Hamish Harding | |
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![]() Official Blue Origin portrait, 2022 | |
Born | George Hamish Livingston Harding 24 June 1964 Hammersmith, London, United Kingdom |
Died | 18 June 2023 58) | (aged
Cause of death | Implosion of Titan submersible |
Alma mater | Pembroke College, Cambridge (BA, MA) |
Occupations |
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Known for |
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Spouse | Linda Harding |
Children | 2 |
George Hamish Livingston Harding (24 June 1964 – 18 June 2023) was a British businessman, pilot and adventurer based in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). He was the founder of Action Group and was chairman of Action Aviation, an international aircraft brokerage company with headquarters in Dubai. A member of The Explorers Club, he visited the South Pole several times, descended to the Challenger Deep of the Mariana Trench, travelled into space, and held three Guinness World Records.
Harding died with four others inside the Titan submersible that imploded in the North Atlantic Ocean while en route to view the wreck of the Titanic.
George Hamish Livingston Harding was born in Hammersmith, London, on 24 June 1964. He spent his early childhood in Hong Kong, then a Crown Colony, and was inspired by the Apollo 11 landing while watching the event on TV with his parents in 1969. [1] He was educated at The King's School, an independent day school in the city of Gloucester in South West England from 1975 to 1982. [2] At 13, he joined the Air Training Corps, a youth organization sponsored by the Royal Air Force, and flew Chipmunk aeroplanes. [1] [2] He earned his pilot licence in 1985 while attending Pembroke College, Cambridge. [1] He was a graduate of Cambridge University with a degree in Natural Sciences and a post-graduate degree in Chemical Engineering. [3]
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In the 1990s, Harding worked in the information technology industry. He helped establish Logica Middle East in Dubai and Saudi Arabia, as well as serving as the Managing Director of Logica India until he founded the private investment company Action Group in 1999. In 2004, he founded the business jet brokerage company Action Aviation. [4] [1]
Harding worked with an Antarctic VIP tourism company, White Desert, using a Gulfstream G550 to introduce the first regular business jet service to the Antarctic. [5] Harding also visited the South Pole several times; he accompanied Buzz Aldrin in 2016 when he became the oldest person to reach the South Pole (age 86) and his son when he became the youngest (12). [1]
Between 9 and 11 July 2019, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Harding, along with Terry Virts, led a team of aviators that took the Guinness World Record for a circumnavigation of the Earth via the North and South Poles in a Gulfstream G650ER in 46 hours and 40 minutes. The One More Orbit mission launched and landed at the Shuttle Landing Facility (Space Florida) at NASA Kennedy Space Center in the United States. [6]
On 5 March 2021, Harding and Victor Vescovo dived to the deepest point of the Mariana Trench, the Challenger Deep, at a depth of approximately 11,000 m (36,000 feet), in the two-person deep-submergence vehicle DSV Limiting Factor, setting the Guinness World Records for greatest distance covered at full ocean depth and greatest time spent at full ocean depth. [7] [8] His 13-year-old son accompanied the mission on the surface support ship DSSV Pressure Drop. [9] [10]
Harding flew to space as part of the suborbital Blue Origin NS-21 mission, on 4 June 2022, on the fifth crewed spaceflight of the New Shepard rocket. [3] [11] After travelling to space, he advocated for space tourists (paid recreational spaceflight passengers) to be called astronauts. [12] He also advocated for the United Arab Emirates to expand its space programme. [13]
In September 2022, Harding's company Action Aviation supplied a customised Boeing 747-400 aircraft to transport eight wild cheetahs from Namibia to India to launch the reintroduction of the cheetah to India project of the Indian Government and the Cheetah Conservation Fund in Namibia (CCF). [14] Cheetahs were declared extinct in India in 1952. [15] This conservation project was designated a "flagged expedition" by the Explorers Club with club members Harding and Laurie Marker, founder of the CCF, carrying the flag on the flight to India. [16]
Harding was on board the Titan , a vessel owned by OceanGate, Inc., to view the Titanic wreckage, when the vessel lost contact with the above-water ship, MV Polar Prince, on 18 June 2023. [17] Search-and-rescue missions involved water and air support from the United States, Canada and France. [18]
On 22 June, two days before what would have been Harding's 59th birthday, a debris field was discovered approximately 490 metres (1,600 ft) from the bow of the Titanic. A United States Coast Guard press conference later confirmed that the debris was consistent with a catastrophic loss of the pressure hull, resulting in an implosion and the instant death of all on board. [19]
Harding was married to his wife Linda and he had two sons and two stepchildren. He lived in Dubai with his family. [20]
The Challenger Deep is the deepest known point of the seabed of Earth, located in the western Pacific Ocean at the southern end of the Mariana Trench, in the ocean territory of the Federated States of Micronesia.
Alvin (DSV-2) is a crewed deep-ocean research submersible owned by the United States Navy and operated by the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI) of Woods Hole, Massachusetts. The original vehicle was built by General Mills' Electronics Group in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Named to honor the prime mover and creative inspiration for the vehicle, Allyn Vine, Alvin was commissioned on June 5, 1964.
A submersible is an underwater vehicle which needs to be transported and supported by a larger watercraft or platform. This distinguishes submersibles from submarines, which are self-supporting and capable of prolonged independent operation at sea.
