I've got that book somewhere. Interestingly, given I live just down the road, one of the planned Blue Streak silo sites was to have been RAF Boulmer near Blyth.
British and commonwealth rocket development
- Thread starter Ry01tank
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The same author did a companion volume, An Atomic Empire, chronicling UK nuclear projects.
Ok, i thought you meant "Commonwealth builds the service module or something"
Outside of lunar surface experiments (which is a stretch already), Commonwealth wouldn't have the technical know-how to build a lander and impactor as the US would, the US spent a lot of money on figuring out how to do it. At most the earliest a lunar probe could impact is in the late 60s (69), i am sure NASA would request a specific site to hit to act as recon for a landing at said site
Alot of this would have to be approved by Congress, there was an arguement on another thread on why the Apollo astronauts didn't plant a UN flag on the moon as a symbol of unity of Earth, the simplest answer is Congress mandated an American flag be used
For lunar surface experiments it would be a hard ass ask to NASA, by 15 there were turf wars on what experiments to fly (extended to sites as well), Apollo 17 flew without a siesmic recorder due to it being heavy and wanting to let other experiments be flown
That makes much more sense, sorry if i sounded pricky
As i said above, getting lunar experiments flown is an ask, on the CSM it would be more likely, but on the surface it would be a huge can of worms
The most practical way i can think is if the Commonwealth offers to develop some of the experiments, which would reduce NASA costs, but likely annoy the National Science people who are ones resposible for the IRL experiments
Gemini and the lunar module is butterflied (Maynard was Canadian, "the guy most resposible for how the LM was made"), Hodge as flight director and that one guy who worked on the comms network
The earliest Commonwealth flight is the mid 70s at earliest with a first launch in the early 60s with Avro Canada doing the upper stages and possibly capsule
Exactly, until Shuttle there was no room for seats to be sold, Gemini was already tight, the only practical way i could see a Commonwealth guy in space is if Commonwealth pays for a Gemini 13 flight
Big Mac was a nutjob
i wanted to use bridge too far but it felt on the nose
Black Arrow had a bunch of failed launches before the first orbital flight, iirc the program was cancelled before the first orbital flight. UK was already struggling and the failures coupled with the fixed costs were too much, so it was axed
Yes
In summary, the POD has to be in the 50s before Arrow is made
ya
Ya, perferably a dryer climate.
a few other places outside northern scotland were thought of, but the weather and "dropping stages on people" risk made Australia the only choice, Barbados was a canidate as well
Ya, its more practical for Britain to be apart of ESA
Its more due to British nationalism then anything else, Britian historically doesn't have the same Pan-European nationalism that the continent has. This and a lack of internationalism that is required "britain is not paying for a frenchmen to fly" made it an outlier in ESA
basically wanting the benefits without paying its part (if that makes sense)
To make the commonwealth a space power requires alot more changes, a better WW2 and Britain keeping more of its colonies and overseas companies (Arab oil fields, Suez)
In the 50's and 60's Britain and the Commonwealth was in no condition to fly a space program.
I know I've suggested RATOG in the past as an alternative to the catapults envisioned in Air Ministry Specification P.13/36 here and over on Secret Projects, not sure if it might have been me or someone else. Funnily enough I ran across something in a back-issue of Aeromilitaria related to this yesterday evening
Unfortunately the sentence was cut off so it didn't give the ending file reference. Having independently come up with the idea of RATOG as a starting point finding out that they actually looked at it unrelatedly in real life was pleasantly surprising.Aeromilitaria said:
Did some reasarch on British finances
Up until the 80s Britain was kinda fucked. WW2 debt and the loss of the colonies a huge revenue stream along with a decrease in Inter-Empire/Commonwealth trade, which was mostly british companies no longer having an advantage overseas from resource explotiation. All of this left Britain with a totally fucked financial situation, most of the Royal Navy was scrapped, including Warspite and Vanguard, the Armed Forces and Air Force were similarly downsized, and rationing continued for years
By the 60s things had got better with the economy, 70s was similar with the oil crisis messing some stuff up, there was a joke of this time period that a person in poverty in Uganda would be so shocked at Britain that THEY would donate money, and the other one where Uganda has a higher standard of living then the UK
When Thatcher came into power the country was starting to get out from the debts and fucked finances, mostly through Thatcher era cuts on spending. Falklands island cost a bunch but "The Empire Strikes Back" is the best news cover of all time.
