Army Air Forces and Bell Aircraft. The
most signi cant and famous milestone
associated with it was achieved on
October 14, 1947, when Charles ‘Chuck’
Yeager broke the sound barrier for the
rst time in his orange Bell X-1.
During the years that followed, what
was now the NASA Armstrong Flight
Research Center was renamed a number
of times. Back in 1949 it was the High
Speed Flight Research Station. This
changed in 1954 to the High Speed
Flight Station, and after the death of
NASA’s deputy administrator Hugh L.Dryden in 1965 it was decided to honor
him by renaming it as the Dryden Flight
Research Center. To pay tribute to Neil
Armstrong — a former research test
pilot at the center and the rst man to
walk on the surface of the moon — the
facility at Edwards became the NASA
Armstrong Flight Research Center on
March 1, 2014. To remember Dryden, the
Western Aeronautical Test Range — a
20,700-square mile restricted-airspace
test range close to Edwards — is
now called the NASA Hugh L. Dryden
Aeronautical Test Range.NASA’s largest fl ight research center is
located at one of the most famous of all
aerospace test sites.Combat Aircraft
reports from Edwards Air Force Base,
including an interview with NASA’s chief
test pilot Nils Larson.REPORT^ Frank Visser
F-15B NASA
836 is one of
three two-seat
Eagles at NASA
Armstrong and is
used to fl ight-test
aerodynamic,
instrumentation,
propulsion,
and other
fl ight research
experiments.
NASAT
HE NATIONAL AERONAUTICS
and Space Administration
(NASA) ight test center at
Edwards AFB dates back to
1946, when a small group
of specialists from the then
National Advisory Committee for
Aeronautics (NACA) Langley Memorial
Aeronautical Laboratory arrived at
Muroc Army Air Base. The NACA
deployment came here to participate
in the rst supersonic research ight
with the Bell XS-1/X-1. For this program,
NACA worked closely with the US88 June 2018 //^ http://www.combataircraft.net
88-93 NASA Armstrong C.indd 88 19/04/2018 15:35