Well, classic Atlas lasted till what, 2004 of Stage and a half kerlox sat lofting?
But yeah, they did themselves no favors with putting French and German upper stages on Blue Streak
AHC: Britain be a player in the Space Race
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Well, classic Atlas lasted till what, 2004 of Stage and a half kerlox sat lofting?
But yeah, they did themselves no favors with putting French and German upper stages on Blue Streak
Sure, what are you not going to pay for to fund the launch capability and the payloads to use it? There's a quote, part of which lent the title for C. N. Hill's history of the British rocketry and space programmes A Vertical Empire, from a note that the Chief Secretary to the Treasury sent in 1963 that observed 'I suggest we cannot begin to build a vertical empire if our colleagues insist on our continuing to provide for the defence of a horizontal one.' I'd highly recommend both A Vertical Empire and his Space UK page.
Malta? Okay whilst it might it might be nearer and potentially able to still be a part of the UK-proper I can't really see the down-range neighbours being all that impressed by the idea. Agreeing a Sovereign Base Area type deal like in Cyprus with Trinidad would be further away but much nearer the equator at roughly 10.28 and with clear water to the east, or in a case of can't beat them join them Guyana is even closer at 6.25 albeit with a trickier political situation and depending on the angles needing an agreement with the Netherlands.
Well that's two very distinct things, the design and building of the satellites themselves and the launching of them. The major profit has always been in the former rather than the latter, although SpaceX could be changing that.
Marconi made a number of Sats that rode to orbit on US rockets.
I do admit that the UK might not have been able to drop costs as uch as was done with the Delta, but giving up guaranteed failure
Any missile that's going to be used long term as a deterrent weapon needs to be hypergolic, or better yet solid. Going that route might (possibily) get you a deterrent for a while, but it's a lousy basis for a commercial launcher.
No, I'd have them realize that Skybolt isn't the 'thing' sooner, keep the Blue Streak in service longer (say until Polaris subs can take up the deterrent role),
Get a bit more funding for the Black Prince, and you've got quite a capable first gen satellite launcher.
Howard Hughes had his fingers in everything, his new division, Hughes Aerospace and later Space and Communications Group, did fire and ground control, radars, Missiles, Sats, etc. etc.
AT&T, well Ma Bell had plenty, but that was all communication related but thru Bell Labs and Western Electric, that did a lot of the same stuff as Hughes Aerospace, but no vehicles
If the Australian government is prepared to foot the bill for the facilities then thats a massive advantage over other sites, plus the proximity to the equator would be nice.
What's in Korou other than a type of wasp that spins its nests in rockets and shitload more bad weather?
Ok... Let's flip the switch.
What about an Imperial Federation style system with Canada, New Zealand and Australia as states, you can choose with or without the rest of their territories but I'd recommend making the rest incorporated.
What about an Imperial Federation style system with Canada, New Zealand and Australia as states, you can choose with or without the rest of their territories but I'd recommend making the rest incorporated.
No thank you, Australia expended huge sums on the Joint Project at Woomera only to be left high and dry by the fickle British.
AndyC
Donor
I'd love to see that - the NIMBY reactions of the Frinton-on-Sea residents (signpost: "Harwich, for the Continent; Frinton, for the Incontinent"), who even refused to have a pub in their town until the dawn of the 21st century - would be epic.
Archibald
Banned
Somebody should write a TL where a Blue Streak mk.2 replace LOX by hydrogen peroxide and is pressed into service. Later a liquid hydrogen second stage is developed (perhaps with France help - RZ-20 and HM-4 were developped in parallel from 1965). The result is a powerful rocket that can launch Surveyors-like robotic landers to the Moon. I think it could be done for the cost of Concorde. It should be easy to find development cost of Centaur and Surveyor - Atlas second stage and payload.
http://www.asi.org/adb/m/02/07/apollo-cost.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM4 (amazingly enough, RZ.20 doesn't seem to have a wikipedia page).
Apollo cost $24 billion (which amounts to $100 billion today). Concorde cost $3 billion ($20 billion today). I think a Franco-British Blue Streak + Centaur + Surveyor could be made within that envelope, even more if ESRO ELDO Europa never happens.
