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As part of our STEM program, we were visited on Monday by the fabulous Paul McMahon, who worked for 43+ years in the space industry for Airbus Defence & Space. He presented to our students about his working life as a mechanical engineer, working on projects and hardware used on over 40 different space craft, and visiting launch sites all over the world.

Mr McMahon spoke to the students about ways that STEM has been important in his career, from developing mathematical models and writing code, to keeping sterile rooms microbe free and utilising free-body diagrams in plans. There were some excellent questions asked by our students which stimulated discussion around human survival on Mars, climate change research, and g-force experienced by the spacecraft.

To round off an amazing session, Mr McMahon was the special guest at Redruth School’s very own rocket launch. This is linked to a project that a group of now Y11s worked on last year and culminated in a very successful (3rd time lucky!) launch at breaktime, with a large crowd to cheer them on.