Could Britain Land a Person on the Moon by 2027?

Having seen at first-hand the depressing indifference displayed towards subjects like Maths, English and the Sciences by many students in classes where I support learners with special educational needs and disabilities (SEND), it occurred to me that the election of a new Labour Government may provide the perfect opportunity to reawaken a passion for those subjects in learners across Britain through ambitious and exciting projects that would require their mastery.

One such STEM-engagement endeavour could be the announcement by the new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer, of a British ‘Apollo Mission’ aimed at landing a Briton on the Moon by 2027 as part of an effort to establish a permanent UK presence on the lunar surface.

Could Britain Land a Person On the Moon By 2027? 

For what could be a better way to infuse the British people with a new sense of National Purpose and spark genuine enthusiasm for Maths, English and Science in young people across the UK than through the launch of a literal ‘moonshot’? Consisting of a ‘Manhattan Project’-like crash program aimed at building a SpaceX-style Starship (‘HMS Galactica’ i.e. His Majesty’s Starship Galactica), this spectacular undertaking would seek to land a ‘Brit on the Moon’ by 2027.

This lunar voyage – to be named the ‘Excalibur Mission’ – would be launched from an as-yet-to-be-built ‘King Charles Space Centre’ (Britain’s answer to Cape Canaveral) and would have as its goal the establishment of a permanent lunar base (‘Moon Base Albion’) to be settled by a colony of the UK’s very own ‘Britonauts’ whose presence there would serve as a staging post for the UK’s follow-on 2030 ‘Galadriel Mission’ to Mars.

How Would Britain’s Moon Landing Be Funded?

In what would be the world’s single largest NFT project, Britain’s Excalibur Mission could be funded by tokenizing the British Starship as an NFT, placing it on marketplaces like Opensea and inviting investors from Britain and across the world to purchase any of the one million Starship NFTs towards our goal of raising the estimated £10 billion (or so) budget with which to build our fleet of British Starships and the associated Moonbase. 

And with less relative effort than Sir Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic or Elon Musk’s SpaceX, the United Kingdom – endowed as it is with thousands of talented scientists, technicians and engineers – could assemble our own SpaceX-like Starship, launch our own Space Mission and land a ‘Brit on the Moon’ by 2027!

Does Britain Possess the Resources & Expertise for a Moon Landing?

• According to a recent study Britain has among the world’s leading “robotics, advanced materials, automation, metrology and artificial intelligence” professionals along with a “high concentration of industrial expertise in the design, development and manufacture of complex machinery”, thus endowing the UK with everything we need for Britain’s very own ‘Apollo Program’
• As the world’s graphene capital (and home of both the National Graphene Institute and its sister facility, the Graphene Engineering Innovation Centre) the City of Manchester alone has the expertise in the material that makes her the municipality best suited to supply the heat shield for Britain’s first Starship
• Greater Manchester’s Borough of Rochdale, as home to the planned Advanced Machinery and Productivity Institute, is set to play a leading role in the UK’s development of autonomous robotic systems of the kind that would be vital to Britain’s first Moon Landing
• The 120-hectare Heywood/Pilsworth site, located around Junction 18 of the M60 motorway and extending east to Junction 19 of the M62 and north to Junction 3 of the M66, is situated close to the Heywood Distribution Park and would be the ideal site for a Starship-building gigafactory for Britain’s first Moon Mission

Manchester alone, to say nothing of the entire country, possesses within her ten boroughs all of the expertise and resources required to undertake a full-blown Space Mission that could land a ‘Brit on the Moon’ on our own UK-built Starship by 2027.

After all, if Britons possess the resources and ingenuity to build Vanguard-class nuclear powered submarines (and undertake Herculean engineering projects like the Elizabeth Line and HS2), could we not just as easily summon the same Blitz Spirit with which the Oxford-AstraZeneca team conjured a record-breaking COVID vaccine in 2020 in order to assemble a fleet of Churchill-class fusion-driven Starships that would land a ‘Brit on the Moon’?

A ‘British Model’ of Space Exploration?

As the birthplace of the Industrial Revolution, Manchester could become Britain’s ‘Space Capital’ and launch a Space Revolution that could inspire the planet. And like Britain’s world-class soccer teams, a newly formed United Kingdom Starship Command (UKSC) and United Kingdom Astronaut Corps (UKAC) could trigger the competitive spirit that turns this lunar dream into a reality.

Online platforms like LinkedIn would be an invaluable resource in assembling the ‘Manhattan Project’-style team of specialists who would build our Starships and land our ‘Brit on the Moon’. The top aerospace professionals in Britain and the world are to be found on LinkedIn by their thousands simply by typing in the relevant job title. 

And the fact that Britain’s Starships themselves would be communally owned by the fans and investors who purchased the Starship NFTs would assure the project of broad public support and fuel the passion propelling the ‘Brit on the Moon’ mission from an idle daydream into a blazing reality.  

--------------------------------- 

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Paul Bitakaramire is a published writer whose articles have appeared in Britain’s Spectator magazine and elsewhere.