Ministry of Space
What is it that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse?
- Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979.
We’ve all seen news footage of huge multi-stage rockets lifting off from the Kilimanjaro Launch Facility and delta-shaped rocket ships blasting off from the Woomera Space Center or manoeuvring through the endless star specked space. Or marvelled at the capabilities of the newest Oberon Satellites. Or seen the grainy black and white photos of Malcolm Davis and Ceepak Basheer Saheb as they took their first steps on the pock-marked surface of the Moon. As the mission to Mars is planned and next to five billion non-Commonwealth citizens daily walk in the shadow of the Zuckerman and Churchill Space Stations every day, the British Ministry of Space and their Commonwealth equivalents in the Commonwealth Space Agency – the CSA - can look back at nearly 50 years of space flight and untold successes.
Part I
“All right”, the critics said, “let's build the super V2 if we must...but let's have less of this worship of things German. The Germans didn't win the War!” It was a danger signal, a denial of science. The man who builds a swing doesn't plant a tree and wait for it to grow. He selects an established tree and secures his ropes to the stoutest branch!
- Ivan Southall, Woomera, 1962.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories!
- Arthur C. Clarke.
The British Interplanetary Society (BIS) formed in Liverpool in 1933, and, due to a peculiar British law - the Explosives Act of 1875 - prohibiting the building of rockets by private individuals, concentrated on theoretical work in astronautics and thus broaden an awareness of the need for space exploration and rocketry. Although the Explosives Act severely restricted rocketry research, certain government sponsored tests were allowed nonetheless. These included amongst others research into anti-aircraft rockets, long-range rockets – very early missiles -, air-to-air rockets and assisted take-off rockets by the Research Department at Woolwich Arsenal in the mid-30’s. Tests which led to the development of smokeless cordite for one.
Even with the legal bonds placed on them, the BIS had nonetheless done remarkably well - especially if one considers the little or no funding they recieved before the War and the fact that their advocacy of using rockets to explore space made many view them as cranks. Still, BIS brought together a brilliant group of visionaries. Among the best known were Arthur C. Clarke and the popular sci-fi writer, John Wyndham. The group also included Val Cleaver, an engineer who would play a leading role in the Blue Streak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) project and other similar projects. In 1937 a feasibility study of a Lunar landing mission began. With it, the BIS hoped to prove that that such missions were possible.
The technology needed to place a satellite in orbit is very similar to that which is required to move a nuclear warhead over intercontinental distances and the possibility of launching nuclear weapons at the Soviets would by far be the main British incentive for building rockets in the early 50’s. But many who worked on the military weapons saw their initial efforts to build a weapon as part of an unspoken long-term mission to get into and ultimately explore space. One man’s Herculean effort brought German and British know-how and shared dreams together in what was to become the British Ministry of Space. As we all know, that man was Solly Zuckerman.
Unable to raise the funds needed to build large pieces of hardware in the 1930s, the BIS focussed on tackling the theoretical problems of space travel. However, after the first V2-missile attacks on Britain, some members of the BIS gained prominence. Not for their, at the time, somewhat loony space ideas, but for their knowledge of rockets and ballistics. The BIS-experts got an unexpected friend in RAF’s in-house technical expert, the ingenious South African, Solly Zuckerman. Zuckerman, even though he never publicly admitted it, saw the possibilities in space travel and exploration. Some time in late 1944, Zuckerman arranged for a meeting between some members of BIS, himself – naturally -, Prime minister Churchill, Lord Tizard, the government’s technological advisor, Fieldmarshal Alanbrooke, the head the Imperial General Staff, and Air Marshal Tedder. Tizard was very direct in his dismissal of rockets, missiles and other little boy’s toys. It was his firm impression that the Germans were getting increasingly desperate and thus needed those fantasy weapons, the Allies should concentrate on real weapons. Tedder, however, noted that the Royal Air Force was unable to stop the V2’s in flight and that they on impact killed British citizens and destroyed property, which, in Tedders book, meant that they were a very real and relevant threat. BIS-member Val Cleaver noted en passant that not only could rockets be made to transport bombs as the Germans did it, they could also take you into space. In space the possibilities were infinite. At the meeting Cleaver is said to have sketched out the very first spy satellite. Alanbrooke, an avid
birdwatcher, and the ever adventurous Prime Minister seemed to warm to the idea of a concentrated British effort toward designing and building functioning rockets. The RAF’s Department of Rocketry was thus born and placed under Zuckerman’s supervison. After the war the DoR took a leading role in pressing the case for space exploration and research, both in Britain and in the Commonwealth, and got moved from RAF to the Ministry of Aviation. Later it would emerge in its own right as the Ministry of Space.
What is it that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle, such as a Redstone, Atlas, Titan or Saturn rocket, and wait for someone to light the fuse?
