More Brits in space (Oh stop whimpering, it's not like I didn't warn you about this)
- Thread starter Landshark
- Start date
MoS TL
Part III
I have already described the - shall we say - jockeying for position before take-off on the first flight to the moon. As it turned out, the American, Russian and British ships landed just about simultaneously...
- Arthur C. Clarke, Venture to the Moon, 1956.
After the War, both the Soviet Union and the United States put a significant effort into long-range missiles for military purposes as part of their expansion of, and increasingly reliance upon, nuclear weapons, but because of the highly succesfull British Backfire-operations, they were way behind Britain. Both in Moscow and Washington politicians and officers alike began speaking of a missile and technology gap. In London, however, a recently reelected Churchill was pleased indeed, it might be expensive, but the missiles and the associated technology would give the British military and industrial sector an edge for centuries to come, he was sure of that. So was most of the Commonwealth nations apparently, as they saw that the British were still both a strong power and a world leader in advanced weaponry and began to buy their way into Britians various projects with men, resources, bases or money.
In late 1945 a committee was convened under Solly Zuckerman, who, at Churchill’s request, had just taken over as the government's chief scientific adviser, to examine the possibilities of not only producing independent British nuclear arms, but to put them in missiles. The Zuckerman Committee clearly stated that with present day technology it was indeed possible and advantageous to do so. The guidance system necessary to make such a weapon effective would have to be developed, but that was just a matter of time and effort. Zuckerman might have been overly optimistc, but he did not, as Lord Tizard before him, deem it outright impossible. Consequently British efforts were focused and determined.
Undoubtedly Werner von Braun would have liked to go to the USA, but he soon settled in under British protection and in somewhat more modest surroundings than had he gone to America. However, now he could do what he always dreamed of doing; build rockets. The DoR was military, no doubt about it, but many of the British scientists, working with the Germans and on the various British projects, still had the dream of going into space. Together with Val Cleaver and Arthur C. Clarke, von Braun orchestrated the much acclaimed International Congress on Astronautics in London in the summer of 1951. This led to an increase in public interest and to more sophisticated ideas of how space travel and exploration could be brought about. The British economy naturally had been seriously damaged by the War and, even with Churchill at the helm, the government refused to spend large sums of hard earned and much needed money on such idealistic notions as space flight for the sake of space travel alone, so the main focus was to remain on developing military missiles for the time being. However, the idea of space exploration became a very popular theme, aided by entertainment features like the comic-strip space-hero Dan Dare and the rocket-plane riding Commonwealth fighter-aces of the Missile Musketeers. The idea of space gave many people in poverty striken Britain hope of a better tomorrow and a belief in themselve and Britain.
In November 1953, Britain exploded a British developed nuclear weapon at Emu, Australia. Initially it was believed by most in the British government and Imperial General Staff that the RAF could be relied upon to deliver nuclear weapons to their targets with the V-type bombers, but soon it was realised, though, that these aircraft were too vulnerable to air defences, especially the Soviet ones. A long range ballistic missile would not only be preferable, but absolutely necessary to national security.
In 1954 the DoR’s Striker guidance system programme under the Ministry of Aviation developed a highly accurate inertial guidance systems, but in the same periode the Americans, and soon after British themselves, tested a two-stage thermo-nuclear device, the Hydrogene-bomb. The H-bomb, as it simply became known, was of such hitherto unimaginable power that there was less need to use a highly accurate delivery system as needed for the less powerfull A-bombs. Missles were most definitely in and development were pushed further and faster. The Department of Rocketry was soon one of the largest entities in the British Military, soaking up men and resources to a degree that began to worry the British Minister of Defence and quite a few Generals (not to speak of the Admirals, who saw ship after ship laid up).
The de Havilland Aircraft Company won the contract to produce an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) under the codename Blue Streak, while the Rolls-Royce company gained the contract for development af an engine in cooperation with Department of Rocketry’s Propulsion Study Center. Eventhough it would be cheaper and quicker just to licence an existing rocket engine rather than start development from scratch, the British government and Solly Zuckerman pushed for a homegrown design. Later it was disclosed that the RZ2 rocket engine was actually based on Rocketdyne’s S3D rocket engine, but the Britsih had wastly improved it and made it more efficient by reducing weight and increasing power-output. In August 1956, the first engines were tested at the Spadeadam Test Site in Cumbria. Soon Blue Streak itself was tested…
As far back as December 1946, a study group of the DoR under the visionary R.Smith and H.Ross had submitted a design for an adapted space-going German V-2 rocket to the Ministry of Aviation, now he masters of the DoR. The adaption consisted mainly of a pressurised cabin in the nose of the rocket, in place of the usual explosive warhead, which would enable a man to be launched as a passenger on the flight. The cabin was detachable, allowing the astronaut to experience several minutes of weightlessness before it parachuted back to Earth. Now several members of the DoR and in the Ministry of Aviation itself wanted to try for a manned fligth, but not on the basis of the original V2-proposal, instead planes were being drawn up for a modified Blue Steak to be lanched into space along with a crew of two. Needless to say, Churchill, Solly Zuckerman and Werner von Braun was firmly behind the idea, as was many other influentical political figures; they all saw this as a way to anounce to the world that Britain and her Commonwealth allies was still to be recogned with. The project was to be launched from the newly constructed Woomera-base in Australia. Austraila had from the beginning backed the British rocket programme and was together with several other both major and minor Commonwealth-nations involved in it.
