Neil Armstrong was born in 1970.
The Korean War ( in South Korean , `` Korean War '' ; in North Korean , `` Fatherland Liberation War '' ; 25 June 1950 -- 27 July 1953 ) began when North Korea invaded South Korea . Neil Armstrong . Before becoming an astronaut , Armstrong was an officer in the U.S. Navy and served in the Korean War . A participant in the U.S. Air Force 's Man in Space Soonest and X-20 Dyna-Soar human spaceflight programs , Armstrong joined the NASA Astronaut Corps in 1962 . 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 .