Jay: Buzz, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us about your experiences with the program Scrapheap Challenge. My first question has to do with your nickname, 'Buzz'. Where on earth did you ever come up with such a name?

Buzz: I didn't :-) The TV people made it up :-) Initially, when I turned up on set and saw the name, I was quite annoyed, and didn't want to put the helmet on, but after much persuasion, I relented. I don't have a nickname, I'm normally just known as Richard or Rich, that's it. So I'm afraid that one is a myth :-)

J: Well...now I can go back to those Nazca Lines in Peru. Let me ask you about the show itself. How did you become involved with the show?

B: By accident really. The first UK rocketeer the TV people asked was a Scottish Rocketeer, and he declined, but put them in touch with a friend of mine in the same rocketry group, MARS. He said "Oh I know someone much more enthusiastic than me, you want him!". Thus it was that I ended up doing the show, and he ended up as their technical adviser.

J: That's quite a stroke of luck! I guess it does prove the adage of "It's not what you know..." but I think it was a great combination of what and who you knew. Now, before the show, were you given any kind of material or preparation?

B: I was given a few sheets of contact details, and a rough outline of what Scrapheap was about. I was told I would be a team expert on a show with rockets, and that there would be 4 rocket motors made by a company called Aerotech, placed on the scrapheap, that the team had to find, but that I was not allowed to describe to the team what the motors looked like, nor that they were solid motors.

So if they went down the route off wanting to build a liquid rocket, I couldn't tell them "well actually, there's some solid rocket motors hidden on set". Luckily, as soon as they found one of the solid motors, it was easy to just say "great, look for more of the same". Both team experts (myself and Charles Simpson - who I know very well) use Aerotech motors, so we knew what to expect.

I was also told not to give away my background to the team before they were told on camera, nor what the week's task was.

J: I suppose if they knew your background, it basically gives the challenge away. What about the rocket itself? It flew quite well but what did you use?

B: The rocket was a small, traditional style rocket made from the casing of a sealant gun, a plastic water filter, a piece of plastic drainpipe, some wooden rings to centre the motor, a parachute made out of a tent and some string, and aluminium fins. The rocket was so small because I knew that of the 4 motors hidden on set, the team had recovered the smaller ones, which meant the other team had the biggest and most powerful motor. Consequently, the only way to go higher than them, would be to build something as small and light, and as small a diameter (to reduce cross-sectional area for aerodynamic drag) as possible.

I had some mad ideas about building a lander, and staging it etc, but calmed down soon enough, given that they are complicated enough when you have the right equipment, let alone using only junk :-)

I wanted to separate the rocket into 2 halves, so the payload would come down by parachute and the motor section would tumble down, or come down on a streamer - this would have been the simplest option. The TV people ruled this out because it was deemed unsafe (although as I suspected, it would have been safer to do it that way than the way we had to do it in the end, since that way, gravity would have ensured the parachute deployed). So anyway, we went with the traditional model and high power rocketry approach to recovery of separating both halves by a length of shockcord. Unfortunately, due to the packing and tightness, the vehicle never separated cleanly on the descent, so the shockcord never got chance to work.

J: Yes. As I recall, your rocket buried itself rather deep into Mother Earth. What about the 10 hours spent building the rocket? What was that like?

B: The build went very well considering we had to build the rocket from scrap. The team were lovely people (as were the other team for that matter).

In the end, our rocket actually went to about 1200 feet, and the other team's went to 800 feet, but for the purposes of the TV, they actually said the altitudes were much closer than they actually were. The rockets each carried an off-the shelf altimeter/accelerometer called an IAX-96, which logged the altitudes and accelerations of the rockets over the entire flights. I think both were damaged after the flights. Our team's was written off, and I think they got the altitude out by extracting the EEPROM and reading the data from the chip directly.

The mistake we made was having the cabbage wadding packed too tight. I did actually say "This isn't going to work" on camera, but it didn't make it to the final cut. I was overuled on the amount of wadding and the tightness of the wadding, and unfortunately, given the criticality of the parachute, this was the one place I shouldn't have been overuled :-( Still, it was a spectacular crash, and I still have the wreckage :-)

J: Speaking of being over-ruled, some have suggested that you came off as somewhat buffoonish on TV. Now, in speaking with you, you strike me as quite the opposite. I find you to be a passionate person on the subject of rockets. Where you surprised by the final product seen on TV?

B: Yes and no. I am by nature, fairly enthusiastic, so I know how I am likely to come across. In hindsight I think when I was asked to get excited and jump up and down for the camera, I should have said no, on the grounds that you can't really catch sponteneity, and you end up looking mad. Yes, I did jump up and down and get excited, but that's because I love rocketry and get immersed in it. I think they got good TV out of it, but it didn't all do me favours when I had to go into management meetings with my work subsequently.

The people on set though were really nice, and the teams were great fun to be with.

J: That's good to hear, that the people were nice. It's been my experience that enthusiasm can be met with ridicule, which is really too bad. Anyway, what was it that sparked your interest in rockets?

B: Watching the moon landings whilst still in larval stage.

J: OK, short & to the point. I'll abandon that line of questioning. :-) I want to ask you a couple of questions about the future of space exploration, since that is your area of expertise. Do you think we will ever travel through space in the way Star Trek or the Space Odyssey movies envision?

B: Eventually, yes. The first hurdle is to develop cheap, reusable launch vehicles, and where possible, Single Stage To Orbit Spacecraft. As soon as the launch costs drop, then we should see a major expansion of space exploration, initially to High Earth Orbit and the Moon, and then in time, to Mars and beyond. Extrapolating past that point, you have to look at others strands of technology too, and bring them together to work out where mankind will go, and when.

It would certainly not be impossible to imagine manned exploration to the edge of our Solar System by then end of the 21st century. After that, it's a bit like asking where would we be in 200 years, to someone in 1800. How could they have forseen all the advances we have made since that time? Likewise, given the increasing pace of technological change, it would be foolish to rule anything out in timeframes beyond the 21st century.

J: Good point. That's why I'll leave the rocket science to someone who is in the know. One other question on the subject, other galaxies are 1000s of light years away, making even the speed of light too slow for deep space exploration. How do you figure we'll visit other galaxies?

B: There has been some promising studies done on the concept of a warp drive by an astrophysicist called Miguel Acubierre at the University of Cardiff. Whilst we certainly don't have the technology at present, in many hundreds of years time, this may change. Likewise, the work by physicists such as Dr Hal Puthoff on zero point energy and vacuum fluctuations is possibly a way to develop seriously fast propulsion systems too. I think the concept of warping space around a vehicle and using a combination of negative matter and positive matter to push and pull the vehcile to its destination is a plausible approach - if we could figure out how to make the negative matter etc :-)

In the shorter term, Nuclear propulsion has been tested on the ground back in the 1960's in Nevada, U.S.A., there is a spacecraft called Deep Space 1 whizzing around the solar system powered by an Ion engine as we speak, and some promising work has been carried out on antimatter propulsion, which if developed further (if the costs come down) would open up the solar system.

J: One final question before we go. Would you do it again if they asked?

B: Yes, definitely. It was great fun to do.