Secret Plans for Irish Spaceship Revealed

Ananova ^ | Thursday 1st January 2004

[anymouse]

Besides the source, one clue that this is a bogus article is that rocket pioneer, Gary Hudson does not possess a Doctorate (I'm not even sure that he ever received his Bachelors degree, even though he is sharper than most Ph.D.s.

[anymouse]

space ping.

[the invisib1e hand]

Secret Plans for Irish Spaceship Revealed

lol

[AnAmericanMother]

Somehow I am inescapably reminded of the Pilot's Written Exam (Irish), a little bit of persiflage directed more or less at the inhabitants of that island . . . wish I could find it on the net, it's a hoot. I still have a copy somewhere.

[OpusatFR]

All I can think of is that d***ed Lucky Charms commercial..

[RoughDobermann]

Is the spaceship fueled by liquid whiskey?

[Billthedrill]

Actually, the Irish have considerable experience in the area: "An Irishman is not drunk if he can hang onto a blade of grass with both hands and not fall off the face of the earth."

[BushCountry]

I want them to build spacecraft based on the The "Medusa" design. Be able to get to Mars in a few weeks and take hundreds of passengers, then we would accomplish something.

[CWOJackson]

Pelleted Bush Mills.

[Jeff Chandler]

Is the spaceship fueled by liquid whiskey?

No, potatoes.

[RoughDobermann]

LOL!

[RoughDobermann]

No, potatoes.

Cool. Vodka rocket fuel.

[solitas]

Please: if You should ever locate it, I would be interested in reading it. Thank You.

[Az Joe]

Just what wwe need: Drunk spaceship drivers!

[Jeff Chandler]

Ping.

[RexRichard]

This is hilarious.

[anymouse]

As Paul Harvey is fond of saying, "now for the rest of the story."

------

From Gary Hudson:

Even though I should know better, I am still surprised by the ability of reporters (and apparently government officials) to turn an hour-long visit into “ Secret Proposals” and “Plans.” Case in point is the preceding article from Ananova news service. I realize they are not Aviation Week, but good grief…

Just to set the record straight, yes, in 1973 I did inquire of the Industrial Development Authority (IDA) of Ireland regarding the possibility of setting up a launch firm in the country and launching a partly-expendable vehicle from Inishnabro (misspelled in the article). I never visited the island as was claimed, but did vacation in Kilarney for two days. I have pleasant memories of the place, and drank a fair amount of excellent Guinness Stout. (But, even so, I rather doubt that I told them that 1000 people would be working on rockets – that’s not the path to cheap launch. They may have been hoping for a sort of “multiplier effect” on local employment.) And I don’t think that anyone who knows me would believe that I represented myself as having worked for NASA! (This is symptomatic of the “Space Program” mythos in general: one has to be promoted to “Dr.” and be from NASA in order to speak on the subject. To be fair to them, however, this was all happening 30 years ago at the end of the Apollo program. The mythos was ascendant.)

The whole thing began when Prof. Fred Hoyle and I were having a cup of tea in his Cambridge office the year before in England. Sir Fred had considered the desirability of setting up a launch site on one of the Great Blasket islands, and encouraged me to have a look. Since I had never visited Ireland, it sounded like a good idea (even with the limited range of inclinations available), and I went the next year. At the time, the IDA had a deal they offered to outside investors. Build a plant in Ireland and all your export sales were tax-free for twenty years. The purpose of my inquiry was to determine if they would consider a launch as an export and they did. (We of the emerging space business community have struggled for years to get tax breaks for commercial space in the US and have largely failed. Here was a ready-made opportunity.) Being a European company would have also opened up the European launch market, this in the waning days of ELDO and before the real rise of the Ariane program.

Of course, the idea was twenty years ahead of its time and investment was not available. But even with money, in the end, of course, European (or US) politics would have killed it anyway. At least I got to taste that Guinness from the tap. (And no, the fuel was not going to be alcohol, but LOX-hydrogen!)

Gary C Hudson

[mrsmith]

I found only one question from it:

Draw the shortest route between the following two points. You may ask for more paper if necessary.

x

x

[Waco]

However the "Yellow Submarine" did get off the ground. Hic