Blast off from Newquay and visit Mars from Stevenage… how Britain’s ambitious space plans could see us plant a Union Jack in martian soil

CORNWALL - known for its pasties, beaches and... spaceport?

It may sound a bit out-of-this-world to associate the South West with colonising the final frontier, but ambitious plans for a space-faring Britain could turn Newquay into the new key to the galaxy.

At the moment, compared to our European neighbours - and almost every other developed nation - we Brits are very much lagging behind in the space race.

But yesterday, Brit billionaire Richard Branson revealed how serious his spacefaring ambitions are with a successful flight of Virgin Galactic's new space tourism craft, Unity, followed by a tweet proclaiming: "Space feels close now".

Unity took to the skies after take-off at California's Mojave Air & Space Port, but Virgin Galactic boss Branson also wants a European space hub to be built in the UK, so his commercial launches won't be confined to the States.

And this successful launch follows a call by industry leaders in the UK's £14billion space sector for the government to set up a serious national programme to get Britain into space, which could kick-start the construction of spaceports and launch sites over the country.

Sure, Britain hasn't colonised anything for years, but it's hard for any patriot to resist the thought of Brit astronauts like Tim Peake planting a Union Jack on Martian soil.

You can't deny that it all sounds exciting, but the big question is what would a well-funded, healthy UK space industry really look like?

Take off from Newquay spaceport

The UK Space trade body reckons that the space business could be worth a lucrative £40bn per year by 2030, but without a concerted national effort, Britain's brightest minds fear much of this potential could be wasted.

As it stands, the British government spends just £371million per year on the UK Space Agency (the NHS costs £110 billion), while Nasa has a £14billion budget and Germany spends the equivalent of £2billion per year on space.

India, for comparison, spends over a billion pounds per year on its space program - nearly three times more than we do.

We're already a member of the EU-independent European Space Agency (which we will stay in post-Brexit), and we have our own UK Space Agency, but it's tiny and runs on a shoestring budget.

Industry insiders reckon that properly funding a British space effort and capitalising on the 40,000 space-sector jobs we already have would be a no-brainer for any forward-thinking government - and satellites are a great place to start.

If there's one thing Britain is really good at, it's making them - in fact, we're a world leader in the satellite department.

But something we're not so good at is getting the satellites we've made up into orbit, often relying on other countries' spaceports and craft to launch UK tech into space.

One way this could change is if Britain had its own spaceport, and Newquay Cornwall Airport is keen to branch out into the space game.

The airport has presented its spaceport plans to the government, and is expecting to find out in the coming weeks whether it has been selected to host one of Britain's first launch sites.

Richard Branson is also keen on the idea, hoping to use a Brit spaceport as somewhere he can launch commercial joy rides for space tourists, while the site could also be useful for launching government-backed sub-orbital science missions.

A UK space agency would almost certainly crack on with these ambitious plans, possibly even adding to the £50m of spaceport funding announced by the government last year.

From Hertfordshire to Mars

Stumble into the right hangar in Stevenage, and you'd think you'd entered The Twilight Zone.

The Airbus "Mars Yard" - just one building in the company's  vast industrial testing and manufacturing site that's "part state-of-the art lab, part Dr Evil's lair" - is laid out to look and feel just like the surface of Mars.

Essentially, the Hertfordshire hangar is a giant sandpit where rovers are put through their paces before being shipped off to explore our neighbouring planet.

Pop your head in during the day and you'll probably see a robotic rover picking its way over the rocky terrain as a team of geeks remotely control the vehicle.

Tim Peake has used the yard to sharpen his skills at the controls, and Airbus wants to continue using the UK site as somewhere to test the rovers it has developed for the European Space Agency's planned Mars mission in 2020.

A serious space agency effort could make sure that Britain stays at the forefront of the race to the Red Planet, and investment at sites like the Mars Yard could be the difference between watching from the bleachers and actually getting there.

A UK Space Agency spokesperson told Sun Online: “Space is already one of the fastest growing sectors of our economy and we’re working closely with industry and government partners to boost it further.

“Our commitment to international collaboration on missions like ExoMars, which involves a British-built rover, will also keep us at the forefront of space science, technology and exploration.”

Blast out of Glasgow

As well as horizontal space plane launches, Britain is also well poised to become the site of more complex vertical rocket launches.

A fully-funded UK space agency could press on with building launch sites in Scotland, where the sparse population and abundance of land makes for a prime place to launch whopping great rockets like Russia's Soyuz-2, which is designed to deliver satellites into orbit.

Glasgow is already one of the European leaders in satellite tech and is also bidding for a spaceport, so rocket launchpad near the city isn't too much of a giant leap (for mankind, or otherwise).

A British space company, Skyrora, recently announced its plans to start launching rockets from Scotland, with the quiet Shetlands identified as a possible launch site for satellite-carrying craft.

These satellites may not sound all that exciting, but they have a profound impact on your day-to-day life.

Anita Bernie, a director at Surrey Satellite Technology, told Sun Online: "We are already benefiting from a space-enabled society and the UK space industry is already making an impact in telecommunications, transport, agriculture, smart cars, pollution monitoring and aeroplane tracking, to name just a few examples."

Test labs near Oxford

As we've established, we're brilliant at building satellites - and we could expand on this by pressing ahead with a proposed satellite test facility in Harwell, near Oxford.

The UK is currently a missing a test site where our satellites can be given a thorough check-up, so it was big news last year when the state-funded company RAL Space announced it was building a £99m test lab in Harwell.

More bold projects like this are needed to mark the UK out as the place for space, or we risk falling behind our overseas competitors.

Build for the future from Portsmouth and Glasgow

Thanks to its Airbus Defence and Space site, which employs about 1,000 people, Portsmouth stands out alongside science hub Glasgow as a key part of the UK's space sector.

Its teams support the country's military satellite communications to the armed forces.

Both Portsmouth and Glasgow's cutting-edge satellite labs are fundamental to the UK space sector, and they could only benefit from a concerted national effort to cement Britain's place as a space-faring nation.

Satellite guru Anita Bernie added: "It’s clear that more funding needs to be made available to enable UK business to grow the value of the industry."

Even so, despite the relative lack of funding, science Minister Sam Gyimah is keen to blow our space industry's trumpet.

He said: “Our space sector is going from strength to strength and we are a global leader in satellite manufacturing, with one in four of the world's telecommunications satellites made in Britain.

"The government is working with industry to build on the UK's excellence and strengths in the space sector to enable small satellite launch and sub-orbital flight from UK spaceports for the first time."

A cut above

Hypersonic rockets sound like something out of Star Wars, but the ultra-fast jets are very real - and they're being pioneered by Brits.

Reaction Engines, a company based in Oxfordshire, is behind a revolutionary rocket engine called SABRE, which is hoped to be fired up and ready for use in space planes as early as 2020.

It took a £60m government grant to get the project off the ground, but now it's hoped that the brand new tech can be used to propel planes to 20,000 miles per hour - easily fast enough to launch a space plane into orbit... perhaps carrying a Brit satellite and launched from a UK spaceport.

A UK space agency could unlock the potential of more projects like this and make sure that, one day, the phrase "Made in Britain" is stamped all over the solar system.