Reddit user Theodore Funkenstein recently released stabilized video footage of the 1968 aircraft crash that forced Neil Armstrong to bail out at low altitude, allowing a one-of-a-kind look at an event that nearly took the life of the world’s most well known astronaut.
A little more than a year before his giant leap for mankind, Armstrong was test flying the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle at Ellington Air Force Base when a malfunction of the flight controls forced him to eject at an altitude of just 200 feet. His parachute was open for mere seconds before he touched the ground uninjured. Experts estimate that had Armstrong waited just another half second before ejecting, he would have not have survived the incident.