To boldly go where no BBC icon’s grandson has gone before

IT MAY have been an American dream to send the first privately funded rocket into orbit this week. But I can reveal that the SpaceX mission, which saw two astronauts blast off on Saturday and safely dock at the International Space Station less than a day later, has thoroughly British roots.

The Flight Director at NASA in charge of the mission Zebulon Scoville is in fact the grandson of the late, great broadcaster Alistair Cooke.

Cooke left Blackpool, where he grew up in humble circumstances, to find fame and, ultimately, fortune in the USA, from where he delivered Letter From America, his weekly radio report for the BBC, for 58 years.

But the family appetite for venturing across new frontiers clearly remains undimmed. Scoville, 45, known in the family and to colleagues as Zeb, tells me that his grandfather — born just five years after the Wright brothers made the first aeroplane flight — was ‘fascinated by the space age’ and revered his close friend, astronaut John Glenn, who in 1962 became the first American to orbit the earth.

‘He had enormous respect and admiration for the men and women who committed themselves to the rigour and challenge of human space exploration,’ says Scoville, explaining that ‘Poppa’, as he knew his grandfather, ‘saw the future of spaceflight as the meeting point of human ingenuity, science fiction, and fantastic voyages’.

Scoville’s career intensified his grandfather’s excitement, particularly after he completed training at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. ‘He was certain I would someday end up on Pluto — back in the glory days when it enjoyed planet status,’ remembers Scoville.

He treasures a book by bestselling science fiction author Arthur C. Clarke, given to him by his grandfather who inscribed it to ‘the only carbon-based biped in the family who will have any idea what it’s all about’.

His dreams of leading his family into space are as fervent as ever — boosted by NASA’s partnership with SpaceX.

‘It opens up access to human spaceflight,’ says Scoville, mentioning the impending Artemis Program missions to the Moon — ‘and, eventually, Mars’. His grandfather’s faith in the space age never wavered. Scoville visited him shortly before he died in 2004, aged 95.

‘Poppa had an absolute confidence that spaceflight would evolve to the point where the unimaginable would be common place. He would have seen the NASA and SpaceX mission as an example of the human potential fulfilled. Go boldly!’