Here’s a heartwarming story that came across my feed. Reuters reports that Graham Shema, who is 7 and from Uganda, has become a legend in his country. Shema has a wealth of aircraft knowledge and budding flying skills — at only 7! He’s been interviewed by local television, and the local newspapers have dubbed him Captain.
Photo © Peter Bakema. Full gallery here. Source page here. (GFDL 1.2 license)
Shema loves math and science along with flying and has flown as a trainee three times on a Cessna 172. He plans to be a pilot, an astronaut, and one day travel to Mars. “My role model is Elon Musk,” Shema said. “I like Elon Musk because I want to learn with him about space, to go with him in space, and also to get a handshake.”
The article shared the story of a recent morning when his instructor asked him to explain how the engines worked on a Bombardier CRJ900 plane that was parked on the tarmac at Uganda’s Entebbe International Airport.
“The inlet tubes suck in the air and inject it into the compressor, the compressor squeezes it with the fans, after squeezing it with the fans, it becomes hot,” Shema said, as he gestured and detailed how an engine creates thrust.
A freak accident inspired Shema’s passion for flight. When he was only 3, a police helicopter flew so low to the ground that it blew off the roof of his grandmother’s house on the outskirts of Kampala, the capital city. Shema was playing outside. His mother, a travel agent named Shamim Mwanaisha, said, “It triggered something in his mind.”
Naturally, he started asking her questions about flying. She contacted a local aviation academy last year and Shema started learning about aircraft parts and aviation vocabulary — and after five months of coursework, he started learning how to fly. “I felt like a bird flying up,” Shema said of his first flight.
Between January and March of 2020, he flew three times as a copilot. The pandemic stopped his practice, so he’s been focusing on aviation theory and immersing himself in videos about aviation as well as space exploration on his virtual reality viewer.
Sign up for daily news updates from CleanTechnica on email. Or follow us on Google News!
Have a tip for CleanTechnica, want to advertise, or want to suggest a guest for our CleanTech Talk podcast? Contact us here.
Former Tesla Battery Expert Leading Lyten Into New Lithium-Sulfur Battery Era — Podcast:
I don't like paywalls. You don't like paywalls. Who likes paywalls? Here at CleanTechnica, we implemented a limited paywall for a while, but it always felt wrong — and it was always tough to decide what we should put behind there. In theory, your most exclusive and best content goes behind a paywall. But then fewer people read it! We just don't like paywalls, and so we've decided to ditch ours. Unfortunately, the media business is still a tough, cut-throat business with tiny margins. It's a never-ending Olympic challenge to stay above water or even perhaps — gasp — grow. So ...
