Teddies in Flight Lectures

Sixth Formers, Freddie Samuel and Mikhail Aslam, write:

Colonel Dick Covey with Captain Les Brodie

As of the Physics Department’s Teddies in Flight Week we hosted Captain Les Brodie, former Concorde pilot, and Colonel Dick Covey, former NASA Astronaut, for lectures on their remarkable careers.

Captain Les Brodie gave a talk about how he became a Concorde captain, and the details of piloting such a complex aircraft. Brodie spoke about his father’s career working on an aircraft carrier during World War II and how this inspired him to pursue a career in aviation. Brodie started his career piloting Tridents, before training onto the Concorde. He explained in detail complex systems such as the trim control which allowed for super cruise. Brodie also spoke about his personal experience piloting the iconic aircraft, from when the upper rudder snapped off whilst supersonic to the last Concorde landing, at an airport he had only previously landed at in a single propeller Cessna! Brodie explained that he lives by the motto, ‘the harder you work in life, the luckier you get’. His talk was incredibly inspirational.

On Thursday we had a visit from NASA Astronaut Richard ‘Dick’ Covey. Colonel Covey piloted the F100, F15, and the Space Shuttle. He talked of his experience in space on four missions, including the first flight following the Challenger disaster on STS 26 and rescuing the Hubble Space Telescope on STS 61. Covey spoke of his experience as an astronaut in a spaceship travelling 17,500 mph above the earth. As he looked down upon Earth he came to a stunning realisation: Earth is our spaceship. Relative to the rest of the universe, it is a tiny body travelling at 1000mph in the middle of space. It is providing us with gravity, air, and life and we need to take care of it. Finally he spoke about the future of space exploration, the Artemis programme to return humans to the moon in 2026 and onwards to Mars.