Destination: Moon. Starting point: Isle of Man. Deadline: 2015.
10 out of 10 for ambition, which after all is what got the USA to the moon:
Excalibur Almaz is Britain’s answer to SpaceX, and it’s planning to send men back to the moon and beyond — and as early as 2015, too.
Based on the Isle of Man, Excalibur Almaz is a private company, which was set up back in 2005, with many, many years of space-faring experience behind it. Its current team consists of a true multinational bunch, including a tour de force of American commercial space pioneers, NASA consultants, and Russian engineers and cosmonauts. The company bought four space-proven Russian reusable re-entry vehicles (RRVs) — they’re the space capsules you see shooting through the atmosphere ferrying people safely back to Earth. EA also has two Salyut-class space station units, which it plans to use as both a launch platform and as part of a larger spacecraft combined with the RRVs…
Unlike another British-at-its-core venture, Virgin Galactic, EA is going to send men beyond low Earth orbit, and plans to use its system to send men on a trip to the moon and beyond. [Gizmodo]
UPDATE: It is 2016. No man or woman in the moon from the Isle of Man so far.
At University of TÜBINGEN / Germany interested students can study "Space Science" ,- students have possibilities to take part on "Parabel-Flights". University Tübingen has close contact to "ESA". It is very good , that the ISLE OF MAN will become a further place from where to start into orbit.