The Wilkins family are calling it their own Artemis project. Some 40 years on from the launch of the original concept, the family unit behind the Hinterland Water Rokit are returning to where it all began to deliver a ‘moon mission for the modern era.’

It’s one of the many parallels that Dan Wilkins, the company’s director, draws between the family business and NASA.

Anyone less sincerely enthusiastic for their topic would never get away with such a sentiment. Afterall, this is the toy industry, not rocket science. However, Dan Wilkins, son of the inventor of the world’s first and only precision water bottle rocket kit, has been surrounded by rocketry his whole life. So, when he talks about ‘tweaking the original statement’ and readying his father’s work for relaunch, it’s difficult to find anything contrived here.

The tweaks Dan talks so emphatically about may appear on the surface only one small step for the business, but it’s a giant leap for mankind. The very product that put the Wilkins family on the map four decades ago is being overhauled and the plastic stripped out.

“Our number one selling Water Rokit kit has historically been the one with the plastic bottle. But we came to the realisation that we are buying plastic and shipping it around the world. Yes, we are all about STEM and education, but we felt we were missing an opportunity to bring environmental education into our fold,” explains Dan.

“We thought, there’s no better time to be courageous and do something bold. So, we removed the plastic bottle.”

Instead, children are now being encouraged to upcycle their own plastic waste. More than STEM and rocketry, Hinterland’s precision Water Rokit is now actively encouraging younger years education around reuse and product circularity.

“So, yes – we are now selling a space and science education rocket launch kit that is essentially incomplete,” laughs Dan. “But we felt that environmental education was more pressing to address – these ‘incomplete’ rocket kits now drive a renewed launch mission: to raise awareness and educate kids on reuse.”

More so still, it helps Water Rokit‘s younger audience create a new narrative around their understanding of waste. If an empty plastic bottle they would have once put in the bin could become a rocket, what dormant value can be unlocked in other items? Is ‘waste’ even real or just a by-product of a wasteful system?

“This is our Artemis project in a way, we are doing like NASA are doing. We’re returning to the launch that put us on the map but we are delivering a new mission for the new generation,” says Dan. “I believe it was a brave decision on our part, made harder by this 40-year legacy we have as a family for bringing rocketry to life for primary school children through plastic bottle rockets. But we don’t want to be known for encouraging plastic waste. We want to be known for providing children the education to find the solution to the problem we face.”

But the re-engineering project doesn’t end there. Historically, each Hinterland precision Water Rokit kit has arrived accompanied by a learning manual, again produced by Dan’s father 40 years ago. This 20-page tome taught children how to use the rocket and apply its teaching to STEM education. This very manual, Dan claims, is around ‘90% of the content used by NASA in its own flying water rocket teaching programmes.’ But it’s just been updated. This manual has now been removed and translated into a digital version; made more accessible for the next generation of young rocket scientists.

All of this couldn’t be taking place at a more exciting time. Cultural interest in rocketry and space exploration is about to undergo somewhat of a resurgence here in the UK. Why? Well, not only has NASA released a swathe of blood-pumping detail surrounding its plans to partner with Elon Musk’s Space X and return to the moon where it will build a gateway station for the next major target: astronauts on Mars, but the UK is getting in on the rocket action, too with the development of the SaxaVord Spaceport on the Shetland Islands.

“It’s amazing,” says Dan. “In America and Australia, rocketry is so significant. It’s such a part of the culture. But later this year, SaxaVord is going to start firing up satellite orbits with vertically launched rockets from the Shetlands, right here in the UK. It will be the UK and mainland Europe’s rocket launch centre, and the excitement that is going to be driven by this across UK culture is going to be so significant, it’s like we have our own Cape Canaveral.”

All of this activity hasn’t failed to attract attention from all the right people, either. And that includes from the UK environmental non-profit and Products of Change member, Wastebuster who has since partnered with Hinterland Water Rokit to bring the educational kit to its audience of thousands of schools and school children and their families across the UK and Europe.

“Discovering the team at Wastebuster was just a moment of inspiration and uplift,” explains Dan who had, until then, spent hours having very difficult conversations with customers and partners not yet aligned with the team’s decision to remove its plastic offering.

“When I met Wastebuster, I was blown away. I was really engaged with what the business is doing and the human beings behind it all – they have real purpose and intent. And I felt that finally, we have a collaboration and connection with a company that was as – if not more so – courageous as we were.

“And the feather in the cap for us is how on board they are with what Water Rokit is delivering: STEM, environmental education and the promotion of reuse, all wrapped up in this topic of rocketry that is about to see a major and hugely impactful resurgence in the UK.”

And so, 40 years of legacy later, the Wilkins family are feeling really rather excited about the journey they’re about to embark on again. And should they be the type of business in need of a sign they were on the right track, that’s been covered too.

“So, the Artemis mission is named so because Artemis is the twin sister of Apollo – Apollo 11 being the name of the first mission to the moon,” explains Dan. “We’re a family of twins. My brother and I are twins, and my two sister are twins. So, we really are doing as NASA is doing.”