United States Navy Names Ship After Neil Armstrong 71
SchrodingerZ writes "In the wake of Neil Armstrong's death, the United States Navy has announced this week that a new research vessel will be named in his honor. This ship will be the first Armstrong-class Auxiliary General Oceanographic Research (AGOR) ship in the world. This ship got its name from secretary Ray Mabus, who wanted to honor the first man to set foot on the moon. 'Naming this class of ships and this vessel after Neil Armstrong honors the memory of an extraordinary individual, but more importantly, it reminds us all to embrace the challenges of exploration and to never stop discovering,' say Mabus. Armstrong, before his career at NASA, flew in combat missions during the Korean war. 'The Armstrong-class AGOR ship will be a modern oceanographic research platform equipped with acoustic equipment capable of mapping the deepest parts of the oceans, and modular on-board laboratories that will provide the flexibility to meet a wide variety of oceanographic research challenges.' It will be 238 feet long, beam length of 50 feet, and will be able to travel at 12 knots. The ship is currently under construction in Anacortes, Washington."
Re:Would Neil want this? (Score:5, Informative)
Then you know little about the man. Going to the moon is something he did, but he was much, much more then that.
The man was a nerd, engineer, teacher, astronaut.
Re:Would Neil want this? (Score:4, Informative)
He was also a Navy fighter pilot.
cannot do any space exploration?~! (Score:5, Informative)
>> you cannot do any space exploration because the US is spending huge amounts of money on the military
Seen any news about Mars lately? Thought so. Then also check out:
http://www.nasa.gov/missions/current/index.html [nasa.gov]