Discovery landing spurs Irishman towards space

THE successful return home of the space shuttle Discovery yesterday has increased the ambition of Limerick man Cyril Bennis to be the first Irishman to fly into space.

Cyril, 56, who lives in Stratford-upon-Avon, where he served a term as the town’s mayor, has just returned from the US where he went on a flight into the margins of space where he experienced zero gravity.

Cyril said: “I did that to see how my body would cope with weightlessness. There were seven passengers on the Boeing 727/200. We went up to 32,000 feet where we experienced zero gravity and we were floating around the cabin of the plane. We were up for about two hours.”

That trip cost Cyril €8,100 and he will have to pay out €144,000 if he wants to go on a space charter being organised in the next 18 months in the US.

Cyril said: “I have always been fascinated with the space projects and am a person who believed in going out and doing things. If you are to keep thinking about how much it will cost, you’ll do very little.”

Cyril, who worked in the hotel industry, is now a full-time musician and teams up with his American wife, Loxanne, on stage.

“We do Irish music and as we live in Stratford-upon-Avon, the home of William Shakespeare, we also do a lot of Elizabethan music,” he said.

A keen athlete, he has completed a marathon run across the Sahara desert and is now preparing to run across Britain.

Of the space flight, he said: “I am really looking forward to it. The craft will piggyback on a conventional plane which will take it up to 50,000 feet before it jettisons off into space. The flight will last a few hours.”

During his career in politics, Cyril served on three local councils at the one time and was elected for one term as mayor of Stratfofd-upon-Avon in 1997. He was an independent member on the council.

He originally came from the Fair Green in Limerick and has lived in Stratford-upon-Avon for nearly 30 years.