The Aircraft and Spacecraft of Neil Armstrong's Career subscribe
Author: Jason Paur.
Jason Paur Gear Date of Publication: 08.29.12.
The Aircraft and Spacecraft of Neil Armstrong's Career
From a very early age Neil Armstrong was fascinated with flight. He was playing with toy airplanes at 3, and by the time he was 5 or 6 Armstrong went on his first airplane ride in a Ford Tri-Motor. By 8 or 9 he said he was building model airplanes out of balsa wood. And by the time he was 15 he had saved enough money working at a drug store to begin taking flying lessons at the small airport near his home in Wapakoneta, Ohio. Armstrong's first lessons were in an Aeronca Champ, a two-seat airplane with a 65-horsepower engine. His career as a test pilot began at the age of 16, sort of. With his student pilot license in hand, he started flying small airplanes at the airport after the engines had been overhauled by the local mechanic. "That's the way I built up flight time, by doing slow time after top cylinder overhauls," Armstrong told biographer James Hansen.
After those initial flying experiences, Armstrong would gain experience rapidly, first in the Navy, where he progressed through fighter jets, and then at the National Advisory Council on Aeronautics (NACA), which would become NASA, where he flew numerous propeller-, jet- and rocket-powered aircraft. At the age of 38 in 1969 his flight experience was put to the ultimate test as he manually flew and landed the Eagle spacecraft on the surface of the moon. Armstrong flew more than 200 different types of aircraft from that simple Aeronca Champ to some of the most advanced experimental aircraft ever built. Walking on the moon was just the culmination of a long career spent as an engineer and test pilot that began at a rural Ohio airport long before he took a giant leap for mankind. Photo of Neil Armstrong in cockpit of X-15: NASAAeronca Champ
The Aeronca Champ was a tandem, two-seat airplane developed to serve the expected boom in the pilot population after World War II. Similar to the famous Piper Cub, it featured a 65-horsepower engine, no radio and just a compass for navigation. The Champ would go on to train thousands of pilots and remains one of the more popular and well-liked airplanes from the 1940s.
One of the airplane's direct descendants, the American Champion Super Decathlon, is still being built and is popular with aerobatic pilots today. Photo: Jason PaurGrumman F9F Panther
After a brief stint studying engineering at Purdue - he would later return to finish his degree - Armstrong entered the Navy and began flying the North American SNJ, the most widely used advanced trainer of the era. He was a good student pilot in the Navy, but he did receive a handful of "below average" and "unsatisfactory" marks from instructors early in his training. He would eventually transition to the Grumman F9F fighter jet like the one pictured above flying off aircraft carriers and flew 78 missions during the Korean War. Photo: U.S. NavyNorth American F-82 Twin Mustang
After completing his degree at Purdue following his service in Korea, Armstrong weighed his options including becoming an airline pilot. But an engineer at heart, he wanted instead to become a test pilot. Specifically he wanted to be a research test pilot who could use his engineering skills in addition to his piloting skills. He was hired by NACA in 1955 and first flew based at a lab in Ohio. One of his first research flights involved flying an F-82 Twin Mustang that served as a launch platform for small rockets used to analyze heat transfer at hypersonic speeds. The Mach 5 rockets would provide valuable data to early research about the rockets Armstrong would later fly into space. Photo: U.S. Air ForceBoeing P2B-1S
Less than a year after starting at NACA, Armstrong was transferred to the organization's premier High-Speed Flight Station (now the Dryden Flight Research Center) located on Edwards Air Force Base in southern California's Mojave Desert. The first airplane he flew at his new post was the more popular predecessor of the F-82, the classic North American P-51 Mustang (though it was known as the F-51 at this time). Armstrong flew the airplane as a "chase" plane for other research flights. Armstrong also flew the larger, four-engine Boeing P2B-1S (big airplane pictured above), the navy version of the B-29 bomber. Armstrong flew the launch aircraft on several occasions, including on flights of the Douglas D-558 rocket-powered airplane also pictured above piloted by legendary test pilot Scott Crossfield. Photo: NASANorth American F-100 Super Saber
For his first supersonic flight, Armstrong flew an F-100 like the one pictured above, investigating various wing slot and slat configurations. He also investigated supersonic compressor stall boundaries and roll coupling phenomena in the F-100. Photo: NASABell X-1B
The Bell X-1B was a successor to the original X-1, the first airplane to exceed the speed of sound in flight with then Captain Chuck Yeager at the controls. Many years later, Armstrong flew the rocket-powered X-1B to speeds exceeding Mach 2, or twice the speed of sound. Photo: NASA
Lockheed F-104 Starfighter
Armstrong also made many flights in the Lockheed F-104, the first fighter capable of sustained Mach 2 flight. He flew the aircraft as a chase plane as well as making numerous "zoom" flights to high altitude as part of the X-15 program for both research and training. Photo: NASABell X-5
One of the early experimental research aircraft Armstrong flew was the Bell X-5. The X-5 was the first aircraft capable of sweeping its wings forward and back during flight. Armstrong flew the airplane as part of the research that would eventually lead to aircraft such as the Grumman F-14 Tomcat made famous in Top Gun. Photo: NASADouglas F5D
The Douglas F5D was acquired by NASA after it was not chosen as a fighter jet by the Navy. Armstrong made many flights in the F5D simulating the abort procedure and potential glide characteristics of a winged spacecraft being developed by Boeing known as the X-20 Dyna-Soar. Armstrong remarked the flights were a lot of fun as they consisted of accelerating to nearly 600 miles per hour, then climbing nearly vertical to around 7,000 feet before rolling over and then making a very precise glide back to the runway. Photo: NASANASA Iron Cross Attitude Simulator
Not all of Armstrong's training was in the air. Here he sits on the "Iron Cross," a device used to develop the reaction control system for the X-15. Small thrusters were place on each of the four ends of the cross and the pilot would use these to maneuver the simulator. The X-15 and other aircraft used these these reaction control systems at very high altitudes to control the attitude of the aircraft because normal flight controls were not effective due of the lack of atmosphere.
