Our story start’s on Friday night at 1900 hours (7.00pm) in between my bath and bed time. Molly came to me with an amazing idea as to what we could do at the weekend. Her bright idea was that we should try to build a two-seat, light spacecraft so that we could both boldly go where no little girl or basset hound has ever been before.

Molly had her own reasons for wanting to travel into outer space, which she said were to collect space particles, measure solar radiation levels and eat as many cookies as possible in zero gravity before being sick. But all I wanted do was see if I could find my house from space.

I told my dad about our plans to travel to outer space. He giggled to himself and said, “I will get some bits and pieces for your space craft tomorrow morning, ‘Poppet’.”