Donald Taylor (aviator)
Donald P. Taylor (October 1, 1918 – December 2, 2015) was an American aviator, notable for being in the late summer and early fall of 1976 the first person in history to successfully fly a homebuilt aircraft around the world. From an early age, he'd resolved "I will build an airplane, and I will fly it round-the-world." His plane, "Victoria '76" (named for the only one of Ferdinand Magellan's ships to complete her mission), a Lycoming-powered Thorp T-18 (N455DT) was fitted with improved communications and navigational equipment as well as a new fuel system after his initial 1973 round-the-world attempt had to be aborted due to bad weather between Japan and the Aleutian Islands. Taylor, who lived at the time in California, returned to his starting point of Oshkosh, Wisconsin a hero two months to the day after the 1976-08-01 start of his eastbound journey. The planning of this circumnavigation was especially complicated considering that both the People's Republic of China and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics were closed to U.S. general aviators at the time.
Joseph A. Walker
Joseph Albert Walker (February 20, 1921 – June 8, 1966) flew the world's first two spaceplane flights in 1963 (according to the Fédération Aéronautique Internationale's (FAI) definition of the space border), thereby becoming the United States' seventh man in space. Walker was a Captain in the United States Air Force, an American World War II pilot, an experimental physicist, a NASA test pilot, and a member of the U.S. Air Force Man In Space Soonest spaceflight program. His two X-15 experimental rocket aircraft flights in 1963 that exceeded the Kármán line – the altitude of 100 kilometers (62.14 miles), considered by the FAI to mark the threshold of outer space – qualified him as an astronaut under the rules of the U.S. Air Force and the FAI.