George Beardshall was an engineer who is known to have worked for AVRO during the Second World War. Bearshall later worked as a Chief Engineer in the Oxygen Division of Normalair Ltd., which manufactured life support equipment for the aerospace industry.

Worked for Normalair Ltd.

In 1946 Normalair Ltd. was formed as a subsidiary company of Westland Aircraft Ltd. to meet the growing demands for this specialist equipment, and today employs 1,100 people and has its own extensive production facilities. Normalair operate the most extensive respiratory laboratory, and are the largest producers of aircraft pressurisation, air conditioning and oxygen breathing equipment, in Europe. All British military aircraft that are pressurised are fitted with Normalair equipment, and such famous airliners as the Viscount, Britannia and Comet are equipped by Normalair. With subsidiary companies in Canada and Australia, and with representatives and agencies all over the world, Normalair provides a very wide market with cabin pressure controllers, discharge valves, safety valves, humidifiers, water extractors, flow control valves, cooling turbines, oxygen regulators, liquid oxygen converters, and many items of equipment vital to the needs of the aircraft of today. For several years the company has had license agreements with the two American companies foremost in these fields, namely the Garratt Corporation of Los Angeles and Bendix Aviation of New York. These agreements have been the source of substantial dollar export business by Normalair. In 1953, Normalair provided the oxygen equipment that enabled Sir Edmund Hillary and Sherpa Tensing to be the first to conquer Everest and, in 1955, provided the oxygen sets that were used in the first successful assault on Mount Kanchenjunga. The company also produces lightweight portable oxygen equipment for medical, industrial and emergency use, and are the sales agents in the UK for the respirators and breathing equipment made by Mrs Dräger of Lubeck. This business is handled by Normalair's branch office in Manchester. The Garrett Corporation took a 48% share in the company in 1966, and was subsequently renamed Normalair-Garrett Limited (NGL). The company is now Honeywell Normalair Garrett Ltd.

The British Interplanetary Society (BIS) was founded in 1933 by a group of space flight enthuasiasts to promote and educate on the exploration and use of space for the benefit of humanity. In the years before World War II a technical core of BIS members made the first plans for a rocket capable of landing three men on the Moon and returning them to Earth. After World War II members of the Society developed ideas for the exploration of outer space including developing liquid rockets for launch into space, the construction of Space Stations, the human exploration of the Moon, the development of probes to investigate other planets in our Solar System and the use of space telescopes to observe distant stars and galaxies. In 1951 the BIS organized the world’s first International Congress on “The Artificial Satellite”, and became one of the founder members of the International Astronautical Federation (IAF). Earth Remote Sensing was initially advocated and studied at an international level at its NATO Conference in the 1950s, with space biology following soon afterwards. Planetary studies began with papers examining the propulsion requirements to reach Mars and Venus, as well as projected instruments for scientific probes. Advocacy of studies on comets and meteors helped further the Giotto mission to Halley’s Comet and later the ESA Rosetta mission. Studies and long term thinking on human spaceflight and launch vehicle development have always been a core area of activity amongst Society members, with the visionary early work on the BIS Lunar Lander, the Orbital Launcher and various other space launchers and space stations. With the demise of the Apollo Program in 1972, the British Interplanetary Society continued to encourage exploration of ideas on the possibilities of a return to the Moon and its eventual colonization. More recently a group within the Society has initiated a series of studies on the scientific and technical objectives of conducting a human exploration of the Martian North Polar Cap (Project Boreas), and another group within the Society has initiated a follow on study to the Daedalus Interstellar Starprobe, called Project Icarus.