Columbia College Today

After 24 years at Boeing working on projects such as the International Space Station, Dani Eder ’79 is building a castle in rural Alabama.

A gigantic inflatable planet, three times the size of Jupiter. A Norman castle in the middle of rural Alabama. A space shuttle propelled into orbit by a chain of used cars.

While listening to self-described “mad scientist” Dani Eder ’79 rattle off his post-retirement projects, there comes a point when you realize he isn’t kidding. He’s a “mad scientist,” maybe. An ambitious visionary with a wonderfully self-deprecating sense of humor, definitely. But kidding? Never.

“I never leaned toward writing fiction,” says the soft-spoken former aerospace engineer, who leans instead toward making it happen. Ever since Eder founded the College’s science fiction club 30 years ago, he has found ways to turn his favorite stories into reality. Take Star Wars, for instance, a film the physics major watched as a sophomore.

“I was sitting in a theater watching Episode IV, where the giant ship comes in chasing the princess’ ship, and I thought, ‘I want to build those,’ ” says Eder.

At the time, the Israeli-born Eder already knew that his future lay in science. He attended Bronx Science H.S., then applied to Columbia. As the first in his family to attend college, he was elated to be accepted at the Ivy League institution. It was less than a decade after the first human stepped onto the moon, and to Eder, anything seemed possible.

Still, Eder’s dream of working on an inhabitable spacecraft might never have come true without the help of Columbia physics professor James Rainwater. The Nobel laureate encouraged his students to have fun with science, and Eder did just that. As a senior, Eder presented a paper on “giant space guns for launching things into space” at an engineering conference. A Boeing engineer in the audience was so impressed by Eder’s creativity that he suggested Eder apply to the company. Eder did, and the aerospace giant hired him to work on its propulsion systems following his graduation. For much of the next 24 years Eder spent with the company, he helped engineer the International Space Station. George Lucas’ vision was science, and no longer fiction.

Harlech Castle in Wales is the model for the castle Eder is building near Talladega, Ala.

Photo: GWEN HITCHCOCK

It is only in retirement, however, that Eder has been able to give full rein to at least one of the projects that burst forth from his imagination. Not the inflatable planet nor the space shuttle propelled by used cars, but the castle.

Two years ago, Eder left his job as a Boeing contractor for NASA and bought 93 acres in Alabama’s Talladega National Forest, an area he plans to make his kingdom. Literally. He’s designing a 10,000-square-foot castle that he plans to complete in the next decade, then rent out as a hotel and fairy tale-themed wedding retreat. The plan sounds oddly nostalgic for a futurist like Eder, but like his space station work, it all began at the same place: Columbia.

“I lived down the street from St. John the Divine, right when they restarted the reconstruction of the cathedral,” he recalls. “I was watching the stone masons working on it one day, and I found myself becoming obsessed with medieval architecture. It had to wait until I retired, though.”

Good thing Eder tends not to let go of his dreams. Thirty years after Columbia and 1,000 miles away, Eder lives with his girlfriend in a mobile home on the site of his future castle, and spends his day drawing up its blueprints with a computer-aided design program. He admits it’s an ambitious project, but one of his closest colleagues, NASA engineer Richard Altstatt, doesn’t have the slightest doubt that Eder will pull it off.

“He’s enormously competent at getting things done. As an engineer, he’s never dropped a project halfway through,” says Altsatt, who met Eder 10 years ago at a meeting of the Society for Creative Anachronism, a group for medieval combat enthusiasts. When Eder is finished, his castle will provide a backdrop for their battle reenactments. Until then, one of Altstatt and Eder’s favorite activities, says Altstatt, is eating at IHOP in full armor.

Despite the grandeur of his vision, Eder imagines a remarkably humble role for himself in his kingdom-in-progress. “I probably will be closer to a baron than a king,” he says. “Or maybe just head cook. Somebody has to do the catering.”

Justin Clark ’04J is a freelance writer in Los Angeles. His reporting has appeared in L.A. Weekly, San Francisco Chronicle and Psychology Today, among other publications.

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