In this episode, host Nastaran Tavakoli-Far and Lead Producer Pedro Mendes travel to the Musée Aeroscopia in Toulouse, France, where they stand spellbound marveling at a giant, glistening Air France Concorde. And they meet with nonagenarian Dudley Collard, a member of Concorde’s Aerodynamics Design team. When the recording crew mention the beauty of Concorde, engineer Collard quips that all he can see are the flaws. Indeed, the story of Concorde includes a seemingly never-ending set of problems faced by these international teams just to get a prototype in the air, and how they responded by developing new ways of working together. Also in episode two: the suspicion of espionage and the capture of spies, the Americans enter the supersonic race, and how Soviet Russia's desire to overtake Concorde’s dream of supersonic flight leads to a nightmare.
Guests in this episode:
Jonathan Glancey, author of 'Concorde: The Rise and Fall of the Supersonic Airliner'
Katie John, Editor of Mach 2 magazine
Nigel Ferris, a former clerk in the hangers where the British Concorde fleet was built
John Britton, Chief Engineer of the British Concorde fleet
Ted Talbot (through an actor’s voice), Chief Design Engineer at Concorde and author of the memoir ‘Concorde, A Designer's Life’
Yves Gourinat, former Airbus employee during Concorde’s last decade and currently an Aviation professor at the University of Toulouse.
Michel Polacco, French aviation reporter, and author of a book on the Concorde in French
Ricky Bastin, Technical Liaison Engineer at Concorde.
Dudley Collard, member of the Aerodynamics Design team at Concorde
For more on this episode, visit: https://www.atlassian.com/blog/podcast/teamistry/season/season-4/building-the-fastest-passenger-jet-ever