They invested in a few rocket motors, things that look suspiciously like fireworks, and act like them too. For "test purposes", one of these was inserted into the end of a metal lab trolley, which was then ignited in the teachers' car park. Perhaps this wasn't such a good idea, although fortunately the evidence has since been removed during recent building work.

Time to call in the experts, in the shape of Kavan Convey, whose name we were given by the Royal Observatory in Edinburgh. Kavan invited us to the observatory for a rocket making workshop.

The rockets were made, by teams of three or four, from cardboard and glue, the idea being that that if the rockets were very simple, it wouldn't matter very much if they got lost. Safety being the order of the day, we attached parachutes made from plastic bags, so the rockets would fall down to earth slowly. Apparently even cardboard can be lethal if dropped from 300 feet.

A few weeks later, we invited Kavan to the school one Saturday, for the official lift-off. The rockets all fired off safely and there were several entertaining moments as one of the rockets spiraled off course and another rocket's parachute failed to release, sending it shooting into the ground. One team had secretly stuffed their parachute with confetti.