Top Gear’s rocket-powered Robin Reliant
Writing by walking leaf on Friday, 23 of February , 2007 at 1:26 pm
BBC’s motoring programme Top Gear have set all kinds of challenges including building a hybrid boat/car or a convertible Renault Espace, but the production team have recently tried something a bit more ambitions. Sending a Robin Reliant into space (or up very high in the sky).
So how was it done? Let the official Top Gear website explain the details surrounding the rocket-powered Robin Reliant.
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 Hammond and James May 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 our own ambition. James and Richard decided to build a space shuttle, which is the most complex kind of spacecraft 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.
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 picture at how big the finished shuttle is (see above), well, so were we, because James is crap at measuring.
See the rocket launch in action and then… crashing back down to earth with a big bang!
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Category: Films & TV, Fun Stuff, eMagi News
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Made Tuesday, 12 of February , 2008 at 1:01 pm
