Mr. President, We Have A Problem..............

History is being made in a few hours time at Price, Maryland (USA), 67 miles East of Washington, DC.

At noon local time (5pm UK time), 50 yr old Steve Eves will go into the record books and fulfil the dreams of those 'space geeks' who like to do a bit more than just watch Star Wars dvds every Saturday night. 

Steve has built a model of the Saturn V rocket that launched the Apollo capsules to the moon back in the late 60's and early 70's.  Yes a model, but not just any old model. This will be, by far, the largest and heaviest model rocket ever launched. It's a 1/10th scale, fully functional (he hopes) model that stands over 36ft tall and weighs in at 1600 lbs or 725 kgs. The rocket, although outwardly looking like the real thing, will be a one stage replica. I mean lets not be silly. 

This isn't NASA.  

The plan is to get it up to 4,000ft where it's engines will cut out and the model will gently (again hopefully) float back to earth for recovery.  Of course if it should all go pear shaped, the rocket might just land on the Obama's new doggie, Bo, out watering the White House lawn.

I'm sure the press core will be lying in wait for such an eventuality. Not to mention the Secret Service who will be looking to the skies at noon and probably breathing a collective sigh of relief by 12:05pm.

I can't begin to think of the bureaucratic hoops, never mind the technological ones, that Steve had to jump through to get this rocket project off the ground, so to speak.  Getting permission to launch a rocket that North Korea would give their eye teeth for less than 70 miles from the nation's capital can't have been a simple process.  

Let's hope the launch is being covered live on tv and fingers crosssed that we hear cheers and applause.  

The last thing we (and Bo) want to hear is Steve saying "oooopps"