Basically in the late 60s early 70s the UK could not afford a costly rocket program. Had Black Arrow performed better it would likely not have been cancelled, the Treasury was looking to cut anything at the time and the 6 or so failures led to the cancellation of the program (afterwards the first successful flight happened).
If and thats a big IF Black Arrow worked on the first or second flight, and kept working it likely would have continued use and sold commerical launches, maybe even getting a new powerful first stage (Blue Streak or something else)
This Blue Arrow or Black Streak would eventually need updating and uprating for higher payloads
The mostly likely way to get Britain in the space game would be the Europa launcher. OTL the upper stages sucked (cause of every failure) which is why UK pulled out of the program. Basically a POD could be that France and Germany didn't suck making their "portions" of the rocket, so Europa becomes a launcher for Europe
This would result in Ariane never existing and French leading ESA might be changed to a British Dominated ESA (in terms of manufacturing)
OTL Britain having its own space program is indeed ASB, so yeah it has to be a AU, just depends on how far back you want to go with a story, so POD ideas:
1. There is a massive interest in rockets and space post WW1 leading to V2 style stuff in the early 30's and a different WW2 and post-war situation.
2. Commonwealth Federation idea takes off from the late 19th C, leading to a very changed 20thC for Britain.
3. WW2 ends in 1940 with British surrender and therefore decolonisation does not happen as we know it.
4. Different American President(s) does not lean on the UK to decolonise in the same way. Less financial shock. Esp with a different WW2.
5. Britain gets more of the Paperclip scientists and taps their knowledge heavily with a PM who will pay for it.
6. WW2 ends much earlier due to Hitler assassination therefore the UK is less strapped for cash, and decolonisation with its financial shock takes a lot longer/easier.
1. There is a massive interest in rockets and space post WW1 leading to V2 style stuff in the early 30's and a different WW2 and post-war situation.
2. Commonwealth Federation idea takes off from the late 19th C, leading to a very changed 20thC for Britain.
3. WW2 ends in 1940 with British surrender and therefore decolonisation does not happen as we know it.
4. Different American President(s) does not lean on the UK to decolonise in the same way. Less financial shock. Esp with a different WW2.
5. Britain gets more of the Paperclip scientists and taps their knowledge heavily with a PM who will pay for it.
6. WW2 ends much earlier due to Hitler assassination therefore the UK is less strapped for cash, and decolonisation with its financial shock takes a lot longer/easier.
Not quite.
The Ministry of Aviation (a short lived Ministry, then under Labour Minister Fred Mulley) had come to the conclusion to unilateraly leave ELDO by late 1965, but the costs and damage of breaking the international agreement made the British Cabinet decide to try to limit british participation, and eventually end it, within the framework of ELDO.
In June 1966 the British delegation, following Harold Wilson's own orders, seriously threatened to leave ELDO, following this threat a compromise was reached, where Britain agreed to participate in the Europa 2 program, in exchange from a substantial participation reduction (39->27%), a hard funding ceilling cap and a warning that they wouldn't accept further additions to the Program, this cap was respected by the British, and the funding modification in 1968-69 had to be taken care of by France and Germany, but it limited Europa up to the F12 launch. The British delivered these blue streak up to F12 (only F11 flew, as part of Europa 2, but F12 was delivered in guyana, where its remains became a henhouse in some farm), several other Blue streaks were ordered in 1969, but as part of separate agreement that would continue beyond ELDO, and with none of their cost bore by the British.
So really, it's not that the Upper stage failures made the UK pull out, it's that they failed to convince the Brits to continue funding Europa beyond what they had agreed to, there are doubts successes would have changed the lack of political will for its continuation that under that Wilson government.
