For someone at the cutting edge of the UK’s space travel industry, Steve Bennett’s life couldn’t be further away from the likes of Elon Musk. The CEO of Starchaser Industries, who has just celebrated his 60th birthday, told the MEN that he spent his time ‘relaxing’ on his narrowboat in Nantwich.
Starchaser Industries is a Hyde-based aerospace company founded by Steve in 1992. A company born out of a childhood fascination with space travel that began with the Apollo moon landing in 1969.
Steve laughed: “I actually didn’t watch it because I was five and my mum wouldn’t let me.” “It was around three in the morning. I asked him ‘can I stay and watch?’ I asked and he said no, it’s past your bedtime but there will be another one.”
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He admits that he has since become “extremely interested in space exploration.” But his path to the stars was anything but conventional for a lad from Dukinfield.
He spent his youth building a chemistry laboratory and launching homemade rockets, to the astonishment of his family and friends. After leaving school, he worked as a laboratory technician before joining the Army in 1983.
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He trained as an oil operator, rising to Lance Corporal. Following his time in the army, he returned to work as a laboratory technician and later became professor of physics at the University of Salford.
But it wasn’t until he was in his 30s that he decided to pursue his dream of becoming a space travel pioneer by founding Starchaser Industries with his own family. Many of the company’s early goals were focused on winning the X Prize, a $10 million prize competition for the first nonprofit to launch a reusable crewed spacecraft into space twice within two weeks.
It was eventually won by Mojave Aerospace Ventures with SpaceShipOne in 2004. The winning technology was later licensed by Richard Branson to found Virgin Galactic, a British-American spaceflight company. This was a solemn moment for Steve, who had been working on a relatively meager budget for years.
“When I was working on the X Prize, I had raised a few million pounds and thought we were well on our way. But the design that won the
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“If you look at the money that Elon Musk (SpaceX) and Jeff Bezos (founder of shopping giant Amazon and aerospace company Blue Origin) have invested, that’s a huge amount of money. I’m not saying it’s bad, it’s just very sobering. I’d put that at around £10 million.” “I thought I could do it with and there’s absolutely no way because there’s so much to do,” he said.
While Starchaser never had the budget of big-budgets like Branson, Musk and Bezos, they came relatively late to the party compared to Steve, who started launching his rockets from Morecambe Bay and Ministry of Defense (MOD) sites. 1990s and 2000s. In response, he says he has had to fundraise and tour schools to help ‘keep the lights on’.
This has been a constant source of frustration, and he has not been helped by what he sees as a lack of ambition on the part of the UK government. “We haven’t gotten any support from the government, which is really frustrating,” he said.
“You’ve got the UK Space Agency and they’ve got a significant budget. They’re providing funding but they’re breaking it up into very small pieces and there’s so many caveats that we can’t qualify for it. It’s very, very frustrating.”
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He says there is a lack of assistance in finding a suitable launch site for Starchaser’s latest rocket, the Astra-X, a nine-metre fully reusable rocket weighing around 800kg. The rocket has been ready to launch for 18 months, but Steve says they can’t find anywhere to launch it.
It has previously been able to launch its rockets from MOD sites, but says current tensions over conflicts in Gaza and Ukraine mean booked launches are being canceled at the last minute. Another once productive launch site was Morecambe Bay, but he laments that “the hierarchy has changed” since the last successful launch in 2000. This, he says, resulted in the Astra-X launch being shelved until a suitable launch site was found.
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But despite the obstacles in his way, it’s the same childhood curiosity about the moon landing that wakes Steve up in the morning to continue his work. The Hyde-based space travel company still has big ambitions.
“What has always driven me is that I have always wanted to take a trip into space. From a purely personal and selfish point of view,” he says.
“I have the technology to do this, I just need support to finish this project. This is what I want to do and I want to bring people with me. We have already sold the tickets for the first flight but I just want to share this with as many people as possible.
“We are doing something in Manchester and we are actually making progress. We are physically building and testing this kit but it is very difficult to find funding or investors.
“I came up with a new concept for launching a rocket and I need to find funding for it. Essentially, getting the rocket up there is powered by electric propulsion.
“Imagine a completely reusable rocket that uses electricity instead of chemicals.” Steve says this technology will be reusable, extremely safe and reliable, which will mean costs will come down. He hopes universities and some bright graduates will get involved in the potential all-electric rocket launch system and eventually create a viable prototype to test.
So, with Starchaser’s current ambitions for space travel centered on launching the Astra-X and developing innovative launch technologies, what predictions about space travel do he see coming true in 25 years? “It really is anyone’s game, it really is,” says Steve.
“The space industry is going to be huge. Right now SpaceX dominates the market with what they do, which is rockets that you can launch a dozen times or more.
“But I think the frontiers of space will open up. It will evolve in ways we can’t foresee right now. There will be a lot of money to be made.”
“People will be able to vacation in space, and I’m not just talking about putting on a spacesuit and taking a short hop into space. There will be space hotels like cruise ships.
“You know, it’s like you’re on a cruise in the Caribbean. In 25 years, I can see people going around the Earth or to the Moon and back in space on cruise ships. The technology to be able to do that has been around for 50 years, someone just needs to put it all together.”
Perhaps someone like Steve, although his company and its ambitions are, according to the space entrepreneur, ‘a square peg in a round hole’.
Or perhaps someone like Elon Musk, who appears to have both the ambition and finances to push the boundaries of space travel. “I’ve met Elon Musk a few times,” says Steve. The first was when he sat next to her at an X Prize fundraising dinner in New York around 2003.
“My next meeting with him was about a year later, at a ‘brainstorming’ event in New Mexico, where the New Mexico government was seeking input from space industry experts on developing promising spaceports. During this time, I found myself sitting next to Elon .”
Although Steve finds the Tesla and SpaceX CEO ‘a bit of an odd character’, he believes he is ‘doing great things’. Adding: “I can’t say more praise about it. It’s so innovative.”
Currently Steve and Starchaser are desperately looking for a launch site for Astra-X and are asking for owners with private land to get in touch. “If we can get permission from the land owners, we can also get permission from the Civil Aviation Authority and launch this rocket,” he said.
He says they will also relaunch Space4school’s program to inspire current and future generations of schoolchildren. Drivers are often stunned when Steve drives one of his own rockets in the back of a truck on his way to and from school.
He believes this part of Starchaser’s work is incredibly important. Not only does he help fund his company’s own goals and ‘keep the lights on’, but he also inspires the next generation of space travel innovators.
You can find more information about Starchaser’s Astra-X and Space4schools projects on their websites.