It would be kind of downrated "Selene" TL
In the Selene TL @sts-200 literally butchered any military and civilian white elephants that stood in the way of the lunar program. TSR-2, Concorde, CVA-01, Europa all went into the ash heap of aerospace history.
http://www.asi.org/adb/m/02/07/apollo-cost.html
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HM4 (amazingly enough, RZ.20 doesn't seem to have a wikipedia page).
Apollo cost $24 billion (which amounts to $100 billion today). Concorde cost $3 billion ($20 billion today). I think a Franco-British Blue Streak + Centaur + Surveyor could be made within that envelope, even more if ESRO ELDO Europa never happens.
It would be kind of downrated "Selene" TL
In the Selene TL @sts-200 literally butchered any military and civilian white elephants that stood in the way of the lunar program. TSR-2, Concorde, CVA-01, Europa all went into the ash heap of aerospace history.
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Wimble Toot
Banned
Cancel Concorde (SSTs are a technological dead end), ensure de Gaulle dies in 1960, make sure short-Termist bean-counters with no vision like Wilson and Heath are never elected.
The absence of a U.K. only, or UK/EC space program are mostly political rather than technical.
A vertical Empire is a very good book, I would recommend The Backrooms Boys by Francis Spufford if you want an easier read.
The absence of a U.K. only, or UK/EC space program are mostly political rather than technical.
A vertical Empire is a very good book, I would recommend The Backrooms Boys by Francis Spufford if you want an easier read.
dragged kicking and screaming to the Future, and the property values shoot up like happened with Cape Canaveral
Thomas1195
Banned
Then who? Grimond was very far-sighted in economic policies, but a PM Grimond scenario is just ASB.
Maybe Roy Jenkins?
That's what I was wondering about, whilst very clever and highly successful some of his business decisions could be rather... idiosyncratic shall we say. As such his interests ranged far and wide. I think we're getting a little away from Joshuapooleanox's original question though.
Realistically I think you need greater research into rockets in the 1930s before the war. A closer reading of the Explosives Act of 1875 which limited solid propellant rockets suggests however that liquid fuelled rockets, if classed as and called jet engines, would fall outside the Act. No-one associated with the British Interplanetary Society seems to have realised this so they worked mostly in the theoretical realm, even if they had done and been successfully able to argue that interpretation they were still very short of funds. So you need to have them realise the loophole regarding liquid fuelled rockets, then find a source of funding such as via someone who was rich and had a passion for the subject, one of them decideing to start a semi-professional research programme and is able to pick up a wealthy benefactor like the Guggenheims with Goddard or Lady Houston with Supermarine, the government or one of the defence industry companies funding a small programme, or some other way.
In an ideal world you'd have them stumble across high-test peroxide (HTP) as a propellant running it over a catalyst to decompose into oxygen and high temperature steam, followed by working out how to combine it with kerosene to act as a bipropellant. After experimenting for a few years someone gets the brilliant idea of being able to pass the HTP through a silver-plated nickel mesh to act as the catalyst. When Britain was testing its first working proximity fuses in mid-1940 they used solid propellant rockets to fire them at hanging targets since they couldn't at the time withstand the massive forces exerted on them by being fired from a gun. So that's the engines and warhead detonators for a weapon, develop a guidance system and once centimetric radar comes into service you could have a half-decent early surface-to-air missile. Success with rocket engines could also see other outlets such as larger unguided air launched rockets, ground-to-ground rockets such as the Nebelwerfer or Katyusha, and similar. Proven weapons during the war could mean more missile-based weapons programmes post-war which a space programme could potentially grow out of.
I'll grant you solids are the military gold standard, but H2O2/kerosine are quite storable propellants and they are much, much easier to handle (also they're cheaper). They aren't hypergolic though, so a keroxide propelled weapon would need to have a somewhat more complicated engine.
A small tank of UDMH should serve since it and H2O2 are hypergolic together.