I'd also add that the 67 veto to British accession to EEG was arguably as important to the British withdrawal as the failure of S2 and S3 in 67-68, after all ELDO was also conceived as a tool of symbolic european integration by McMillian and De Gaulle as as an operational program, and it had failed as the former.
Failure of coralie in 67 was also necessary for the reorganisation of french space efforts that followed, it created better integration between CNES, SEREB and Nord Aviation, and the creation of the first European technical coordination agency, the SETIS, these laid the organisational basis for the creation of Ariane.
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Can Edward Festus Mukuka Nkoloso participate?
I'm only half joking, I think his enthusiasm could make him a good regional spokesperson for the Commonwealth Space Agency.
I'm only half joking, I think his enthusiasm could make him a good regional spokesperson for the Commonwealth Space Agency.
Yeah, this is the core problem with any kind of commonwealth program--the UK's finances are in bad shape, and it's still the largest of the Commonwealth. Being involved with an ESA program and especially with any kind of higher-funded ESA is really much better for the UK though it's not likely to be "UK dominated" even in manufacture--France and Germany are no slouches, and France in particular is touchy about equal work shares in ESA projects. (On the subject of a higher-funded ESA, European spaceflight receives a shockingly lower fraction of GDP compared to NASA. If ESA received funding as a fraction of the EU's GDP similar to the share NASA receives in the US, then ESA would be more like a $19 billion agency than the $8.5b agency it is in reality, which is kind of an interesting thought--an ESA that large really could do a lot more to set space policy for the world instead of tagging along with or just influencing what NASA does.)
Don't forget ESA is only a part of the european space organisations, there's the EUSPA, EUMETSAT, ESO, the national agencies. The ESPI (European Space Policy Institutes) has yearbooks that estimates the cumulative public investment in space, for 2019-2021 ESA only represented ~55% of European space budgets. So really europe has ~$15 billion agencies...
Of course the USA has the huge military space budget which has been consistently larger than NASA's since the end of Apollo and handles a lot of R&D and Infrastructure costs even for civilian uses, and an increasingly more self-funded private sector.
Meanwhile.. OECD estimates...
"In 2022, the UK institutional space budget amounted to USD 867.9 million (GBP 704 million), comprising national activities, contributions to European Union programmes, the European Space Agency and Eumetsat"
"In 2022, France’s institutional space budget reached USD 2 698.5 million (EUR 2 566 million)*,"
*This is CNES only, so includes ESA and EUMETSAT contribution, but not the indirect contribution through the EU's budget (~2 billion euros, of which France pays 15-20%, so the sum is about 3.1 billion... So the real ratio is 3.5x, adjusted to GDP, the UK should spend almost 4 times more in space to keep up with European mainland and even hope to dominate in AH...
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Not likely
Good luck with post WW2 nationalism
British surrender entails alot of stuff, if it is a negotiated peace then its likely to keep the colonies. the Pacific War is the main focus of the UK and Britain, more troops and ships will fight there then OTL
an unconditional surrender or one where the Empire is affected will have huge consequences
A TL where britain keeps its colonies will eventually have issues with nationalistic revolts (India)
Also too, Germany would have free reign in the Soviet Union and enact its ethnic cleansing on a huge scale, basically Jewish people on the continent are gone, slavic peoples are used as slaves in factories, Aryan beliefs are widespread, facism is now a workable ideology for countries
Instead of communist revolutionary overthrows would be replaced by facist military coups, likely along ethnic lines
In general a bad world
Ya, maybe some more nukes get dropped on Japan or a president who doesn't (or cancels the bomb program) and it leads to Operation Downfall
Dewey 44 would be the best case, a pod of the 40 election would work too, but considering FDR was the pro-war guy its likely another would keep America out until pearl harbor, and Britain would be in worse shape without lend lease until 1942
Even pre-WW2 the US was anti-imperialist, it would likely still lead to a decolonization effort.
