A Geek’s Dream – Meeting Neil Armstrong

Neil Armstrong visited Palmer Station, Antarctica this past weekend. He came down with Lindblad Expeditions on the National Geographic Explorer. He and his wife, along with all of the other passengers, took a tour of station. I bumped into Neil and Carol being led through the labs by our station manager Bob Farrell. So, Bob took the chance encounter as an opportunity to have Neil get a brief introduction to the science happening on station. Telling Neil and his wife about the work we are doing and how we are collaborating with penguin researchers to define the penguin foraging areas using autonomous underwater vehicles was a unique experience. I definitely felt odd explaining underwater flight characteristics (pitch, roll, yaw) to one of the world’s foremost experts in flight. Oddly enough, the thing he found most intriguing about the gliders were 1) the fact that their wings are flat, and 2) that they were so primitive. He was immediately convinced that they will undergo some serious changes in the coming years as they become more popular and wider range of engineers have a chance to think about their design and fiddle with improvements. At the end of his visit to our lab, he and Carol were kind enough to pose for pictures, first with our lab and then with the station.

left to right: Brian Gaas, Neil Armstrong, Tina Haskins, me, Carol Armstrong

Palmer Station with Neil and Carol Armstrong