In my experience, there'll be nobody else prepared to do it - so you have a lot more latitude than you think.
Attention span of youngsters - you're looking at 40 minutes, plus some discussion before they start getting bored. Absolute tops, that's 8 topics, five minutes each.
Look to what video material is out there?
I'd say three major early landmarks - Montgolfier brothers is great (don't forget the wildlife), maybe the Wrights - talk about all the effort, being bitten to death by mosquitos at Kittyhawk, fighting for recognition, going around the world - the fact that they came to England and France, the enormous amount of work by Katharine - not just Wilbur and Orville...
Battle of Britain, Spitfire, RJ Mitchell, contribution of Beatrice Shilling and the ATA pilots, fighter controllers - emphasis on massive team effort, dozens of skills
Helen Sharman - first British astronaut, trained as a food scientist, still out there running a chemistry department in London, that famous advert "Astronaut required, no experience necessary".
Two major things going on now, here are my suggestions
- Airlander, biggest aircraft in the world, hopes for future roles in eco-tourism, delivering science, disaster relief. How it's been crowd funded.
- Tim Peake: Left school with average A-levels, British army helicopter pilot, test pilot, competition to get to the ISS, huge amount he's done, what he's still doing.
Three things going into the future
- Spaceship 2, Richard Branson, Dave Mackay, Mojave, the accident, everybody keeping on going - hopes for a future space tourism industry more than doubling the number of people in space, sexy material science, hybrid motors
- HypeR - latest high performance microlight, designed by Bill Brooks in Marlborough, still in flight testing, about to be available to ordinary people to buy and fly. Mention that the wings all started with Francis and Gertrude Rogallo?
- Mars, plans, aspirations, how, who, when... (Nick a clip or two from The Martian?)
If in doubt, take it out! Give them impressions, sexy pictures, good video clips. DO NOT BOMBARD THEM WITH DETAIL. Inspire them, don't aim to fill them with facts. Avoid wiring diagrams and complex timelines - that will bore adults silly, let alone kids. My list of 8/9 topics here is *probably* 50% more than I'd actually deliver if it was me, and I've lectured on aviation subjects to a lot of audiences in a lot of countries.
Do take hardware with you - bits of flying machine they can pass around (don't take anything breakable that you want back).
Don't be too worthy, include about half the detail you think you need. A talk of this nature - absolutely nobody will care about copyright, so nick lots of good imagery from the web.
Have some extra material tucked away in case they ask interesting questions (I always have extras on the end of my slides if I'm doing powerpoint, for example), don't be at-all upset if you don't get to use it.
If you can find any way to make it interactive, do. I did a talk at last year's Schools Aerospace Challenge, where I had the children in groups trying to work out how to use an aeroplane to count penguins in the Antarctic. I met one of the children 6 months later, and it was the first thing they mentioned, and they said it was one of the most memorable parts of the week. Ask them questions, get ideas for discussion from the audience, let them throw paper aeroplanes at you...
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Last edited by Genghis the Engineer; 20th Jan 2017 at 22:24.