It depends where colonies are kept, India was the most valuable of the colonies under direct control, Canada, Australia and New Zealand stopped giving tax's in 31 with partial independance
You would need to have a bigger british army on the continent, and dedicated scientist hunting task forces
for OTL WW2 good fucking luck finding a person willing to spend money on a space program, UK only developed the atomic bomb after the Soviets did (America wasn't considered a threat, USSR was)
UK was broke after WW2, its why the RN was gutted and Thatcher cut everything
Depends when this happen, if its a war start in 38 the whermact would take over, but later (43 and after) its likely Himmlers SS would take over
the war could get worse fast, expecially with Himmler in charge
Ya, so the upper stage failures basically led to the UK feeling like it was the only one giving a damn about the program, leading to them reducing participation until the final cancellation. Its hard to keep a launcher going that fails on every launch, worse when its another countries fault
had it been a success from the first, second or third launches it would have more support, it was that ALL the Europa launches failed due to other countries parts that led to the cancellation, same with Black Arrow after 6 failed attempts
To put it simply Britain could not AFFORD a launcher that had so many failures, when auditors look at the program and see all failures they will cut it like Black Arrow, or have extremely low enthusiasm for a program where the other countries efforts are subpar resulting in failures
it ends up being sunken cost and not worth continuing
Most of Thatchers decisions were made as a result of the financial decisions, even the axing of steel and coal industries was due to the fact that most operated at a cost (not making profit) which ate at budgets
She was going to gut the military too, but the Falklands War saved Invincible from going to Australia and the other carriers from being scrapped
Even IF Europa worked, it would have to perform during Thatcher's era, or it would be cut
Ya the ESA could have a lot higher budget per GDP, but given that most countries split between National and ESA spending, its what you get
The National agencies mostly do stuff for the country like covering satelite construction and other stuff like that, which is not shared by ESA
basically the national funding is for national programs and stuff, the remainder is what countries are willing to pay to be apart of ESA
Ya, the NRO has a higher budget, same with Space Force, the KH-15's (or whatever number their up to now) costs half NASA's budget
in 2012 NRO gave NASA 2 spysats to be converted into observatories, apparently NASA technicions couldn't believe how advanced the things were
UK cannot afford that much
And that isn't including start up costs and a higher wage workerforce, its likely to be 5 billion total space spending. With healthcare having issues (same as in Canada) due to the baby boomer generation finally hitting the "end of life" stage. it is likely that spending will not be able to fit a space program into it.
Worse since UK is out of EU but wants to stay in ESA, its a good way to look bad in the public's eyes
(Sorry calbear) This is the last i am talking on the topic
I dug out my copy of A Vertical Empire in light of this thread, to refresh my own half-remembered thoughts. I was specifically looking for the quote about Anglo-American space cooperation being a nonstarter because of the UK's meager resources. Which led me to:
"Zuckerman" being Chief Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defense Solly Zuckerman. So, the conversation was from the Department of Defense, not NASA. So mea culpa on my misremembering that point and provoking some heated discussion for it. Though given at the time of the statement, £1 = $2.80, so I'm curious just what the unnamed Assistant Secretary of Defense was envisioning. As that's the equivalent of the entire development cost of one-and-a-half Mercurys, roughly what was spent on Dynasoar before it was killed, four-fifths of Thor, three-fifths of Saturn I, and half of Gemini. If you could somehow throw all of the UK's annual defense R&D budget at space-related things, it would not be a small sum. The only thing where that kind of money is a drop in the bucket would be a full-on Project Horizon moon base. Which...well, on the one hand, props to someone in the Pentagon for taking the Anglo-American Star Empire seriously. On the other hand, I cannot help but think there's stuff to be done with Anglo-American cooperation in this vein, even if it is likely to fail once it becomes clear what Britain would actually be willing to contribute. (Which would at the absolute most be £15MM/year, which was what was needed per year to finish Blue Streak.)
