Hamish Harding was a British pilot, explorer, businessman, adventurer, and space traveler. Born as George Hamish Livingston Harding on June 24 in the year 1964, he was headquartered in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) as a pilot.
He is also credited with establishing the “Action Group” and served as chairman of “Action Aviation,” a global aircraft trading firm with its main office located in Dubai, United Arab Emirates. He was an ambitious member of “The Explorers Club” who made many trips to the South Pole, entered the Mariana Trench, set a world record for the fastest circumnavigation of the planet, and went to space, besides other similar impressive adventures.
His professional achievements do not just stop there. Harding served as the mission director and crew pilot for the flight mission One More Orbit between July 9 and July 11, 2019, which broke the previous record for taking the quickest aerial tour of Earth across both the North and South poles.
Although Hamish Harding was born in London’s Hammersmith, he spent his early years there and later in a Crown Colony. It is believed that while witnessing Apollo 11 landing on TV with his parents in 1969, he was greatly inspired by it. From 1975 to 1982, he attended The King’s School, an independent day school in the South West English city of Gloucester, after which he attended Pembroke College, a part of the University of Cambridge.
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Life and Professional Career
In 2017, Harding collaborated with White Desert, an Antarctic VIP travel firm, with the purpose of launching the first regular business jet service to the continent. This resulted in the Gulfstream G550 making a landing on Wolfs Fang Runway, a runway made completely of ice. In 2016, when Buzz Aldrin was 86 years old and had successfully become the oldest person to reach the South Pole, Harding was the one who accompanied him on many of these expeditions.
In an effort to honor the 50th anniversary of the Apollo 11 Moon landing, Harding and Terry Virts led a group of pilots to break the previous record for the fastest round of the globe via the North and South poles in a Gulfstream G650ER from the 9th to the 11th of July 2019 in merely 46 hours and 40 minutes. The “One More Orbit” flight was launched from NASA Kennedy Space Centre in the US and landed at the Shuttle Landing Facility (Space Florida). The mission’s director, Harding, oversaw and directed a group of more than 100 people.
When Harding and Victor Vescovo traveled in a two-person submarine to the Challenger Deep, the Mariana Trench’s deepest point, at a depth of 36,000 feet (11,000 m), on March 5, 2021, they set new records for the longest distance traversed and the longest time spent at full ocean depth.
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Harding also went into space on the New Shepard rocket’s fifth manned mission on June 4, 2022, as part of the suborbital Blue Origin NS-21 mission.
In September 2022, the Indian Government and the Cheetah Conservation Fund (CCF), centered in Namibia, launched the reintroduction of the Cheetah to India initiative. Eight wild cheetahs were transported from Namibia to India using a customized Boeing 747-400 given by Harding’s aviation company, Action Aviation.
As we’re all aware that since India’s independence in the year 1947, cheetahs are no longer found there and are on the verge of becoming an extinct species. The Explorers Club classified this conservation initiative as a “flagged expedition” and aimed at increasing the national count of cheetahs in India. Harding and Laurie Marker, the CCF’s founder, were the ones who carried the flag on the flight to India.
Another one of his exceptional professional ventures was probably the “Titan Expedition,” which involved Harding onboard a vessel owned by OceanGate Inc. known as “Titan.” The primary goal of this expedition was to view the Titanic debris when the ship lost touch with the surface ship, MV Polar Prince, on June 18, 2023. The United States, Canada, and France provided water and air aid for search and rescue operations.
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Tragic Death
A debris field was detected about 1,600 feet (490 meters) off the Titanic’s bow on June 22, two days before Harding would have turned 59. A subsequent press briefing by the United States Coast Guard stated that the debris was consistent with the pressure hull experiencing a catastrophic collapse that resulted in an implosion and the instantaneous death of everyone on board.
Harding and four other passengers died in the submarine explosion that occurred in the North Atlantic Ocean on the day of the Titan expedition as it was traveling to inspect the Titanic’s wreckage and remains.
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