Original URL: https://www.theregister.com/2010/11/11/paris_paper/

Our PARIS becomes GLOBAL MEDIA SENSATION

Deserved fame for paper spaceplane, plucky Playmonaut

By John Oates

Posted in Science, 11th November 2010 10:46 GMT

The Paper Aircraft Released Into Space (PARIS) balloon mothership spaceplane project - named in homage to the socialite and inadvertent internet sensation of all our hearts - has finally won the recognition she always deserved.

The plane, and our heroic Playmonaut, have made it onto the front page of the Telegraph, inside the Times and Daily Mail as well as being covered on LBC this morning. More TV appearances are expected later today.

We here on the Reg space desk like to feel that our project in its own small way follows on in the grand century-old tradition of the news media helping to drive forward development in cutting-edge aerospace technology.

As all dedicated students of aviation history will know, the Morning Post's readers clubbed together to buy the British armed forces an airship - and the Daily Mail sponsored popular air races - in the era before World War I; in the 1930s newspaper tycoon William Hearst sponsored a round-the-world zeppelin flight. There have been many other examples, though sadly fewer in recent times.

In these degenerate internet days when journalists must scrabble for a living, resources are slimmer: the ruthless media barons who control the Register felt unable to fund even a modest airship or space rocket. But nonetheless, with the aid of our corporate sponsors, the epic PARIS suborbital paper plane effort has perhaps gone some way to reigniting the spark of enthusiasm for aerospace (or at any rate traditional garden-shed engineering) in old Blighty. The Reg's accidental reinvigoration of the British space programme could be just the fillip the nation needs at this dark hour.

Regular readers will know that all our sensational PARIS coverage can be found here in our dedicated PARIS channel. ®

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