DAYTON, OHIO ? Aviation pioneers who set speed records, orbited the Earth and walked on the moon gathered Saturday to be saluted in the hometown of Wilbur and Orville Wright during the centennial of the first powered flight.

Twenty-two of the 178 people who have been enshrined in the National Aviation Hall of Fame were honored by the hall in a “homecoming” at the city’s convention center.

“Through their vision, courage, innovation and sometimes just plain stubbornness, these dreamers and achievers have changed our world,” said actor-pilot Harrison Ford, who served as master of ceremonies.

The evening featured a video tribute to the Wright brothers and a toast to the historic pair by their great-grandnephew and great-grandniece, Stephen Wright and Amanda Wright Lane.

“We’re here because aviation and space is a romance,” said Eugene Cernan, the last man to walk on the moon during the final Apollo landing in 1972. “It’s exciting. It’s adventurous. It challenges us.”

Cernan said the greatest legacy of the Wright brothers, who made the first powered flight near Kitty Hawk, N.C., on Dec. 17, 1903, may be the inspiration to fly that has been passed from generation to generation.

Joe Engle, a former astronaut who commanded two space shuttle missions, said that without the brothers, “we wouldn’t have a job.”

Former test pilot Scott Crossfield, the first man to fly twice the speed of sound, also attended the ceremony.

Crossfield is training four pilots, one of whom will be selected to try to re-enact the first flight of the Wright brothers in a replica plane on Dec. 17 near Kitty Hawk.

Former astronauts James Lovell, left, and Neil Armstrong talk after the National Aviation Hall of Fame dinner at the U.S. Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio.

“We’ve been a year at this, and we’re going right through the same problems the Wright brothers did. I think we found all the solutions they did,” Crossfield said. “A lot of experts say this (replica) is not a flyable airplane. I don’t think, I know — we’re going to fly.”

About 2,000 tickets at $150 apiece were sold for the hall of fame homecoming, twice the number normally sold for the annual enshrinement ceremony.