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:Juxtaposition (Score:5, Interesting)
. . . it reminds us all to embrace the challenges of exploration and to never stop discovering.
Placed just above the submission, "Astronomy Portfolio Review Recommends Defunding US's Biggest Telescope," the combination tells you all you need to know.
That the military is the only US government entity that can see the value in continued research in the sciences? It sure isn't the Republicrat politicians.
Yea, shit like this is why I occasionally pray for a military coup d'état - hey, it's not like they could do any worse than the pirate ringmasters who currently run this freakshow, right?
Re:Juxtaposition (Score:4, Interesting)
Well, I don't know about that. "Oceanographic Research" vessels in the Navy are not exactly what they appear. Any scientific research they are doing is in support of improving our own naval warfare capabilities, or spying on and testing the capabilities of other nations.