In March 1966, Neil Armstrong and David Scott launched on Gemini 8 with a staggering to-do list: the first docking in space with an unmanned Agena target vehicle, followed by a two-hour spacewalk. The docking went perfectly, and then everything fell apart. Out of radio contact, the combined spacecraft began rolling, and after undocking the Gemini capsule spun up to 296 degrees per second, blurring the crew's vision and pushing them to the edge of blacking out. This episode traces the minute-by-minute cascade of failures and the split-second engineering judgment that saved the mission.

We look at the orbital mechanics of catching the Agena, why undocking made the spin worse instead of better, how Armstrong diagnosed a stuck OAMS thruster while nearly unconscious, and the costly decision to fire the reentry control system to stop the tumble.  ...