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Starchaser Industries is a privately owned company based in the UK whose principal aim is to become a viable business in space tourism. Formed in 1992, the company has designed and built several rocket systems - all prototypes - to investigate the feasibility of producing a space tourism vehicle. Starchaser's rocket NOVA 1, launched in 2001 from Morecambe Bay, still holds the UK record for the biggest successful rocket launch ever fired from the British mainland. Since 2002, Starchaser have operated an Educational Outreach Programme that has grown steadily to become a now major aspect of the company. This arm of the company aims to take traditionally difficult and abstract areas of physics and chemistry and explain their use in rocket building. ==History== It began in 1992, when Steve Bennett, of Dukinfield, was a laboratory technician at Colgate who sponsored the project initially. By 1998 Steve was teaching at the University of Salford as a professor of Space Physics and had students help out on several of Starchaser's early rockets. The first rockets were powered by sugar; in fact the company was sponsored by Tate & Lyle until March 1996,when it became known as the Starchaser Foundation. By December 1998, the company changed again and become a private limited company now known as Starchaser Industries. Engines were tested in 1999 at the Altcar Rifle Range in Merseyside. It moved to new premises in Hyde in January 2001. By this stage the company was sponsored by Microsoft and the Discovery Channel and employed twelve people. On 22 November 2001, Starchaser 4 was launched from Morecambe Bay as a full-scale test of rocket systems. It was never intended to be a full flight into space (above 100 km) as the UK Civil Aviation Authority restricts any rocket testing on the UK mainland to below 10,000 feet. Starchaser 4 flew to a height of approximately 5,538 feet before parachuting back down into the bay. This was at the time the biggest rocket ever fired from the UK mainland. The rocket, originally intended to be reusable, was damaged on landing and only launched one time. In 2002 work began on NOVA 2, the pregenitor rocket system to Starchaser's Space tourism Vehicle Thunderstar. The aim of this mission was to focus on the capsule and life-supporting systems of the rocket. In 2004 there were successful tests of the NOVA 2 capsule's landing gear to investigate methods of recovery of the capsule by land. On 1 July 2008, the 57-foot Nova 2 was unveiled to the public and did extensive touring around the UK. NOVA 2 still sits unlaunched, however a launch may be likely in the near future. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Starchaser Industries」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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