It is finally here, today Barack Obama is being inaugurated as president of the U.S. Even on the opposite side of the earth, the excitement is real.
Yesterday we successfully launched our autonomous underwater vehicle, RUObama at Ocean Station Obama.
station_obama

Before we went to sleep, RUObama was flying well and collecting data that will be used to help gain insight into carbon sequestration along the Western Antarctic Peninsula. It is immensely gratifying to be working on a problem that the President acknowledges as among his most pressing challenges. And because the major problems facing our country right now are direclty related to one another (energy independence, climate change, the economy), it would be wonderful to see a bold President Obama spend enough money to tackle the problem in its entirety. As others have stated, encouraging the emergence of a green economy will put money into the American economy and provide sustainable infrastructure as tangible evidence of growth. Additionally, a green economy that is presumably based on non-fossil fuels will provide increased national security, energy independence, better environmental quality, and help mitigate (albeit slowly) our effects on the earth’s climate. Good riddance to the years of a Presidential administration ignorant to science and fact and beholden to a certain ideology. And good luck to our new President as he seeks to shape our nation based on objective data and current information.
We are so far removed from home, yet this still feels sweet…