"Zuckerman" being Chief Scientific Advisor to the Ministry of Defense Solly Zuckerman. So, the conversation was from the Department of Defense, not NASA. So mea culpa on my misremembering that point and provoking some heated discussion for it. Though given at the time of the statement, £1 = $2.80, so I'm curious just what the unnamed Assistant Secretary of Defense was envisioning. As that's the equivalent of the entire development cost of one-and-a-half Mercurys, roughly what was spent on Dynasoar before it was killed, four-fifths of Thor, three-fifths of Saturn I, and half of Gemini. If you could somehow throw all of the UK's annual defense R&D budget at space-related things, it would not be a small sum. The only thing where that kind of money is a drop in the bucket would be a full-on Project Horizon moon base. Which...well, on the one hand, props to someone in the Pentagon for taking the Anglo-American Star Empire seriously. On the other hand, I cannot help but think there's stuff to be done with Anglo-American cooperation in this vein, even if it is likely to fail once it becomes clear what Britain would actually be willing to contribute. (Which would at the absolute most be £15MM/year, which was what was needed per year to finish Blue Streak.)
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Ya the money required for an Anglo-American Space endeavour would be hugely hard for the UK to meet without severely changing the timeline (a better WW2, Colonies kept). As stated before, UK is in no financal or Economic condition to sustain even a minor rocket program
The main issue is the fact that while America and the UK are friends, the relationship is often split on different things, the US would have to give up its knowledge to a foreign power (Rockets are a weapon system no matter what). UK was told they would be equals in the Manhatten Project, then when the bombs were made America refused to share it (for obvious political reasons), which is why the UK had to develop theirs but only after the Soviets did.
I had this conversation with E of Pi in relation to Canada or the Commonwealth buying a Space Shuttle from the US and developing LRB's for the US to use. Basically internationalizing the program at any degree adds fixed costs and more importantly adds obligations to keep the program around due to foreign powers operating the system.
Essentially in this case, the US would be stuck with Shuttle until Canada or the Commonwealth stop using it, as cancellation and partner leaving clauses would give the US a penalty in A LOT of money or keeping now uneconomical production and logistics base alive for a foreign power
Famous examples being Avro Arrow taking Avro Canada down with it (massive sunken costs, with no reinbursement) and HMS Prince of Wales, which was built as it would be more expensive to cancel due to the cancel contracts
My "British Rocket" idea is basically either Europa or Black Arrow performed better
Europa being a thing would lead to British domination of the European launch market (over the french ariane), later on updates and uprating would NEED to happen for the Geostationary orbit market, Europa was an LEO launcher, so severe uprating and modifications would be a neccesity. UK would also need to be more invested then OTL and not "jumpy" at the costs which kept on going up. Britain also might be annoyed if ESA decides to move the launch site to french Guiana
Black Arrow working would be a bit more fun, it would be obsolete quickly due to its low payload capacity, neccesitating Blue Streak as a first stage (restarting production lines and such) to get more performance, or just straight up developing a new first stage to compete with Ariane
At this time the US was also trying to "corner the market" with its launchers, and why it offered cheap flights to NATO countries with no intentions of keeping the promises of low costs long term, which is why Scout was offered and withdrawn after Black Arrow, to cause enough pressure to cancel it, then Britain would rely on US launchers, and not want to spend money developing another rocket.
So any of your ideas have to adapt to US political manuevering
Sorry if I'm acting like a Bushwacker on this thread, there is a lot of ways for Britain to have a program, but only a few which are anywhere near realistic
One idea I had was the ELDO program not happening till later in the 60s, so Europa isn't developed with its outright required changes for GEO launches
In 68 Britain and the other countries form ESA, which launches from Barbados, the rocket is basically the same as early Ariane's but has a British first-stage
This avoids the huge lost investment of Europa and development costs for Black Arrow, Blue Streak wouldn't be used as it would be LONG out of production
Eventually, this rocket could be spun off to a totally British rocket if Britain has the will to spend the money. Unlike Europa this would be a GEO launcher (which Europa was designed for LEO launches). Essentially its Ariane but swapping France for the UK
Call the launcher Victoria or Hermes
To piss off the French Wellington or Nelson would be good for the first stage name
I recommend "The Wilson Government's Policy Toward ELDO", Journal of the British Interplanetary Society vol. 53 2000, it describes the reports that led to the near universal Ministry of Aviation, of Defence, Treasure, Prime Minister, rejection of ELDO within a year of the accession of the Labour government.
