alternatehistory.com

"Symposium - theme: Space transportation systems for the 1990's - organized by P. J. Conchie - offers and papers are invited for presentation at a one day meeting to be held in the British Interplanetary Society conference room, 27/29 South Lambert Road, London, on 15 april 1982, 9:30 a.m

(...)

Papers presented at the Symposium included

J.C. Bouillot, Ariane ... Today and Tomorrow.

D.E. Koelle, European Launch Vehicle Alternatives Beyond Ariane 4.

CM. Hempsell, A Low Cost Approach to Interplanetary Exploration.

D. Ashford. Towards Mature Space Transportation.

R. Parkinson, A Manned Mars Mission for 1995

"Alan [Bond] meanwhile had gone away in a different direction but was also thinking about the same problem. He started by thinking about rather exotic propellants that might be used, but he also started to think about engine cycles that you might use as well, that being more his line of territory. And in the late spring of ‘82 he, erm … gave me a ring at Waltham Abbey, mainly because he’d been thinking about exotic propellants and he wanted to know my opinion about exotic propellants. And … I knew that what we he was proposing wasn’t a very good idea, let’s put it that way [laughs]. It … while it looked attractive it – anybody who’d done work on it had – had probably got cuts and bruises as a minimum from the results of it. But we talked on the phone and we talked about the other thing, about just how little you need to do a – or whether you could do – and we clearly were thinking along parallel lines.

And … the next meeting was going – I forget where the next meeting was, Australia I think and … was going to happen probably in September of – of 1982 in Australia... So … I think the dates – so Alan and I had a phone conversation, realised we were on similar lines and we organised a meeting in his office down at Culham down days before I went to Stevenage to discuss things and John Scott-Scott came to the meeting as well, and I think David Andrews. The later two knew each others quite well since the Black Arrow days.

That April 15, 1982 meeting at the BIS had us discussing of single stage to orbit, except that our little group of engineers ended divided on the subject. You had Alan Bond clearly emerging as a leader with fresh ideas - you guess, that's when HOTOL saw the light of the day. We all followed him except for the Davids. Ashford went his own way, leaving the other David [Andrews] apart.

For years and years Ashford had been pushing for his own vision of what an economical space transportation system was to be. He intended to build that from off-the-shelf-part such as the Agena space tug, Diagonal launch vehicle. It was too much for Alan Bond, who by constrast sought a major breakthrough. In the end David Andrews told all of us he was convinced by neither approach. That's how we ended with a third proposal. Our British brains and imaginations proved to be fertile that day..."

(excerpt from: An oral history of the HOTOL / Skylon saga, testimony of Robert "Bob" Parkinson)