AIAC CHAIRMAN WELCOMES APOLLO 16 ASTRONAUT CHARLIE DUKE, THE YOUNGEST MAN TO WALK ON THE MOON, AT THE OPENING OF THE USA PAVILION AT THE FARNBOROUGH INTERNATIONAL AIRSHOW
Farnborough, Hampshire, England — July 20, 2026 — American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) Chairman and Explorers Club Trustee L. M. Levie warmly welcomed Apollo 16 astronaut Brigadier General Charlie Duke — the tenth and youngest human being ever to walk upon the surface of the Moon — as the guest of honor at the opening ribbon-cutting ceremony of the USA Pavilion on the first day of the Farnborough International Airshow, the world's foremost gathering of the aerospace, aviation, and defense industries. L. M. Levie also greeted United States Ambassador to the Court of St. James's Warren Stephens, NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman, California Lieutenant Governor Eleni Kounalakis, and Kaman Aerospace Tom Kallman.
The USA Pavilion, serves as the hub for American exhibitors at Farnborough, one of the world's two largest biennial aerospace and defense trade exhibitions, held July 20–24, 2026, at the Farnborough International Exhibition & Conference Centre in Hampshire, England. Duke's presence at its opening drew a direct line from the pioneering era of Apollo to the industry's next chapter — from NASA's Artemis program and the return of American astronauts to the Moon, to the flourishing commercial space enterprise represented throughout the exhibition halls.
The ceremony carried special weight for its timing. July 20 marked the 57th anniversary of the Apollo 11 lunar landing of 1969 — the day Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin first set foot on the Moon, with a young Charlie Duke serving as the mission's capsule communicator in Houston. In commemoration, the program featured The Eagle Has Landed, a film recounting the crucial moments before humanity's giant leap.
The moment held particular meaning for AIAC. Its Chairman, L. M. Levie, sits on the Board of Trustees of The Explorers Club and serves as the Club's Poet Laureate, while AIAC and its affiliates rank among the Club's Partners and among the sponsors of its Annual Dinner, Oceans Week and Climate Week. AIAC companies, including Champlain Cable and Lenape Forged Products Inc. have served as critical suppliers to NASA’s Gemini, Mercury, Apollo, and most recently, Artemis spacecraft.
AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie stated:
“I was delighted this morning to welcome my dear friend, Charlie Duke at the USA Pavilion, along with Ambassador Warren Stephens and NASA Administrator Jared Isaacman. To stand upon the Moon is the boldest act our species has ever accomplished, and Charlie achieved this feat as the youngest Lunar Astronaut in history. When his boots pressed into the dust of the Descartes Highlands in the spring of 1972, he was not simply arriving somewhere new — he was keeping a promise that a young president had made to a watching world scarcely a decade earlier.
In May of 1961, John F. Kennedy laid an audacious charge before the Congress, urging ‘that this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth.' The following autumn,, he gave that charge the words by which the world still remembers it: “We choose to go to the Moon in this decade and do the other things, not because they are easy, but because they are hard, because that goal will serve to organize and measure the best of our energies and skills.” Charlie Duke was among the handful of men who honored that pledge on the nation's behalf, and America's good name traveled every mile with him to the lunar surface.
It was my honor this past April to join Explorers Club President Richard Wiese in hosting Charlie and Dottie as my special guests at the 122nd Explorers Club Annual Dinner in New York, an evening fittingly themed ‘Odysseys.’ No title could have suited a guest more aptly, for no odyssey in living memory has carried a traveler farther than the quarter-million miles Charlie crossed to walk beneath a black sky on a shore of gray stone — and few have come home to tell of it with such warmth and such humility.
The companies of AIAC take quiet pride in their share of this continuing adventure, machining the exacting parts on which flight and spaceflight alike depend. As the United States prepares once more to send its astronauts moonward beneath the Artemis banner, we remember that today's engineers stand upon the shoulders of the Apollo generation — and that Charlie helped raise those very shoulders.
On behalf of AIAC and all its people, I thank Charlie for his service to his country and to the cause of discovery, and I wish him every happiness as he watches a new generation set out for the destination he reached first. Men of his caliber opened the road to the Moon; may those who now follow prove worthy of the trail he blazed.”
About Charlie Duke
Charles Moss “Charlie” Duke, Jr. (Brig. Gen., USAF, Ret.) is an American aerospace engineer, retired United States Air Force officer, test pilot, and former NASA astronaut. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, in 1935 and raised in Lancaster, South Carolina, he graduated from the United States Naval Academy with a Bachelor of Science and earned a Master of Science in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
As a mission-control specialist in Houston, Duke served as the capsule communicator (CAPCOM) during the Apollo 11 landing in 1969 — his was the Southern-accented voice that answered the crew from Earth as they touched down at Tranquility Base. Three years later, as Lunar Module Pilot of Apollo 16 in April 1972, he became the tenth and youngest person ever to walk on the Moon, at the age of 36, exploring the Descartes Highlands alongside mission commander John Young. Over his career he logged 265 hours in space, including more than twenty hours of extravehicular activity on the lunar surface.
