Steve Beebee visits the recently opened Aerospace Bristol – home to the last Concorde and much more
MUSEUMS AEROSPACE BRISTOL
If asked for memories of Concorde – as new museum Aerospace Bristol did in one of its interactive projects – I would gleefully recall the first time I glimpsed the aircraft, at Coventry Airshow in 1982. I remember standing there as a child with my dad watching this marvel of engineering arcing towards the flightline, slowing down and cruising elegantly past our widening eyes. A chorus of camera shutters and the whine of its engines provided the soundtrack.
“How close will it come?” I had asked, fearful that I might not be tall enough to see anything among the crowds. “You’ll see the whites of the pilots’ eyes”, I was assured, and while that wasn’t quite true, the aircraft’s appearance remains pretty much stamped on the back of my own retinas.
Even though Concorde first flew long before I was born, it seemed like a physical embodiment of my time – a symbol of mankind striving to go faster, higher, further. Intoxicated by the seemingly endless possibilities that childhood imagination presents, I thought of it as the ultimate manifestation of our burgeoning progress, something that…
