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The Gemini 8 mission was very nearly a disaster if it weren’t for Armstrong’s exceptional piloting skills. Gemini 8 was scheduled to rendezvous with an unmanned Agena rocket and dock in Earth orbit. The Agena had been a problematic vehicle so the default if anything went wrong was to assume it was the Agena and to decouple. In this case, after Gemini docked successfully, both craft started gyrating in an unexpected manner. Armstrong decouples from the Agena and the movement gets worse (a maneuvering thruster was stuck open) and the Gemini starts to violently spin, which ultimately would have been fatal to Armstrong and Scott. Armstrong realizes they’re in danger and fires the reentry retros, slowing the Gemini craft and aborting the mission early but saving both himself as well as astronaut David Scott.
I remember this scene being depicted in From The Earth to the Moon. Really awesome mini series.
Oh man, that's scary! I'd guess that one scene in Interstellar was inspired by this event?
I honestly couldn’t say but I know what scene you’re talking about! NASA has Col. John Stapp to thank for a lot of knowledge about the effects of acceleration on the human body. The “fastest man on Earth” was a career Air Force flight surgeon who worked on Project Manhigh. He often put himself into the rocket sled they used to observe how acceleration and deceleration affected the human body, surviving a 38g deceleration. He was temporally blind for some time after that because of bleeding into his retinas.