The premise was simple. Space travel costs a lot of money, so can Top Gear crack the budget nut by building a cheaper space rocket based on a car? Richard and James went for the most rocket-shaped car they could find - a Reliant Robin, but from that point on, the Simplicity Fairies flew away and left us in a world of pain.
The first problem was down to their own ambition. James and Richard decided to build a space shuttle, which is the most complex kind of space craft imaginable, on account of it having to be re-usable. This meant they'd have to build fuel tanks that detached, and find a way of flying a driverless Robin Reliant.
'If you're surprised from the pictures at how big the finished shuttle is, well, so were we' On top of this they'd need some formidable rocket power to get the thing off the ground, so they reunited with our old friends from the British Rocketry Association, the men who'd sent the Mini down the ski jump in the Top Gear Winter Olympics. After much scribbling, the rocket men announced the shuttle would need eight tons of thrust - 12 times what the Mini had, to take the shuttle to its test flight height of 3,000ft.
The project kicked off and there then followed all the trials that would have been the daily fodder of pioneers such as Barnes Wallis, Brunel and the Changing Rooms team. By the way, if you're surprised from the pictures at how big the finished shuttle is, well, so were they, because James is crap at measuring. Tune in to see what happens...
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