Let me guess, this is at East Anglia? Must be kinda tough getting those grants lately. Just make the story so outrageous that everyone will throw money at them.
BTW, were we not taught that space was already a vacuum?
There is space vacuum, and hard vacuum. Space in the orbit area around Earth is sort of a pisspoor vacuum. There are gases up there, they are just too thin for us, and the paint chips, dust, nuts bolt and other stuff we have left up there makes even a geosynchronous orbit a challenge, right now, to get a package into orbit without an immediate collision. That’s why NASA talks about “launch windows” for orbital traffic. It’s like pulling out onto a busy city street at rush hour, blindfolded, without getting clobbered.
Torchwood anyone?