":"Time","url":"https://time.com/","logo":{"@type":"ImageObject","url":"https://time.com/images/logo.png","width":528,"height":156},"foundingDate":"March 3, 1923","sameAs":["https://www.facebook.com/time","https://www.instagram.com/time/?hl=en","https://twitter.com/time","https://www.pinterest.com/timemagazine"]}},{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"BreadcrumbList","itemListElement":[{"@type":"ListItem","position":1,"item":{"@id":"/section/science/","name":"Science"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":2,"item":{"@id":"/tag/podcast/","name":"Podcast"}},{"@type":"ListItem","position":3,"item":{"@id":"https://time.com/4880012/neil-armstrong-apollo-gemini-nasa/","name":"On TIME's Podcast 'Countdown:' The Flight that Nearly Took Neil Armstrong's Life"}}]}] ```