ELDO couldn't happen latter, it was created in very specific circumstances, of cancellation of blue streak, of Macmilian's attempt of joining the EEC, of De Gaulle's last hopes of swaying british strategic defense away from the US, of the infancy of France's Ballistic and Space program, of the General interest in space following Gagarin's flight in all countries of the world. And despite all that it really wasn't the most likely that it happened in the first place.
Without changing the Politics (which some people like to do, but I don't consider Spaceflight to be an important matter enough to justify changing politics to achieve a specific goal), past 1965, Britain can't sustainably continue in ELDO or European launchers, ELDO either fails and collapse, or as IRL, turns into a Franco-German effort and changes radically.
IMO; The only slight chance is to have ELDO succeed is for it to stay a Franco-British bilateral cooperation as originally envisioned, go for the most conservative technical option - Ideally, Blue Streak+Black Knight (the french won't like it) and a French Third stage derived from their Pierre Precieuse program, or maybe, Blue Streak + French 2nd and 3rd stage derived as much as possible from the Pierre Precieuse. No german stages; No ambitious French stage, with all that, and an aggressive development and test schedule, there may be a very slight chance of a first Orbital launch in 1964, which may, potentially, result in France and Britain (before the election of that year) deciding to sign an accord to develop a truly useful and operational version of Blue Streak, probably comparable to the French ELDO B proposal of 1964-66 IRL. with high energy upper stage (ideally, Hydrogen stage is the one sector where French and British technologies could really complement each other). Such an agreement could be hard to denounce, and could survive, just like British participation in Europa and Concorde survived, and in the end, Britain may stumble onto a decent launcher for commercial and technological applications in the 70s.
ELDO couldn't happen latter, it was created in very specific circumstances, of cancellation of blue streak, of Macmilian's attempt of joining the EEC, of De Gaulle's last hopes of swaying british strategic defense away from the US, of the infancy of France's Ballistic and Space program, of the General interest in space following Gagarin's flight in all countries of the world. And despite all that it really wasn't the most likely that it happened in the first place.
Without changing the Politics (which some people like to do, but I don't consider Spaceflight to be an important matter enough to justify changing politics to achieve a specific goal), past 1965, Britain can't sustainably continue in ELDO or European launchers, ELDO either fails and collapse, or as IRL, turns into a Franco-German effort and changes radically.
IMO; The only slight chance is to have ELDO succeed is for it to stay a Franco-British bilateral cooperation as originally envisioned, go for the most conservative technical option - Ideally, Blue Streak+Black Knight (the french won't like it) and a French Third stage derived from their Pierre Precieuse program, or maybe, Blue Streak + French 2nd and 3rd stage derived as much as possible from the Pierre Precieuse. No german stages; No ambitious French stage, with all that, and an aggressive development and test schedule, there may be a very slight chance of a first Orbital launch in 1964, which may, potentially, result in France and Britain (before the election of that year) deciding to sign an accord to develop a truly useful and operational version of Blue Streak, probably comparable to the French ELDO B proposal of 1964-66 IRL. with high energy upper stage (ideally, Hydrogen stage is the one sector where French and British technologies could really complement each other). Such an agreement could be hard to denounce, and could survive, just like British participation in Europa and Concorde survived, and in the end, Britain may stumble onto a decent launcher for commercial and technological applications in the 70s.
