Elon Musk’s audacious launch of his Falcon Heavy rocket last week was a huge breakthrough in spaceflight technology and puts his company SpaceX far ahead of his rivals in the commercial space business. The re-useable boosters , two of which landed with balletic precision after the launch, will cut the cost of heavy launches in future from around $1b to more like €100 million.

But there was also a touch of whimsy in the launch as the payload on this flight was a Tesla car equipped with a dummy astronaut , a Bowie soundtrack and a nod to “Hitchhiker” with the “don’t panic” sign on the dashboard . There were many comments about the bizzare sight of a car in orbit around the Earth. Nothing like this has ever been seen before………unless of course you were reading the Jeff Hawke strip in 1965. In ANTI- GRAVITY MAN which appeared in the Daily express fifty three years ago, we see a car in orbit around the Earth , in this instance the iconic mini-cooper. In the Hawke story some alien technology has been harnessed to equip the car with anti-grav motors. Its owner , equipped with diving suit and using a school atlas , rescues a stranded astronaut from certain death in his doomed space capsule.

Another example of how Messrs Patterson and Jordan got there first. Skipper Prossitt