Rocket man prepares to take off on space odyssey

A BRITISH rocket fanatic hoping to become the first amateur to fly in space in a privately developed craft yesterday unveiled his new rocket capsule.

Steve Bennett, 39, has been building and launching rockets for more than a decade in a bid to become the first man to pilot a privately developed spacecraft into space and back.

His Starchaser firm yesterday unveiled the single seater Nova II capsule, which is being readied for shipment to the US, where it is to be fitted with a parachute system.

The manned capsule is to be dropped from a C-123K transport aircraft at an altitude of 14,000 feet over the Red Lake Drop Zone, Arizona, to practise landing the reusable craft.

Mr Bennett of Duckinfield, near Hyde, Greater Manchester, said he hoped it would take place in May and said he “cannot wait”.

He said: “I used to be scared of heights but after skydiving I got out of that. I am just looking forward to the next buzz.

“I have dreamed about flying in one of these rockets since I was five or six-years-old, since I saw the Americans walk on the moon. I think about it every single day.”

If all goes to plan in Arizona, the capsule will be attached to the Starchaser Nova rocket, which was first flown from Morecambe Bay in November 2001, for further unmanned tests.

This will be followed by a manned launch to an altitude of at least 30,000 feet, which should take less than a minute. It takes an airliner around 30 minutes to reach that altitude.

Mr Bennett, director of the Space Technology Laboratory at Salford University, said there was an “element of risk”.

He said: “We are trying to do our level best to make sure that the risk level is acceptable.

“There is a back-up system if something breaks down.”

Mr Bennett’s wife, Adrienne, said she and her two children Max, 12, and Tabetha, six, were fully supporting him.

“I’m here to make sure he does everything safely,” she said.

Mr Bennett and his firm are competing for a $10 million (9.3m) prize payable to the first team to send three people 100 kilometres into space and back.

There are 24 teams in the competition but only six serious contenders, of which Mr Bennett’s team is one.