- Tom Wolfe, The Right Stuff, 1979.
We’ve all seen news footage of huge multi-stage rockets lifting off from the Kilimanjaro Launch Facility and delta-shaped rocket ships blasting off from the Woomera Space Center or manoeuvring through the endless star specked space. Or marvelled at the capabilities of the newest Oberon Satellites. Or seen the grainy black and white photos of Malcolm Davis and Ceepak Basheer Saheb as they took their first steps on the pock-marked surface of the Moon. As the mission to Mars is planned and next to five billion non-Commonwealth citizens daily walk in the shadow of the Zuckerman and Churchill Space Stations every day, the British Ministry of Space and their Commonwealth equivalents in the Commonwealth Space Agency – the CSA - can look back at nearly 50 years of space flight and untold successes.
Part I
“All right”, the critics said, “let's build the super V2 if we must...but let's have less of this worship of things German. The Germans didn't win the War!” It was a danger signal, a denial of science. The man who builds a swing doesn't plant a tree and wait for it to grow. He selects an established tree and secures his ropes to the stoutest branch!
- Ivan Southall, Woomera, 1962.
Politicians should read science fiction, not westerns and detective stories!
- Arthur C. Clarke.
The British Interplanetary Society (BIS) formed in Liverpool in 1933, and, due to a peculiar British law - the Explosives Act of 1875 - prohibiting the building of rockets by private individuals, concentrated on theoretical work in astronautics and thus broaden an awareness of the need for space exploration and rocketry. Although the Explosives Act severely restricted rocketry research, certain government sponsored tests were allowed nonetheless. These included amongst others research into anti-aircraft rockets, long-range rockets – very early missiles -, air-to-air rockets and assisted take-off rockets by the Research Department at Woolwich Arsenal in the mid-30’s. Tests which led to the development of smokeless cordite for one.
Even with the legal bonds placed on them, the BIS had nonetheless done remarkably well - especially if one considers the little or no funding they recieved before the War and the fact that their advocacy of using rockets to explore space made many view them as cranks. Still, BIS brought together a brilliant group of visionaries. Among the best known were Arthur C. Clarke and the popular sci-fi writer, John Wyndham. The group also included Val Cleaver, an engineer who would play a leading role in the Blue Streak Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) project and other similar projects. In 1937 a feasibility study of a Lunar landing mission began. With it, the BIS hoped to prove that that such missions were possible.
The technology needed to place a satellite in orbit is very similar to that which is required to move a nuclear warhead over intercontinental distances and the possibility of launching nuclear weapons at the Soviets would by far be the main British incentive for building rockets in the early 50’s. But many who worked on the military weapons saw their initial efforts to build a weapon as part of an unspoken long-term mission to get into and ultimately explore space. One man’s Herculean effort brought German and British know-how and shared dreams together in what was to become the British Ministry of Space. As we all know, that man was Solly Zuckerman.
Unable to raise the funds needed to build large pieces of hardware in the 1930s, the BIS focussed on tackling the theoretical problems of space travel. However, after the first V2-missile attacks on Britain, some members of the BIS gained prominence. Not for their, at the time, somewhat loony space ideas, but for their knowledge of rockets and ballistics. The BIS-experts got an unexpected friend in RAF’s in-house technical expert, the ingenious South African, Solly Zuckerman. Zuckerman, even though he never publicly admitted it, saw the possibilities in space travel and exploration. Some time in late 1944, Zuckerman arranged for a meeting between some members of BIS, himself – naturally -, Prime minister Churchill, Lord Tizard, the government’s technological advisor, Fieldmarshal Alanbrooke, the head the Imperial General Staff, and Air Marshal Tedder. Tizard was very direct in his dismissal of rockets, missiles and other little boy’s toys. It was his firm impression that the Germans were getting increasingly desperate and thus needed those fantasy weapons, the Allies should concentrate on real weapons. Tedder, however, noted that the Royal Air Force was unable to stop the V2’s in flight and that they on impact killed British citizens and destroyed property, which, in Tedders book, meant that they were a very real and relevant threat. BIS-member Val Cleaver noted en passant that not only could rockets be made to transport bombs as the Germans did it, they could also take you into space. In space the possibilities were infinite. At the meeting Cleaver is said to have sketched out the very first spy satellite. Alanbrooke, an avid
birdwatcher, and the ever adventurous Prime Minister seemed to warm to the idea of a concentrated British effort toward designing and building functioning rockets. The RAF’s Department of Rocketry was thus born and placed under Zuckerman’s supervison. After the war the DoR took a leading role in pressing the case for space exploration and research, both in Britain and in the Commonwealth, and got moved from RAF to the Ministry of Aviation. Later it would emerge in its own right as the Ministry of Space.
A slightly rewritten Intro and Part I is up, Part II will follwow after the weekend...