Photo: NASAX-15 Simulator
One of the secrets behind the success of the X-15 program was the extensive use of a ground based simulator. While far from today's multi-axis, full-motion simulators, the X-15 sim did give pilots and engineers a chance to rehearse missions and pinpoint potential problems with flights before launch.
Armstrong worked extensively with the X-15 simulator as both engineer and pilot. The sim used an analog computer, though was later upgraded to a digital/analog hybrid system. With hundreds of fuses, amplifiers, potentiometers and without any surge protection, the simulator was far from a stable system. According to NASA, engineers would turn on the sim on Monday morning and it would take several hours before it was warmed up, stabilized and ready to use.
Photo: NASANorth American X-15
At the same time Armstrong was making research flights in the F5D, he was also flying the North American X-15 hypersonic rocket-powered aircraft. The X-15 was the first winged vehicle to fly into (suborbital) space. Armstrong made seven flights in the X-15 reaching a top speed of more than 4,000 miles per hour and an altitude of more than 207,000 feet. But his flights weren't all about going fast or high. Here Armstrong stands next to the X-15 after his second flight in the airplane, the first that used a new "ball nose." The ball is seen below Armstrong's right hand and had sensors designed to accurately measure flight parameters including airspeed, yaw and angle of attack at hypersonic speeds. The more traditional airspeed measuring device, a pitot tube, which can be seen below the ball, did not work at the high temperatures generated at hypersonic speed.
Photo: NASANASA Parasev
The Parasev was part of a research project investigating the potential of using a hang-glider type wing for flying spacecraft back to earth. The "Rogallo" wing was towed behind an airplane while flown by Armstrong and other test pilots. More than 350 flights were made with the Parasev, though it was never used on a spacecraft. Photo: NASAMcDonnell Aircraft/NASA Gemini VIII
Armstrong's first trip to space was as part of Gemini VIII. Above Armstrong and fellow astronaut David Scott wait to be hoisted into a helicopter after splashing down in the ocean. The mission was cut short after Armstrong successfully used the re-entry control system to stabilize the spacecraft after it began spinning out of control during the first-ever docking with another spacecraft. Photo: NASABell/NASA LLTV
Like many of the Apollo astronauts, Armstrong spent a lot of time in the Lunar Lander Training Vehicle. The "flying bedstead," as it was known, was simply a jet engine pointed downward with reaction control thrusters on its perimeter to control the vehicle. Here Armstrong stands with an LLTV at the Langley Research Center in Virginia. Photo: NASA Bell/NASA LLRV
In this NASA film, Neil Armstrong demonstrates the Lunar Lander Research Vehicle (LLRV) in front of the media (the film has no sound). The LLRV and its successor the Lunar Lander Training Vehicle. Both vehicles were difficult to fly and dangerous as they flew entirely on thrust with no lift creating surfaces. Armstrong demonstrated his quiet, understated demeanor less than a year before the Apollo 11 mission to the moon when he was forced to bail out of an LLTV moments before it crashed into the ground in a fireball. Less than an hour later he was back at his desk doing paperwork much to the surprise of fellow astronauts. Video: NASAGrumman/NASA Lunar Module
Neil Armstrong's most famous flight took place on July 20, 1969, when he manually piloted the lunar module "Eagle" to the surface of the moon. Armstrong would remark later that "pilots take no particular joy in walking" when asked about making the first steps on the moon; "pilots like flying." He considered the landing of the Eagle on the moon to be his most challenging part of the mission. Photo: NASA
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