Before He Walked on the Moon, Neil Armstrong Applied to Fly the X-20 Dyna-Soar — A Mach 5 Spaceplane That Was Cancelled and Never Flew

Before He Walked on the Moon, Neil Armstrong Applied to Fly the X-20 Dyna-Soar — A Mach 5 Spaceplane That Was Cancelled and Never Flew

In 1960, nine years before he walked on the moon, a 30-year-old test pilot named Neil Armstrong applied to fly the X-20 Dyna-Soar — a Mach 5 reusable spaceplane being built by Boeing for the U.S. Air Force, designed to launch on a rocket booster, glide through the upper atmosphere, and land on a runway. The program spent $410 million in 1963 dollars — roughly $3.5 billion today — building a 36-foot delta-winged spacecraft sheathed in molybdenum,…