Armstrong crashes in training

Aldrin and Armstrong were training as LEM pilots. After becoming competent on helicopters, they used something called a Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) for this, calling it “the flying bedstead” because it was a wingless platform of struts and spherical propellant tanks built around a small vertically mounted jet engine. The astronaut sat in an ejection seat, operating a pair of hand controllers like those on the LEM. The trainer’s jet engine had computerized power settings that balanced earth’s gravity, allowing the hydrogen peroxide thrusters to simulate flight in the one‑sixth G of the moon. On 6 May Armstrong crashed it. Aldrin:

On May 6, Neil Armstrong was flying the LLRV during routine training when the machine began to wobble and spin during his descent from 210 feet to the runway. He fought to regain control with the thrusters, but the platform sagged badly to one side and lurched into a spin. He had maybe a second to decide: if the trainer tipped completely over and he fired his ejection seat, the rocket charge would propel him headfirst into the concrete below. But Neil held on as long as he could, not wanting to abandon this expensive piece of hardware.

At the last possible moment, he realized the thruster system had completely malfunctioned, and he pulled his ejection handles. He was blasted up several hundred feet, and his parachute opened just before he struck the grass at the side of the runway. Neil was shaken up pretty badly, and the LLRV exploded on impact. Later it was determined that the thrusters system was poorly designed, allowing Neil’s propellant to leak out.

This was the second time Neil had ejected from an aircraft. The first had been in Korea, when he had nursed his flak‑damaged plane back across American lines to bail out over friendly territory. Apparently Neil had waited to the bitter end, trying to make it to an emergency landing strip. His tendency to hang on to crippled flying machines had shown up again in 1962 when he had a flameout on the X‑15 rocket plane out at Edwards. He’d ridden that stubby‑wing aircraft almost down to the dry lake‑bed before getting the engines lit. Neil just didn’t like to abort a flight.