“The design was totally practical,” says space historian and editor of Spaceflight magazine David Baker, who has studied the Megaroc designs. “All the technology existed and it could have been achieved within three to five years.”
Baker, who was trained on V2 technology in the States and has spent most of his career as a Nasa engineer working on the Space Shuttle programme, says Megaroc was 10 years ahead of its time. “By 1951 Britain could have been routinely putting people into space on a ballistic trajectory,” he says.
Nuclear, not rockets
Smith submitted his spacecraft design to the British government’s Ministry of Supply in December 1946 but a few months later it was rejected. Smith abandoned the project, moving on to design spaceplanes and giant orbiting space stations.
Despite its head start with Operation Backfire, Britain decided to abandon V2 tech and focus its limited research resources instead on aviation and nuclear technology.