Holidays in space... from rocket man of Northumberland!
IT is a far cry from Cape Canaveral but you can’t fault them for trying.
A small British space firm used a flatbed truck in Otterburn, Northumbria, to launch a rocket into the sky yesterday.
The 27ft rocket, named Skybolt 2, only had one astronaut: A cuddly toy dog called Sam, supplied by a local primary school.
However, the company behind the test launch – Starchaser – said it had high hopes the launch will pave the way for taking people to the stars in the next few years.
It will, of course, have stiff competition, with an array of billionaires already working to make space tourism a reality.
Electric car tycoon Elon Musk’s SpaceX, Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic, and Amazon founder Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin are all developing rockets.
Eventually Starchaser, which is supported by the University of Chester, hopes to send travellers to the edge of space at 333,000ft.
Yesterday’s flight only lasted 30 seconds and reached just 4,000ft.
To cheers from a crowd of 50 space enthusiasts, and with the smell of burning rocket fuel in the air, the rocket landed in three pieces roughly two miles away from its launch site.
Steve Bennett, managing director of the company, which he set up 25 years ago, claimed he was just a few years away from carrying people into space.
He said: ‘There are millions of people who’d like to take a trip to outer space and a successful flight of Skybolt will take us another step closer to making this a reality.’
He added: ‘We’re really pleased with that launch, the rocket went really well, it flew nice and high, exactly as it should do.
‘Then it split apart in its separate pieces, which is one of the key tests we were doing, and two of the three parachutes deployed, which is not a bad day.
‘Next for us is a much bigger rocket, that was a 27ft rocket but we have a 39ft rocket big enough to carry a person and we’ll be launching that within 18 months.’
Despite being up against some huge players in the space tourism market, Mr Bennett is confident Starchaser will have a part to play in the industry.
He said: ‘Space tourism is a big cake and there’s a slice for everyone. There are some people out there with a little bit more money than us but we’ve got a fantastic team of people.’