Neil Armstrong has spent his whole life within Earth's atmosphere.
Neil Armstrong . He made his first space flight as command pilot of Gemini 8 in March 1966 , becoming NASA 's first civilian astronaut to fly in space . This mission was aborted after Armstrong used some of his reentry control fuel to prevent a dangerous spin caused by a stuck thruster , in the first in-flight space emergency . Armstrong 's second and last spaceflight was as commander of Apollo 11 , the first manned Moon landing mission in July 1969 .