STEVE BENNETT, the Salford Rocketman, said yesterday that he was close to achieving his lifelong ambition: to launch the world’s first private piloted spaceship.

Mr Bennett, director of the space technology laboratory at Salford University, was launching the new single-seater Nova ll rocket capsule at an hotel in Tameside, close to the home of his company, Starchaser Industries.

The next stop for the re- usable capsule, which weighs 440lb and is 10ft long, is the Arizona desert, on to which it will be dropped from a C-123K transport aircraft at an altitude of 14,000 feet to practise landing.

If that goes well, the capsule will be powered into further test flights by the already tried and tested Starchaser Nova rocket which soared over Morecambe Bay in November 2001. Mr Bennett, 39, from Dukinfield, then hopes to launch his first manned flight, to an altitude of 30,000ft.

His goal is to win the $10 million (£6.4 million) prize being offered to the first non-governmental organisation to launch three people into Space and bring them safely back to Earth. He said: “I have dreamt 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 day.”

He has completed more than 100 high-altitude skydives as preparation. “We are trying to do our level best to make sure that the risk level is acceptable,” he said. “There is a back-up system if something breaks down.”

Adrienne, his wife, and her two children, Max, 12, and Tabitha, six, support him fully. “I’m here to make sure he does everything safely,” she said.

Seated in the tiny rocket capsule, Mr Bennett predicted that space travel would become a normal, everyday occurrence. “Ten years from now we will all be saving up for trips aboard space vehicles,” he said.

Starchaser Industries has spent around £2 million on research and development. Mr Bennett reckons he needs a further £2 million to fulfil his dream and win the prize.

His exploits have captured the imagination of armchair space enthusiasts who have watched his earlier efforts with a mixture of admiration and derision. But with each test flight completed successfully he looks less and less like his childhood television hero, Brains, of Thunderbirds.

The launch of Nova, the world’s first reusable passenger rocket, over Morecambe Bay was a turning point. Manned flight, however, is “no big deal”. “It is going straight up and coming straight down again,” he said. “The experience should be very enjoyable. I suppose it will be less enjoyable if it does not work. I try not to think about that.”

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