Look out Cosmos - Us Brits are Coming!!

One of the most unexpected news stories of the past week has been the growing support for a British manned spaceflight programme. Just as you get used to the daily round of stories about Iraq, The Ashes, Big Brother - and in the case of one newspaper, Diana Conspiracies – Britain suddenly announces that they will follow the Americans and take that “one small step for man”

It wouldn’t be the first time that we as an Island had got involved with the space race. I recently watched a documentary about the early years of a British rocket programme, based on the German V2 designs captured at the end of the war. The home of this fledging space programm - The Isle of Wight.

This facility was abandoned in the 50’s, and today there is very little left on the Cliffside to suggest that this was almost the venue of an English Cape Canaveral. As a nation though we continued our attempts to get into space, mostly through the efforts of the Garden Shed Inventor.

Our highest profile attempt to “boldly go” came through the Beagle 2 project, named in honour of the boat which took Darwin on his voyages of scientific discovery. Lead by Colin Pillinger, who looked every inch the part of the Open University professor, the project was based at the National Space Centre at the University of Leicester.

Hitching a lift on the back of a European “Mars Express” mission, Beagle 2 – which had famously been introduced to the world in a Tesco’s shopping trolley – made it to the Red Planet before losing communications with Earth.

In another strangely British twist, the signal due to be sent back to confirm a safe landing was a specially written tune by indie band Blur.

NASA’s Mars Odyssey craft eventually found a crater which is believed to be the final resting place of the Beagle.

So we certainly have a history, and a bunch of talented and be-bearded individuals who could well pull off a lunar landing. The problem will be what happens then?

For some reason the words “package holiday” and “all inclusive” come springing to mind. Might we really only be 50 years away from Brits swapping the Mediterranean for the Sea of Tranquility. Low cost hotels and London theme pubs would pop up all over the surface as people took advantage of the new Budget Spacelines and went off on an astral booze-cruize.

Will the brightest object in the night sky soon burn with a neon glow, a zero gravity Ibiza for the next generation of hardcore clubbers?

God only knows what Sir Patrick Moore will see through his telescope!