Eventhough Britain and the Commonwealth in general was still reconstructing after the damage of the war-years, there were not only the political backing, but also a large public consent to the project; Churchill and Werner von Braun by their sheer strenght of personality and the latters highly successive International Congress on Astronautics in London back in ’51 had worked wonders to fuel the publics imagination. In the spring of 1958 the Monarch lifted of with astronauts Alan Smith and Roy Radford. While the whole world watched Smith and Radford was sent on a sub-orbital flight and experienced several minutes of weightlessness as their capsule detached from the converted Blue Streak. Helicopters launchend from the deck of the carrier HMS Ark Royal picked up the two unharmed men in the Indian Ocean. The successfull fligth of the Monarch gave birth to the British Ministry of Space as an independent entity in its own.
Part III
I have already described the - shall we say - jockeying for position before take-off on the first flight to the moon. As it turned out, the American, Russian and British ships landed just about simultaneously...
- Arthur C. Clarke, Venture to the Moon, 1956.
After the War, both the Soviet Union and the United States put a significant effort into long-range missiles for military purposes as part of their expansion of, and increasingly reliance upon, nuclear weapons, but because of the highly succesfull British Backfire-operations, they were way behind Britain. Both in Moscow and Washington politicians and officers alike began speaking of a missile and technology gap. In London, however, a recently reelected Churchill was pleased indeed, it might be expensive, but the missiles and the associated technology would give the British military and industrial sector an edge for centuries to come, he was sure of that. So was most of the Commonwealth nations apparently, as they saw that the British were still both a strong power and a world leader in advanced weaponry and began to buy their way into Britians various projects with men, resources, bases or money.
In late 1945 a committee was convened under Solly Zuckerman, who, at Churchill’s request, had just taken over as the government's chief scientific adviser, to examine the possibilities of not only producing independent British nuclear arms, but to put them in missiles. The Zuckerman Committee clearly stated that with present day technology it was indeed possible and advantageous to do so. The guidance system necessary to make such a weapon effective would have to be developed, but that was just a matter of time and effort. Zuckerman might have been overly optimistc, but he did not, as Lord Tizard before him, deem it outright impossible. Consequently British efforts were focused and determined.
Undoubtedly Werner von Braun would have liked to go to the USA, but he soon settled in under British protection and in somewhat more modest surroundings than had he gone to America. However, now he could do what he always dreamed of doing; build rockets. The DoR was military, no doubt about it, but many of the British scientists, working with the Germans and on the various British projects, still had the dream of going into space. Together with Val Cleaver and Arthur C. Clarke, von Braun orchestrated the much acclaimed International Congress on Astronautics in London in the summer of 1951. This led to an increase in public interest and to more sophisticated ideas of how space travel and exploration could be brought about. The British economy naturally had been seriously damaged by the War and, even with Churchill at the helm, the government refused to spend large sums of hard earned and much needed money on such idealistic notions as space flight for the sake of space travel alone, so the main focus was to remain on developing military missiles for the time being. However, the idea of space exploration became a very popular theme, aided by entertainment features like the comic-strip space-hero Dan Dare and the rocket-plane riding Commonwealth fighter-aces of the Missile Musketeers. The idea of space gave many people in poverty striken Britain hope of a better tomorrow and a belief in themselve and Britain.
In November 1953, Britain exploded a British developed nuclear weapon at Emu, Australia. Initially it was believed by most in the British government and Imperial General Staff that the RAF could be relied upon to deliver nuclear weapons to their targets with the V-type bombers, but soon it was realised, though, that these aircraft were too vulnerable to air defences, especially the Soviet ones. A long range ballistic missile would not only be preferable, but absolutely necessary to national security.