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I think this rather misstates the nature of Anglo-American atomic cooperation. The U.S. and U.K. were to be equals in the sharing of atomic information: The Hyde Park Memo was the entire point of that. Its misfiling was a historical accident -- Wilson Brown, ironically, fell for British deception and believed "Tube Alloys" referred to something involving metallurgy -- and the inability to find the American copy due to that misfiling gave rise to the McMahon Act. A good number of the people involved went on-record that, had they known about the Hyde Park Memo, the McMahon Act would not have been enacted as it was. And while it is possible that the "misfiling" was an American plot to cut the British out, I find that exceedingly unlikely, as all of three Americans knew about the Hyde Park Memo (which was why it was so easily misfiled) and that, eventually, the U.S. gave Britain the keys to the kingdom in 1958. An important contextual note of the U.S.-U.K. Mutual Defense Agreement was that it was making up for historical wrongs as much as ensuring Britain wasn't inclined to share the thermonuclear capability which Washington thought London had after Operation Grapple. (And using the former to do the latter, natch.)
The point is, the Hyde Park Memo getting lost is entirely butterfliable, and a great PoD for a TL. It's also a good one for space-related timelines, too, as it retains the foundations for deep Anglo-American strategic cooperation and saves Britain a billion pounds which were spent redeveloping its nuclear capabilities.
The Shuttle is not a great example of anything related to this, simply because its operational cost base was designed to be as broad as possible to guarantee NASA that the program had as many Congressional stakeholders as possible and provide some protection for the budgets of the various NASA centers involved. Internationalization of that in any way would end badly, especially when the hypothetical involves a foreign operator of Shuttle itself. And one who in all likelihood can't afford to rebuild the entire operational infrastructure domestically.
But yes, most international codevelopment programs have significant penalties clauses for partners leaving, both to compensate the remaining codevelopers and to incentivize not leaving the program in the first place. This was the story of Europa, where an unwilling British government soldiered on because they didn't want to pay those penalties. And Britain ended up paying considerably more for Europa than if it had just ate the cost of the penalties after Wilson became PM. Concorde, with the French having learned their lessons from ELDO, ensured the penalties were positively astronomical to make sure the British were suitably motivated to not leave.
But there are other ways to internationalize a program other than straight codevelopment, though that's the one that's usually most attractive (at least for the partners). The model of cooperation exemplified by the Wilson-Sandys Agreement "internationalized" American development of ballistic missiles by divying up development responsibilities, with the British focusing on IRBMs and American on ICBMs, with information-sharing and the U.S. picking up a fifth of the tab for the British side of things. That was subsequently totally outmoded by the Killian Committee's report that prompted the U.S. to crash-develop Thor and Jupiter -- which indirectly also begat Polaris -- but the point is that there other ways to skin the cat of Anglo-American space cooperation than a common rocket in which Britain and the Commonwealth build a certain fraction of it.
The thing is that ELDO was plunged in 1964 by the French, who wanted to kill ELDO A -- what flew as Europa -- because of its inadequacy as a GEO launcher and pushed ELDO B, with a 10'-diamater hydrolox second stage and a smaller third stage, also potentially a hydrolox one as well. It got so bad that for some time the French refused to pay a dime towards the construction of ELDO A. The Wilson government objected on the basis of delay, which was really an objection to cost. So even from Day One of ELDO, the French were keenly interested in GEO and the British government was not. Even if you somehow keep Britain involved in ELDO and Europa's technical issues can be solved, the Europa successor is going to probably to be shaped by French desires to a considerable degree. And has a very good chance of simply being Ariane but with the addition of some British workshare. (This also applies if you somehow connive for there to be a European rocket with British participation started later than ELDO, you're still going to end up with something Ariane-shaped, as the French want a space program and every day later is another day of maturation for the French rocketry program. And the more mature the French rocketry industry, the less it needs Britain to get what it wants.)
Yes, any British space program requires the United States to behave in a less overtly dickish manner when it comes to space. But, at the same time, that creates room for interesting allohistorical scenarios. As it's not hard to be more collegial than the U.S. was during the height of the Space Race. As that's ultimately a political decision and there's considerably more room for shuffling the deck of American space leadership than there is in Britain, as it's very, very hard to get someone in charge in the UK who doesn't see a satellite launcher as a potential place to cut costs.
