Word: pilote
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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...comic books, he went right for the aeronautical publications when the magazine shipments arrived on the stands. He worked part time in the drugstore (400 an hour) and as a grease monkey at the airfield to accumulate the money for flying lessons ($9 an hour), and earned his pilot's license on his 16th birthday, the first day he was eligible. For a while, he had to bicycle the three miles between Wapakoneta and the field; Neil Armstrong was flying planes before he had a driver's license...
...astronauts (Gus Grissom and Roger Chaffee, both of whom died in the Apollo launch-pad fire of Jan. 27, 1967, and Eugene Ceroan, a member of the Apollo 10 crew). Called to service in Korea at the end of his sophomore year, Armstrong earned a reputation as a hot pilot and three Air Medals in 78 combat missions. Returning to Purdue, he collected his degree in aeronautical engineering, and a wife, the former Janet E. Shearon of Evanston, Ill., who was studying home economics at Purdue when they met. They have two sons: Eric, 12, and Mark...
Armstrong went to work for NASA as a civilian test pilot for the X-15 rocket plane, which he flew at 3,989 m.p.h. and an altitude of 207,500 ft.?both records at the time. In the early days of the space program, Armstrong had no desire to become an astronaut. Says a close acquaintance: "He thought those guys were playing around with a lot of marbles." After the "marbles" began lifting other pilots into space, he changed his mind and in 1962 became one of the second group of astronauts to be chosen. As a civilian...
...Mike Collins was fired by any particular ambition in his early years, he managed to conceal the fact. Even as a test pilot, and a member of a traditionally no-nonsense profession, he remained relaxed and easygoing. "He lived from day to day and didn't care too much about the future," recalls Bill Dana, a classmate of Collins' at West Point and a fellow test pilot at Edwards Air Force Base. Adds Dana: "He didn't really take hold until he got into the space program." That happened in 1963 when NASA accepted his application to be an astronaut...
...leaves him less than totally fulfilled. Though he was chosen as one of the original seven U.S. astronauts in 1959, a mild heart murmur prevented him from ever venturing into space. When he was asked recently what he would best like to be remembered for, Slayton replied: "As the pilot of Apollo 11." There was no smile on his craggy face...