In 1954 the DoR’s Striker guidance system programme under the Ministry of Aviation developed a highly accurate inertial guidance systems, but in the same periode the Americans, and soon after British themselves, tested a two-stage thermo-nuclear device, the Hydrogene-bomb. The H-bomb, as it simply became known, was of such hitherto unimaginable power that there was less need to use a highly accurate delivery system as needed for the less powerfull A-bombs. Missles were most definitely in and development were pushed further and faster. The Department of Rocketry was soon one of the largest entities in the British Military, soaking up men and resources to a degree that began to worry the British Minister of Defence and quite a few Generals (not to speak of the Admirals, who saw ship after ship laid up).
The de Havilland Aircraft Company won the contract to produce an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM) under the codename Blue Streak, while the Rolls-Royce company gained the contract for development af an engine in cooperation with Department of Rocketry’s Propulsion Study Center. Eventhough it would be cheaper and quicker just to licence an existing rocket engine rather than start development from scratch, the British government and Solly Zuckerman pushed for a homegrown design. Later it was disclosed that the RZ2 rocket engine was actually based on Rocketdyne’s S3D rocket engine, but the Britsih had wastly improved it and made it more efficient by reducing weight and increasing power-output. In August 1956, the first engines were tested at the Spadeadam Test Site in Cumbria. Soon Blue Streak itself was tested…
As far back as December 1946, a study group of the DoR under the visionary R.Smith and H.Ross had submitted a design for an adapted space-going German V-2 rocket to the Ministry of Aviation, now he masters of the DoR. The adaption consisted mainly of a pressurised cabin in the nose of the rocket, in place of the usual explosive warhead, which would enable a man to be launched as a passenger on the flight. The cabin was detachable, allowing the astronaut to experience several minutes of weightlessness before it parachuted back to Earth. Now several members of the DoR and in the Ministry of Aviation itself wanted to try for a manned fligth, but not on the basis of the original V2-proposal, instead planes were being drawn up for a modified Blue Steak to be lanched into space along with a crew of two. Needless to say, Churchill, Solly Zuckerman and Werner von Braun was firmly behind the idea, as was many other influentical political figures; they all saw this as a way to anounce to the world that Britain and her Commonwealth allies was still to be recogned with. The project was to be launched from the newly constructed Woomera-base in Australia. Austraila had from the beginning backed the British rocket programme and was together with several other both major and minor Commonwealth-nations involved in it.
Eventhough Britain and the Commonwealth in general was still reconstructing after the damage of the war-years, there were not only the political backing, but also a large public consent to the project; Churchill and Werner von Braun by their sheer strenght of personality and the latters highly successive International Congress on Astronautics in London back in ’51 had worked wonders to fuel the publics imagination. In the spring of 1958 the Monarch lifted of with astronauts Alan Smith and Roy Radford. While the whole world watched Smith and Radford was sent on a sub-orbital flight and experienced several minutes of weightlessness as their capsule detached from the converted Blue Streak. Helicopters launchend from the deck of the carrier HMS Ark Royal picked up the two unharmed men in the Indian Ocean. The successfull fligth of the Monarch gave birth to the British Ministry of Space as an independent entity in its own.
David S Poepoe
Banned
Fairly good. I'll only make a few incidental points that you may incorporate if you wish.
1. With the development of ICBMs I can't see too many of them being landbased, so perhaps this is where the Royal Navy will come in. How about if the RN introduces the first nuclear powered submarines and even the first submarine launched ICBMs?
2. I'm trying to figure out exactly how to build a meaningful ATL around this, but while there are plenty of POD about a successful Avro Arrow fighter plane, built in Canada, I haven't see anything about Avro's Jetliner. The Canadian firm flew its first jet powered civilian jetliner just a few days following the first flight of the British Comet. It was a fairly successful design with a lot of potential, especially if the Comet fails, and this is years before Boeing developed the 707. It was the world's first regional jet passenger plane. The Americans were impressed with it and placed many orders for them. However, the project was terminated by the Canadian government. Its entirely likely that one could see a civilian aviation industry, at least from 1950-1970, dominated by Avro Canada and Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed occupying trailing positions.
I guess it would be possible to see long distance flights being flown by de Haviland Comets and local flights being flown by Avro CF102 Jetliners and their successors.
Here are a few sites:
http://www.avroarrow.org/Jetliner/index.html
this one has an ATL that has the Jetliner reach production:
http://www.jetliner.purpleglen.com/timeline2.html
1. With the development of ICBMs I can't see too many of them being landbased, so perhaps this is where the Royal Navy will come in. How about if the RN introduces the first nuclear powered submarines and even the first submarine launched ICBMs?
