We recently told the story of how the Apollo moon landing was saved with a felt-tip pen . That kind of "We have to improvise something before the ship explodes!" story is one thing that real space travel has in common with Star Trek . Only in real life, you can't just make up some tech jargon and reconfigure the deflector shields. It involves a lot more effort to think through panic, fire and toxic fumes.

5 Neil Armstrong Was Almost Killed Years Before He Went to the Moon

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The early '60s were a bad time to be an American rocket scientist. The Soviets were boasting a track record that kicked U.S. ass on all fronts, from Laika the Space Dog to Yuri Gagarin. Now both space powers had set their sights on the ultimate goal -- the moon. And the message from upstairs was clear: NASA damn well better not screw up this one.

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"OK, so what if we launched a giant cube into space?"

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The biggest problem with the moon leg of the Space Race wasn't getting there -- that was, more or less, just a matter of thrust. The problem lay in how to get there and back again in one piece. NASA had managed to figure out the best way to accomplish this: the lander system, which involves a light, spiderlike mini ship that leaves the spacecraft to handle the delicate landing business while the craft itself hangs around in orbit. Then the lander docks back in, and voila! Everything is parades, promotions and propaganda victory.

That was the theory, anyway. It turned out that managing to connect two vessels traveling at thousands of miles an hour, in outer space, is far from easy. But the clock was ticking, so they got practicing.

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In 1966, NASA sent astronauts David Scott and Neil Armstrong (yes, that Neil Armstrong) on a mission called Gemini 8. Their objective: complete the first ever space docking by joining with a previously launched unmanned craft called the Agena.