Book review: How To Build Your Own Spaceship

Published on Friday 9 May 2008 18:06

HOW TO BUILD YOUR OWN SPACESHIP Piers Bizony Portobello, £12.99

ANYONE hoping to put together a space shuttle in their garden might be a little disappointed with this book, which doesn't quite deliver on its title. Yet its aims can be gathered from its unusual dual classification: "popular science/travel writing". This is a book about the technology of space flight, at a time when going into orbit is becoming a genuine tourist possibility – if you have a few million to spare.

At least two private companies are seriously looking at the potential for using Russian Soyuz rocketry to send fee-paying passengers on a trip around the moon; but for now, super-rich travellers must content themselves with trips nearer Earth. Five people so far have coughed up around $20m each for a stay on the International Space Station. They didn't pay for distance: the station orbits only around 250 miles above ground. They got a unique view, the experience of weightlessness – and the training to cope with it.

As Bizony points out, commercial space travel – as promised in the near future by Virgin Galactic – has to deal with issues of safety and comfort that no airline need worry about. What do you do about toilets? Or your neighbour throwing up in the zero-gravity cabin? America's Federal Aviation Authority has relaxed its safety rules for space flight, and Virgin's passengers will only get three days' preparation for their ultimate white-knuckle ride. The two-and-a-half-hour flight will be "sub-orbital", reaching the official boundary of space – 60 miles above Earth – for six precious minutes of weightlessness before descending. Celebrities such as Paris Hilton and Sigourney Weaver are allegedly queuing up for the $200,000 seats.

Apart from Richard Branson, the key players in the new industry are mostly dotcom billionaires, including the founder of Google and the inventor of Microsoft Word. Bizony pitches his book at people hoping to muscle in on the business for themselves: a cute conceit to begin with, but one that soon feels forced. He is also apt to wander off-topic: the latter part of the book feels more like a general survey of space exploration, having little to do with tourism.

Still, there is plenty of curious information here: I had never realised, for example, that all Soyuz missions had a loaded gun on board in case the capsule came down in wolf-infested wilderness. We can safely assume such items will not be carried by the glitterati taking off from Branson's New Mexico spaceport. I just hope that Norman Foster's 'eco-friendly' design for it works better than Heathrow Terminal Five.