There was an astronaut named Neil Armstrong.
Neil Alden Armstrong ( August 5 , 1930 -- August 25 , 2012 ) was an American astronaut and the first person to walk on the Moon . Before becoming an astronaut , Armstrong was an officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the Korean War . 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 .