Grand Témoin 2024

On 1 October, the Forum will welcome the 9th Frenchman to have gone into space. He flew aboard the American shuttle Endeavour in March 2002. He made three spacewalks to assemble the International Space Station (ISS), which he helped to build. A dream come true for the man who, from childhood, saw himself as a fighter pilot and astronaut. This experienced pilot has gone from the Mirage F1 to the stars. It’s a journey he recounts in his book ‘En apesanteur’ (Michel Lafon), published last April. Il peut témoigner des qualités de courage, de ténacité mais aussi de fraternité qui sont nécessaires pour évoluer dans de tels univers. La prise de risques, il connaît et il pourra partager cette expérience auprès des entrepreneurs réunis à Montbéliard pour le forum. Philippe Perrin a aussi été pilote d’essai chez Airbus, où il a planché sur les avions futurs. His expertise in aeronautics also led him to be asked to act as a consultant for Blue Spirit Aero, where he will be supervising tests to develop the Dragon Fly: a hydrogen-powered aeroclub aircraft.

Aged 61 and living in Toulouse, our Great Witness is an ambassador for the Antoine de Saint-Exupéry Youth Foundation. He also has a keen interest in new energies and the environment. For him, the urgency of climate change is self-evident. ‘What makes an astronaut special is his ability to observe, in much the same way as Saint-Exupéry was able to observe from his plane’, Philippe Perrin points out. At the Hydrogen Business for Climate Forum, his talk will give us a chance to get some perspective, but also to come back down to earth.