2. I'm trying to figure out exactly how to build a meaningful ATL around this, but while there are plenty of POD about a successful Avro Arrow fighter plane, built in Canada, I haven't see anything about Avro's Jetliner. The Canadian firm flew its first jet powered civilian jetliner just a few days following the first flight of the British Comet. It was a fairly successful design with a lot of potential, especially if the Comet fails, and this is years before Boeing developed the 707. It was the world's first regional jet passenger plane. The Americans were impressed with it and placed many orders for them. However, the project was terminated by the Canadian government. Its entirely likely that one could see a civilian aviation industry, at least from 1950-1970, dominated by Avro Canada and Boeing, Douglas and Lockheed occupying trailing positions.
I guess it would be possible to see long distance flights being flown by de Haviland Comets and local flights being flown by Avro CF102 Jetliners and their successors.
Here are a few sites:
http://www.avroarrow.org/Jetliner/index.html
this one has an ATL that has the Jetliner reach production:
http://www.jetliner.purpleglen.com/timeline2.html
Thank you, David! The MoS TL could be better, I know, but I hope you find it at least somewhat amusing and plausible! I'll probably rewrite it some time in the future, but it'll do for now!David S Poepoe said:
Ah, well, that's in Part IV, but you're right. Historically Blue Streak was dropped because of the long fueling time and the fact that the launch-silos need space, which are at a premium on the British Isles, and would be vulnerable to enemy pre-emptive strikes. The Brits instead bought into the American submarine-based Polaris system.David S Poepoe said:
Regarding civilian flight and the various rocket planes and interceptors, I'm hoping to get to that, but thanks for the links.
I aim to expand the MoS TL into the 80's, if I get around to it, that is!
Part IV should be up sunday.So, any other comments? Is it all bull?
Best regards!
- Mr.B.
David S Poepoe
Banned
Mr.Bluenote said:
One thing I was thinking about just now, is that how about the British launching the first nuclear ballistic submarine and call it HMS Dreadnought. Then all SSBNs would be known as dreadnoughts. The nuclear attack submarines would basically be named after old battlecruisers. Superdreadnoughts would be those submarines carrying more than 12 missiles.
I think I'll rewrite the TL and post it under its own thread on sunday. I've found out a bunch of new things that are space related. Arthur C. Clarke's ComSat ideas from 1945, Alan Turing's ACE-computers and perhaps even found an idea to generate the cash to keep the space programme running.
Regarding the nuclear ballistic submarines. Would it, as David suggested, be allright to name these boats Dreadnoughts?
I have another question, though. Without access the the German scientist and tech after WW2, how would the US and USSR react? Would they concentrate on heavy bombers instead of missile technology? Would they even have a space programme? I of course know of both Korolev and Goddard, but how much influence and how big a budget would they have in this ATL?
Best regards!
- Mr.B.
Hehe, might actually be a good title for the thread...Torqumada said:(...) BRITSSSSSSS.....INNNNNNN........... SPACE!!
Thanks, G! Hope the new version will be better.G.Bone said:
Regarding the nuclear ballistic submarines. Would it, as David suggested, be allright to name these boats Dreadnoughts?
I have another question, though. Without access the the German scientist and tech after WW2, how would the US and USSR react? Would they concentrate on heavy bombers instead of missile technology? Would they even have a space programme? I of course know of both Korolev and Goddard, but how much influence and how big a budget would they have in this ATL?
Best regards!
- Mr.B.
the soviet space response
I can not say about the US but the SU's policy was (consistantly!) to react to
the american space programme. This was the case with the space shuttle, for
example. In fact, there was a precedent even before Korolyov died - the Moon
race was oficially "approved" only a few yeasr after the Americans started it
even though Korolyv himself has proposed plans along those lines even before
the famous Kennedy speach.
Therefore I think in this OTL the SU will develope a matching effort.
Mr.Bluenote said:
I can not say about the US but the SU's policy was (consistantly!) to react to
the american space programme. This was the case with the space shuttle, for
example. In fact, there was a precedent even before Korolyov died - the Moon
race was oficially "approved" only a few yeasr after the Americans started it
even though Korolyv himself has proposed plans along those lines even before
the famous Kennedy speach.
Therefore I think in this OTL the SU will develope a matching effort.
This will also have a Affect on the whole vibility of the Commonwealth, While England is Recovering, the other countries may develop more than in OTL, but the common Space program will help hold them together.
Canada Avro company develops it's Jetliner in co-operation with the British Program. And in the '70's the SST is a joint Commonwealth program, not a British/French.
The Common market is a German/French lead inititive, without GB holding them back, the Euro Block comes together sooner.
Canada Avro company develops it's Jetliner in co-operation with the British Program. And in the '70's the SST is a joint Commonwealth program, not a British/French.
The Common market is a German/French lead inititive, without GB holding them back, the Euro Block comes together sooner.