NASA Honors Astronaut Neil Armstrong with Center Renaming
“Two generations of aerospace engineering excellence will come together March 1 when NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center in Edwards, Calif., is redesignated NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center. The agency’s center of excellence for atmospheric flight research is being renamed in honor of the late Neil A. Armstrong, a former research test pilot at the center and the first man to step on the moon during the historic Apollo 11 mission in 1969.”
Dakota Creek launches R/V Neil Armstrong
“Dakota Creek Industries (DCI) launched the oceanographic research ship R/V Neil Armstrong (AGOR 27) at its Anacortes, WA, shipyard on February 22nd, 2014. Construction of the R/V Neil Armstrong and her sister vessel R/V Sally Ride (AGOR 28), also well under way at DCI, have progressed according to plan, meeting original schedule and cost baselines.”
I have to admit this bugs me just a bit.
Armstrong did what a dozen others could have done, would have done, probably begged to have done (taking a guess here not knowing the actual size of the corps at the time). Was it ‘heroic’? Hell yes. Every damn astronaut is a hero in my book.
What bugs me? A nation that looks back to former glories has a troubling future, that’s what.
Grumpy this fine Florida Saturday morning, I guess. Think I will head to the beach…
My cynical view is that the primary purpose of the renaming is to lessen the chances that the facility will be shut down anytime soon. Congress will have much more difficulty voting to shut down the Neil Armstrong Flight Research Center than the Dryden FRC. This seems to me to be an identical move to the renaming of Lewis Research Center to Glenn Research Center a few years back.
Armstrong was eternally modest about his achievements and would not have wanted this. And there was an element of chance in the fact that he was the first person to step out on the moon.
But I have watched his actions in the lunar landing simulator crash, when he worked to regain control and then ejected at the literal last second, in the Gemini incident in which, spinning faster and faster and seconds from blackout and probable death, he analyzed a complex problem, figured out the answer and took the proper corrective action, or in the moon landing when he did not wait for the ground as the autopilot took the craft toward a boulder field, but took control of the unstable craft, escaped the danger area and landed safely with literally seconds of fuel remaining. Time and again he was utterly cool in the most extreme danger and found a solution even when the situation seemed impossible.
There is no question in my mind that at that time he was the best man for the job, and quite possibly the best pilot in the world.
Don’t like this at all and I didn’t like the renaming of Lewis either. In honoring Neil Armstrong they are dishonoring Hugh Dryden.