EDIT: when I wrote this, I had forgotten that Blue Streak used LOX rather than HTP. Which makes me wonder if the British ever considered using HTP on any of their military designs, or if it was only considered for use on experimental designs and eventually civilian LVs.
fasquardon
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Warren Ellis' graphic novel Ministry of Space addresses this theme.. It's an interesting read, if more than a a bit improbable.
SPOILERS:
SPOILERS:
Britain reaches Peenemunde before the Americans and Soviets and gets all the scientists for themselves. Britain builds itself an Empire in space while keeping the Americans and Soviets Earth-bound. By 2001, the UK has the "Dan Dare" future, but is socially static, still racially segregated, even in space. The story ends with the UK's dark secret on the verge of exposure: The whole thing was funded with gold the Nazis looted from Holocaust victims, which the British confiscated and kept for themselves.
Blue Streak comes up a lot in British space/nuclear discussion and I think there is a lot of misconception surrounding it, someone (me?) really should gather some definitive stuff together and put it in my British cold war facts and figures thread.
While the Blue Streak itself was almost a 2//3 scale version of the Atlas its intended mode of operation and thus utility and longevity as a deterrent were vastly better. The Blue Streak was always fully fuelled in it's silo, but the LOX tank was filled with pressurised nitrogen to keep thin-wall the missile rigid, each silo had a LOX tank which re-liquefied LOX boil-off and the LOX was 'blasted' into the oxidiser tank by compressed gas in 3 1/2 minutes. The missile was then launched directly from the silo (not hoisted to the surface like Atlas and Titan I), the blast doors being equipped with high pressure water jets to clear away any debris that might block its opening operation, within 4 1/2 minutes.
Once the LOX was on board the missile could be kept fully fuelled and ready for 30 second launch for 10 hours, before having to be drained of LOX and made ready to repeat the process, the turnaround time for this process also being 10 hours. Thus in theory 50% of the Blue Steak force could be kept at 30 seconds notice to fire, which in deterrent terms is more than suitable.
However what II suspect would happen in practice is the time on 30 second alert would creep up to maybe 12 hours, the time to turn around for the next 30 second alert would creep down to 8-9 hours and an intermediate stage of turnaround to 4 1/2 minutes to launch introduced, maybe 6 (?) hours. The result is a system that is considerably more flexible than Polaris and able to put up to 60% of its force on 30 seconds to launch or the whole force down to 4 1/2 minutes to launch and anything in between as the international diplomatic situation requires.
The upshot being that writing off a British space programme because Blue Streak is a piece of shit isn't really valid.
While the Blue Streak itself was almost a 2//3 scale version of the Atlas its intended mode of operation and thus utility and longevity as a deterrent were vastly better. The Blue Streak was always fully fuelled in it's silo, but the LOX tank was filled with pressurised nitrogen to keep thin-wall the missile rigid, each silo had a LOX tank which re-liquefied LOX boil-off and the LOX was 'blasted' into the oxidiser tank by compressed gas in 3 1/2 minutes. The missile was then launched directly from the silo (not hoisted to the surface like Atlas and Titan I), the blast doors being equipped with high pressure water jets to clear away any debris that might block its opening operation, within 4 1/2 minutes.
Once the LOX was on board the missile could be kept fully fuelled and ready for 30 second launch for 10 hours, before having to be drained of LOX and made ready to repeat the process, the turnaround time for this process also being 10 hours. Thus in theory 50% of the Blue Steak force could be kept at 30 seconds notice to fire, which in deterrent terms is more than suitable.
However what II suspect would happen in practice is the time on 30 second alert would creep up to maybe 12 hours, the time to turn around for the next 30 second alert would creep down to 8-9 hours and an intermediate stage of turnaround to 4 1/2 minutes to launch introduced, maybe 6 (?) hours. The result is a system that is considerably more flexible than Polaris and able to put up to 60% of its force on 30 seconds to launch or the whole force down to 4 1/2 minutes to launch and anything in between as the international diplomatic situation requires.
The upshot being that writing off a British space programme because Blue Streak is a piece of shit isn't really valid.