Watch Neil Armstrong narrowly escape a 1968 training accident

[montrealfilmguy]

This amazing footage shows how it could have been a totally different person uttering the famous words a year later.

 

At 14 seconds,the tiny speck and the little puff of smoke is him ejecting.

 

In his Armstrong biography First Man, author James Hansen recounts how astronaut Alan Bean saw Armstrong that afternoon at his desk in the astronaut office. Bean then heard colleagues in the hall talking about the accident, and asked them, “When did this happen?” About an hour ago, they replied. Bean returned to Armstrong and said, “I just heard the funniest story!” Armstrong said, “What?” “I heard that you bailed out of the LLTV an hour ago.” “Yeah, I did,” replied Armstrong. “I lost control and had to bail out of the darn thing.” “I can’t think of another person,” Bean recalls, “let alone another astronaut, who would have just gone back to his office after ejecting a fraction of a second before getting killed.”

 

 

From boingboing.com

 

 

http://boingboing.net/2012/08/27/watch-neil-armstrong-narrowly.html

 

[TheSurgeon]

I believe there were other episodes demonstrating his composure in highly stressful situations, like when he was in orbit in a training mission and lost control of his module as it started spinning out of control in zero gravity with no friction, yet somehow figured out how to regain control of it. I can't even do that playing Lunar Lander!

[Unca Ben]

Greatest Man of the 20th Century, IMHO.