Objective 4

A race against time by an inspired group of innovators, up against those who would control them. In this rapid moving near future adventure, Andrew Machan and his team of engineers have developed a new technology - a single stage to orbit spaceplane. However, there are others who are determined to thwart their ambitions; determined that innovation should be controlled and managed by more sensible and less cavalier types . Objective 4 brings together creative and entrepreneurial personalities determined to make better futures through hard work, imagination and creative effort. To do so, they have to follow an ingenious secretive development plan that outwits those who would prefer to decide what can be done. In a series of exciting twists and turns the group of engineer adventurers manage by creative and outrageous chutzpah to achieve their goal - the mysterious Objective 4. Set initially against the remote backdrop of the Scottish Highlands where testing is done, the adventure takes the reader into the air and on up to orbit but also through some of the labyrinthine torture of the over-zealous regulatory state. The lead characters are a diverse bunch; becoming friends as they do battle to keep going. The Machans - a talented entrepreneurial husband and his equally talented and extraordinarily beautiful wife - use their charms and that talent to get their way. They are supported by hard-boiled Texan Jake Diamond and other key supporters; the media savvy Maddie Schwartz and Scottish engineers Callum Buchanan, Duncan Mackinnes and Helen Cree. They are joined by the initially inscrutable Dr Celia Hammond. Whose side is she on? No-one knows, but soon enough she lets Jake Diamond find out. The result is not only a romp across Scotland's heather moors and lochs, but also a flight into tomorrow that tells us a lot about the bureaucratic, political and media realities that define why progress has become so difficult. The author is both an engineer and a political economist and the conjunction of those themes is a recurrent strand throughout the book. The result makes the reader think about how forward-thinking optimistic innovators are forced to work within such constraints. We are made to ask ourselves whether we risk the throttling of progress through blind interventions that are more self-serving than serving human progress. Objective 4 wraps such themes with a light touch within an essentially uplifting story of a battle by practical individuals against the odds and keeps it fun all the way. Objective 4 has to be achieved!