Except that Europeanization was itself a French objective. While a Black Prince derivative was rejected by the French on workshare grounds, it was also spiritually unacceptable because of its prejudicing France's other European projects because of the bilateral nature of what the Macmillan government originally proposed. A purely Anglo-French affair has a much greater chance of succeeding, but was dead on arrival and needs butterflying on the French side to be on the table. The problem is that since this cooperation was of interest to de Gaulle, you might need to end up butterflying the Fifth Republic to put such a bilateral deal on the table. Which is using a sledgehammer to kill fly and unleashing so many butterflies they'll swallow up your space timeline.
I just don't see an Anglo-French ELDO B -- complete with the hydrolox second stage! -- happening before Europa's OTL first launch attempt. There's just too much for whoever's building the upper stage to learn about building flyable LH2 hardware, and as that is probably going to be French, this is doubly the case. Building an RZ.20-powered British Centaur-a-logue by 1967-68 isn't impossible but will require considerable expenditure, which the Treasury will absolutely loathe. More importantly, however, it will probably prove politically unacceptable to Paris. As French money will not build a British stage and Britain isn't going to agree to a French first-stage when it's got a perfectly good Blue Streak whose development needs justified. And the various stuff bought and licensed from Convair for balloon-tank construction -- which is the best argument for a Centaur-a-logue, as Blue Streak was an Atlas-a-logue -- probably can't be transferred to the French without Washington's approval, while Paris is going to object to making itself in any way reliant upon American technology if it can help it.
And as we always comes back to, Blue Streak-Centaur -- in whatever form you can get it -- is a decent and decently sustainable option for a British launcher once you to the Seventies. The problem is getting there in the first place. Bilateral Anglo-French cooperation is probably a better way to get there than ELDO working as intended, but I don't think an Anglo-French program is any more plausible than an Anglo-Commonwealth one. They both have their problems, which can (probably) be surmounted with a creative enough usage of butterflies. I confess, however, to be more pessimistic on the bilateral Anglo-French option than the Anglo-Commonwealth one, because of my relative dearth of knowledge about French politics of the period and what might be possible if you start meddling with the inputs.
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1) Mostly true, but the first Anglo-French proposal lived for long enough - almost a year- for it to be completely ASB, I'll expand on it later since it's late, but IMO it's possible, just not the most likely option. Black Prince derivative is indeed, as I said, even more unlikely, but I think you could get something done with the intermediary option, French 2nd and 3rd stage, Blue Streak-Emeraude, Blue-Streak "Super-Veronique", Blue-Streak-Vesta, these appear in discussion and literature in mid-1960
2) Sorry If I got myself misunderstood , I propose a minimum ELDO rocket, one that probably would struggle to send more than half a ton to orbit, as a 1964 launch date, it's potentially possible, all the main parts (Blue Streak, Emeraude - both's failure can be butterflied away, their causes were quite specific -, Rubis) were flying by this date (For my Proposal I also think that wanking french liquid propulsion in 2nd half of the 50s- relatively possible as Veronique got some quite unlucky funding cuts - would allow the french to have a more convincing upper stage proposal by 1960); the general idea is that if you can prove to the british that an ELDO rocket works by 1964, then you can have the best conditions possible to get a binding ELDO B agreement, and that second agreement could also be more europeanised.
>RZ.20.
The actual engine that was being studied for ELDO B was a Franco-British one, derived from HM-4 (most of the engine) and RZ.20 (Thrust chamber) preliminary work, It's quite similar to how the production HM7 was a mostly French design with a German (MBB) Thrust Chamber. This cooperation also could maybe be lasting, which would be nice for keeping R.R. and british industries involved in the more propulsive parts of launchers through the decades.
IDK why you think of balloon tanks in this case, ELDO B's upper stage was an Aluminium design.
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Honestly I don't even like the Anglo-French proposal that much, In hindsight the best part of ELDO was that it kickstarted German orbital launcher industry, and enabled it to support Ariane as France's junior partner. I just think that a very conservative Anglo-French ELDO is only way to get an Europa rocket flying ASAP, the Germans picked the most conservative design they studied for the upper stage - they initially thought about putting H2-O2 and H2-F2 upper stages! - , and look at what happened...
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