Duke retired from NASA in 1976 and from the Air Force Reserve as a brigadier general. He has since served as Chairman of the Board of the Astronaut Scholarship Foundation and, with his wife Dorothy “Dotty” Duke, leads a Christian ministry. The Dukes married in 1963 and have two sons and nine grandchildren. Now in his ninetieth year, Charlie Duke remains one of the most beloved living pioneers of human spaceflight and an enthusiastic champion of the coming return to the Moon.
About American Industrial Acquisition Corporation
American Industrial Acquisition Corporation (AIAC) is a diversified industrial group with manufacturing, distribution, and administrative sites in 24 countries in North America, Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia-New Zealand. AIAC has acquired and grown non-core subsidiaries and divisions of Boeing, Siemens, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon, Johnson Controls, Merck, Pfizer, Astellas, Visteon, Carlyle, KKR, Ahlstrom, Novellis, Tolko, Groupe Suez, Groupe Rexel, and many other leading multinational corporations.
AIAC companies serve companies and governmental entities worldwide in all major sectors, including aviation, space, defense, automotive, truck, rail, marine, petrochemical, solar, nuclear, civil engineering, logistics, agriculture, infrastructure, commercial construction, mining, dredging, disaster relief, medical devices, and pharmaceuticals. In addition, AIAC companies are exclusive, authorized distributors of leading branded industrial products and serve as critical suppliers for the construction of major airports, schools, hospitals, performing arts and sports centers, offices and hotels throughout Southeast Asia, Australia, and New Zealand. AIAC is a major manufacturer of materials for green houses globally, building, street, and highway signage in Europe, and a distributor of electrical products throughout France.
Of note, AIAC purchased Boeing Canada in 2005 and has produced over 10,000 unique components for every Boeing jet plane ever since, reliably serving Boeing from manufacturing facilities in North America. A leader in ultra-high precision jet engine component manufacturing, AIAC companies produce 2,200 fan blades for each jet engine produced by GE, Pratt & Whitney, Rolls Royce, and Honeywell.
AIAC companies actively support exploration into outer space, manufacturing critical components for launching and propelling spacecraft and satellites. AIAC customers in this sector include NASA, SpaceX, the European Space Agency, Blue Origin, and Boeing. AIAC companies also lead in the design and manufacture of undersea umbilical cables for worldwide oceanographic research.
AIAC companies produce the critical automotive wire and cable for Tesla, GM, Ford, Chrysler-Fiat, Toyota, and Nissan and for the New York and Atlanta Subways. In connection with its kraft paper manufacturing interests in Canada and the US, AIAC sustainably manages 22 million acres of Manitoba, Canada forestland, an area equivalent in size to the nation of Hungary. AIAC affiliate, Metallwarenfabrik Gemmingen GmbH, located in Germany, designs, manufactures and distributes high performance, emergency portable power generators utilized in global conflict zones and during major natural disasters.
For further information, see: www.aiac.com
About AIAC Philanthropies
AIAC and the AIAC Foundation support a wide range of nonprofit, nonsectarian, bipartisan organizations which promote international conflict resolution, disaster relief, economic development, environmental sustainability, exploration, and the performing arts. The exploration-focused nonprofit organizations which they actively support include The Explorers Club, the National Geographic Society, the Royal Geographical Society, the Royal Canadian Geographical Society, Mission Blue, the Jane Goodall Institute, the American Museum of Natural History and the Hayden Planetarium, the Victoria & Albert Museum, the National Air and Space Museum, the National Space Society, and the United States Space Foundation.
AIAC Chairman L. M. Levie is a Member of the Board of Trustees of The Explorers Club, its Poet Laureate, and a Member of its Annual Dinner Committee. AIAC and its affiliates, Bradford Space, Canadian Kraft Paper Industries, SuperAlloy Manufacturing Solutions, and Champlain Cable are Partners of The Explorers Club and Sponsors of Oceans Week and Climate Week. AIAC was the Sponsor for the New York memorial services for Jane Goodall and Ted Turner.
For further information, see: www.aiac.com and https://www.aiac.com/our-values
About The Explorers Club
The Explorers Club is an American-based, international, multidisciplinary professional society with the mission of promoting and supporting scientific exploration and field study on land, sea, and in outer space. The club was founded in New York City in 1904 and has served as a meeting point for explorers and scientists worldwide. Members of the club have been the first to explore the North Pole, South Pole, Mount Everest, the Mariana Trench, and to walk on the Moon. The club's notable current members or honorees include Buzz Aldrin, Charlie Duke, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk, Prince Albert II of Monaco, Princess Reema Bandar Al-Saud of Saudi Arabia, Grand Duke Guillaume V of Luxembourg, Sir Richard Branson, Ken Griffin, James Cameron, Ray Dalio, and Wendy Schmidt.
In years past, prominent members have included Sir Ernest Shackleton, President Theodore Roosevelt, Sir Edmund Hillary, Amelia Earhart, Neil Armstrong, John Glenn, Jim Lovell, Thor Heyerdahl, Walter Cronkite, Prince Philip — Duke of Edinburgh, and Jane Goodall. The Explorers Club's historic clubhouse, at 46 East 70th Street in New York City, is a museum and monument to the “Famous Firsts,” the greatest explorers and expeditions of all time.
For further information, see: www.explorers.org
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