The last man on the moon, Eugene Cernan (left), has been in town this week on behalf of aircraft maker Bombardier as it launches a new luxury travel package with Island Shangri-La. At a Roof Garden reception on Wednesday, he reminisced about the first time he saw Hong Kong.
'It was 1960,' Cernan recalls. 'I was on a big carrier and we sailed right down the middle of the harbour. Ironically, the ship was called Shangri-La.'
The affable Apollo XVII astronaut also found time to help actor Michael Wong Man-tak officially launch his Operation Flying Eagle project, which takes young air cadets around Hong Kong in a helicopter, giving them valuable air experience.
As Wong, a licensed pilot, relates: 'We met promoting a watch brand years ago and Eugene and I were down in Houston to look around the Nasa facilities. Mission control was communicating with the MIR [Soviet space] station at the time and there I got hooked on flying, so it's full circle that he's able to help kick this programme off.'