BBC article WI: British first in space on scavenged and modified V2s

This article was on the BBC news. Apparently they managed to modify captured V2 technology enough that by 1947 they could have done a manned space launch but the British government was bankrupt from World War 2 and decided to put the funds in nuclear and aviation research. What if they had?

http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150824-how-a-nazi-rocket-could-have-put-a-briton-in-space
Oh, god, do we really need a fourth thread on this today? It'd be a minor stunt, and the money spent on it would leave the aviation and nuclear programs even more hamstrung than they already were in the aftermath of WWII and the spin-up of the welfare state. You could argue that the US or USSR could equally have easily done the same, and both had far more money floating around to do so if the scientific and PR value of a one-off popgun suborbital flight was seen as enough to justify it. You'll note neither did--the Mercury-Redstone flights (arguably relatively close to the same idea) were just a test and leadup to Mercury-Atlas orbital flights. It'd have been an extremely expensive dead end.
 
Geoffrey DeHavilland, John Cunningham, Peter Twiss, Eric Brown or one of their colleagues could have been ...

... the first man to be killed piloting a spacecraft.
 
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