The Ascender space plane, designed by David Ashford of Bristol SpacePlanes

Bristolians are being invited to help launch planes into space in a new crowd-funding campaign.

Bristol SpacePlanes, a local firm which hopes to one day make space travel affordable, wants to raise 10,000 to build the first model of its Ascender space plane.

Founder David Ashford believes organisations such as NASA having being going about space travel the wrong way and that it could become much cheaper by reviving some old ideas from the 1960s.

The main barrier is not the technology, but changing peoples mindset he said. The technology is proven its just a case of getting people to believe.

Support us and you will, we truly believe, be helping us to bring spaceflight to the masses within 15 years.

One the reasons space flight is so expensive, costing millions of pounds to send an astronaut into space, is that rockets burn out and cant be re-used.

Imagine how much motoring would cost if we threw away the car after every journey, said David.

It is clear that an airliner that could fly to orbit would transform this situation. It could provide an airline service to orbit and open up large new markets, especially tourist visits to space hotels.

What is less well known is that in the 1960s most big aircraft companies in Europe and the USA studied space planes in depth. There was a consensus that space planes were the obvious next step and that they were just about feasible with the technology of the day.

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Bristol SpacePlanes launches crowd-funding campaign to help it get into orbit