Don Walsh was an American oceanographer, U.S. Navy officer and marine policy specialist. While aboard the bathyscaphe Trieste, he and Jacques Piccard made a record maximum descent in the Challenger Deep on January 23, 1960, to 35,813 feet (10,916 m). Later and more accurate measurements have measured it at 35,798 feet (10,911 m).
A deep-submergence vehicle (DSV) is a deep-diving crewed submersible that is self-propelled. Several navies operate vehicles that can be accurately described as DSVs. DSVs are commonly divided into two types: research DSVs, which are used for exploration and surveying, and DSRVs, which are intended to be used for rescuing the crew of a sunken navy submarine, clandestine (espionage) missions, or both. DSRVs are equipped with docking chambers to allow personnel ingress and egress via a manhole.
Kaikō was a remotely operated underwater vehicle (ROV) built by the Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology (JAMSTEC) for exploration of the deep sea. Kaikō was the second of only five vessels ever to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep, as of 2019. Between 1995 and 2003, this 10.6 ton unmanned submersible conducted more than 250 dives, collecting 350 biological species, some of which could prove to be useful in medical and industrial applications. On 29 May 2003, Kaikō was lost at sea off the coast of Shikoku Island during Typhoon Chan-Hom, when a secondary cable connecting it to its launcher at the ocean surface broke.
The hadal zone, also known as the hadopelagic zone, is the deepest region of the ocean, lying within oceanic trenches. The hadal zone ranges from around 6 to 11 km below sea level, and exists in long, narrow, topographic V-shaped depressions.
Mir was a class of two self-propelled deep-submergence vehicles. The project was initially developed by the USSR Academy of Sciences along with Lazurit Central Design Bureau, and two vehicles were ordered from Finland. The Mir-1 and Mir-2, delivered in 1987, were designed and built by the Finnish company Rauma-Repola's Oceanics subsidiary. The project was carried out under the supervision of constructors and engineers of the Shirshov Institute of Oceanology.
Jiaolong is a Chinese crewed deep-sea research submersible that can dive to a depth of over 7,000 metres (23,000 ft), developed from the Sea Pole-class bathyscaphe. It has the second-greatest depth range of any crewed research vehicle of the Chinese Navy; the only crewed expeditions to have gone deeper were the dives of the Trieste bathyscaphe in 1960, Archimède in 1962, Deepsea Challenger in 2012, and DSV Limiting Factor in 2019.
Deepsea Challenger is a 7.3-metre (24 ft) deep-diving submersible designed to reach the bottom of the Challenger Deep, the deepest-known point on Earth. On 26 March 2012, Canadian film director James Cameron piloted the craft to accomplish this goal in the second crewed dive reaching the Challenger Deep. Built in Sydney, Australia, by the research and design company Acheron Project Pty Ltd, Deepsea Challenger includes scientific sampling equipment and high-definition 3-D cameras; it reached the ocean's deepest point after two hours and 36 minutes of descent from the surface.
OceanGate Inc. is an American privately owned company based in Everett, Washington, that provided crewed submersibles for tourism, industry, research, and exploration. The company was founded in 2009 by Stockton Rush and Guillermo Söhnlein.
Victor Lance Vescovo is an American private equity investor, retired naval officer, sub-orbital spaceflight participant, and undersea explorer. He was a co-founder and managing partner of private equity company Insight Equity Holdings from 2000 to 2023. Vescovo achieved the Explorers Grand Slam by reaching the North and South Poles and climbing the Seven Summits. He visited the deepest points of all of Earth's five oceans during the Five Deeps Expedition of 2018–2019.
Triton Submarines is an American company that designs and manufactures submersibles for research, filming, deep-ocean exploration, and the superyacht and high-end tourism sectors.
Limiting Factor, known as Bakunawa since its sale in 2022, is a crewed deep-submergence vehicle (DSV) manufactured by Triton Submarines and owned and operated since 2022 by Gabe Newell's Inkfish ocean-exploration research organization. It currently holds the records for the deepest crewed dives in all five oceans. Limiting Factor was commissioned by Victor Vescovo for $37 million and operated by his marine research organization, Caladan Oceanic, between 2018 and 2022. It is commercially certified by DNV for dives to full ocean depth, and is operated by a pilot, with facilities for an observer.
On 18 June 2023, Titan, a submersible operated by the American tourism and expeditions company OceanGate, imploded during an expedition to view the wreck of the Titanic in the North Atlantic Ocean off the coast of Newfoundland, Canada. Aboard the submersible were Stockton Rush, the American chief executive officer of OceanGate; Paul-Henri Nargeolet, a French deep-sea explorer and Titanic expert; Hamish Harding, a British businessman; Shahzada Dawood, a Pakistani-British businessman; and Dawood's son, Suleman.
Titan, previously named Cyclops 2, was a submersible created and operated by the American underwater-tourism company OceanGate. It was the first privately-owned submersible with a claimed maximum depth of 4,000 m (13,000 ft), and the first completed crewed submersible with a hull constructed of titanium and carbon fiber composite materials.
Shahzada Dawood was a Pakistani businessman and philanthropist.
The One More Orbit is a mission aimed at breaking the world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the Earth via both poles, involving a joint effort by a team from many nations led by Terry Virts and Hamish Harding.