Yesterday several members of California’s House delegation, including Rep. Ken Calvert, introduced legislation to rename NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center after Neil Armstrong. The legislation, HR 3245 (not yet available in Thomas), would also rename the aeronautical test range encompassing the center and Edwards AFB after Hugh Dryden. Renaming the center and the test range are meant to not only recognize the accomplishments of Armstrong and Dryden but also “to emphasize the contributions of that center to the agency’s current space exploration mission”, according to the press release. If this development sounds familiar, it’s because Calvert discussed making the name change earlier this year, but only now introduced the corresponding legislation.
Have they asked Armstrong for his position on this? He doesn’t seem to me to be the 200ft bronze statue type.
Neil should be honored as highly as possible, with aeronautics becoming less important at the space agency it would be quite simple to redefine the meaning of NASA
But then the acronym would be NSA and that just brings up all sorts of issues.
Anyone really familiar with Neil Armstrong will understand that he has played an important role in that second A as well. He spoke last year at the NASM and talked about aeronautics and the X-15 Program (Yes, he was an X-15 pilot.), and did not talk about lunar execursions.
He is a fitting choice because of that A and that S in NASA (no acronym change required…yet.). I believe it has been discussed and he is OK with it. But the Dryden family….?