A Grand Day Out For British Rocketman

Instine writes "Salford University, in the UK, is showing an article suggesting that Britain's biggest ever rocket has been unveiled, by an academic planning a space tourism offering by 2013. 'Nova 2 qualifies as the biggest rocket ever created and flown from the UK mainland,' says Steve Bennett, Head of Salford's Space Technology Laboratory The current offering is said to amount to 20 minutes 'flight' and 3-4 mins floating. I'm not sure how much, but I'd pay for that."

Re:Eccentrics?

[pzs]

Maybe we could set up an exchange program. Ship Wal-Mart consumer drones from the UK (yes, we have quite a few) to the US in exchange for your middle class eccentrics.

I have a friend who worked in IT in the UK. He got sick of it and went to work on a ranch in rural Australia. I'm willing to bet there are quite a few farmers in rural Australia who would kill to work in IT in the UK.

1. Set up exchanges for people who think the grass is greener.
2. They get to find out if they're right.
3. ???
4. Profit!

Starchaser

[Anonymous Coward]

These are the people that tried to launch a Robin Reliant as part of a Top Gear episode last year. If anyone in the UK can do it, then these are probably the guys. Makes me proud to live in Salford.

Steve Bennett...

[damburger]

Having read more about this man and his previous 'efforts' to break altitude records that had already been broken and to showcase part of a cement mixer as a space capsule... I feel that Wallace and Gromit are a more serious prospect for commercial space flight in this country.

Re:Here he comes again ...

[Anonymous Coward]

Absolutely, and each time, he ends up launching on a cluster of High power model rocketry solid motors, and claims he's going into space very shortly now.

The UK rocketry community were far more impressed with the guys who launched the Reliant Robin Space Shuttle for Top Gear than anything Bennett's ever done. At least they were honest about what they were doing.

The reason he's pissed so many off in the UK amateur rocketry community is firstly because his claims are so far removed from reality it is not hard to see what he is saying is misleading, and secondly because of the amount of legal threats he has made to people to scare them into not telling the truth about what he really is.

Re:Well..

[RocketGeek]

Not the same guys at all. In fact I was fortunate enough to help out on the launch of the Top Gear Reliant Robin, and the people behind the Robin are in a different league. They are really clued up and know what they are doing when it comes to launching stunt rockets. Ironically, they were building the Top Gear Reliant Robin Shuttle no more than a couple of miles from Bennett, and he had no idea :-)