To Grasp the Heavens

[sts-200]

She Who Must Be Obeyed​

The tall, middle aged and, these days, rather greying man stood quietly in the outer office while the secretary fussed around, furtively glancing at him at every opportunity. The man should have been used to dealing with the great and the good, and the not-so-good, but even so, the look was universal, no matter who else was in the room. He was used to it though - that look - awe and admiration, blended with simple curiosity.

In that respect, the British were worse than foreigners; at least they would look before launching into the usual mix of words and questions. Britons just stood there, wanting to say the same dull things, but irritatingly hesitant, timid, uncertain as to whether it might be seen as rude. In the end, it would always be up to him to break the ice.

Mercifully on this occasion it wasn't necessary, as the door opened, and the secretary stopped trying to look busy and instead ushered him in; "This way Sir"

"The Chairman of Servotronics to see you, Pri.."

"Yes, yes, send him in …"

He could tell from the tone that it was going to be one of those 'Get To The Point' evenings.

"Hello Jock, come in, sit down ... Sherry?"

"Thank you"

"How are the children? … I thought I saw Edward at the Admiralty the other day."

"Yes, they're well thank you, Ed's surpassed his old man's rank now, reached the lofty heights of Commander… …yours? One keeps hearing about Mark."

"Oh, yes ... the usual."

"Cheers"

"Your health"

"Now, what can I do for you? I understood you had the Kuwaiti valve deal well in hand…"

"Yes, all's well there ... in fact I'm not here about Servotronics today, I'm wearing my new BAC hat. I'm here for a word about our rocketry programme; what we ..."

"NO ... I am not having any more of that HOTOL nonsense. We cannot afford to waste our…"

"This is not about HOTOL."

Not many men would dare to interrupt the Prime Minister when she was launching into one of her lectures on the evils of underperformance and overspending, however Jock Waters was one of the select few who would.
Besides being the first man to walk on the Moon, Sir James Harold Waters KCB FREng OM (besides his twenty-three other honours from nineteen nations, one real and four honorary doctorates) had served in the Royal Navy, flown experimental aircraft for the RAE and had become a successful businessman in the years following his return from the Moon. Even the self-effacing remark about his son surpassing his own rank was only partly true. Jock been a Lieutenant-Commander when he left the Navy to become a civilian astronaut, but had been retrospectively promoted to Rear-Admiral (Retired) shortly after completing his famous space flight.

As a national hero, he had been kept well away from the squalid end of the Selene Project and had soon begun a second career as one of the quiet army of businessmen, engineers and technicians who had brought Britain's aerospace industry back onto more solid foundations. His own firm, Servotronics, specialised in electronically controllable valves and switchgear and exported all around the world, making Jock a multi-millionaire in the process. He had since been appointed to the Boards of several firms, including BAC, where his global fame was valued just as much as his business talent. Being able to wheel out the first man on the Moon helped make for an impressive sales pitch, and Jock's presence at key negotiations had probably helped win several major deals.

The next few minutes would be crucial. Jock knew the PM would listen to a good argument, but once her mind was made up, that was it. If it didn't go any further this evening, then it probably never would.

"Well, what are you after then?"

"Thank you, Prime Minister.
Our concept is cheaper, it is a commercial proposition, and most importantly it will work. To keep us in the space business, we need a launcher. If we act now, we can have one relatively cheaply and quickly. If we wait even a year or two, it will take us ten years just to make up lost ground.
We need to look to the future now. GEC are ready to proceed with their universal satellite bus - I gather they've talked to you about that - and we at BAC have enquiries from around the world. HOTOL wasn’t going to work, but it did show that the business is there, if we develop the capacity to meet it. We're not just looking at sales there, but a complete space service industry. Then there’s the on-orbit research and small-scale manufacturing that look set to take off in the next few years, both with Europe and the US. We are starting to see commercial, not just government interest in space again and we need independent access if our firms are going to be a leading part of it. There are also concepts such as Starnet and some of the military options; this could make them into serious proposals..."

"I see, so you want more rockets ... What about Fellingham? He believes we should keep clear of launchers and not pour millions into an entire industry … and I agree."*

"Fellingham looked at the cost of Selene, not the launcher and space programme specifically. He didn't emphasise the point, but the Hermes satellite programme made us money.
We still have a first-class satellite industry. If we mean to keep it and expand it, we have to be able to offer everything. The Americans have been successfully doing that for years and the French are not far behind with their Europas; they can sell a complete service - design, build, launch, operate. If we don’t have any launch capability, one way or another they can make it very difficult for us to compete. It's not something we want to loose; as I say, that market is going to expand rapidly in the next few years."

"You know as well as I that we have agreements with the Americans and access to their Shuttle, besides our membership of ESA. Your argument sounds like the one used for Selene; keep subsidising an industry in the hope that there is some future use for it. We can't do that. It's not practical and we can't afford it."

"I'd hardly call what we did in 1973 impractical"

"Ha…very good. More Sherry?"

"Yes, thank you … … Mm, cheers.
Europa isn’t up to it, it’s going to be too small, and ESA committees are not going to react quickly enough for this. The Shuttle is under American control, and they won't let us compete if we rely on it. There may be a lot of polite language, but their policy hasn't really changed since the days of Kennedy and Nixon trying to torpedo us, then the Europeans. Whatever nice old Ronnie may say, too many of them still think that space should be for America. Our industry still has the talent and prestige to compete with their dominance of the space market and to replace the sort of half-baked compromise that we see with Europa. We need to go past that, and there are real opportunities presented by industry and by SDI. Some of what they are talking about needs far more than just the Shuttle, even if they haven't made that clear in public. I know you talked about it with the President on your recent trip and I assume you want us to play a part; bring some of those development dollars over here?"

At that moment, Jock knew that he had won, or at least won this opening move. The Prime Minister leaned forward, and for the first time showed genuine interest, rather than the politely feigned attention all practiced politicians learn to show when they are obliged to listen to a thousand idiots and their conflicting viewpoints.

"We discussed it, and there are possibilities there ... Go on"

"This proposal will keep us in the industry, give us a leg up on Europe and an 'in' with the Americans. It's challenging, but it’s not another Selene. In fact, we studied something similar in the ‘60s, but we didn't have the time, the technology or the money."

"There's the word. So how much do BAC want this time?"

"Let us keep the Black Anvil production lines active for another two years - into 1986 - at just a couple of rounds a year. We need continued access to Rainbow Beach and a loan guarantee, although that can be held off until next year."

"I see. Money, time and you want the Australians to like us again… and what is it that you will do?"

"We are going to build this…"




*[The Fellingham Report was a government-backed study into the cost of the lunar programme, which revealed that the costs of Selene were about 50% higher than anyone had previously thought.]

 

[CrazyGeorge]

This is great.

 

[Archibald]

Thatcher was famously incensed by Giotto pictures of comet Halley and cut budget for space as a result. HOTOL wasn't going to work. Skylon may, but in a helluva length of time (2030 !)

So it takes a moon walker to get the iron lady interested in space.

 

[sts-200]

Thatcher was famously incensed by Giotto pictures of comet Halley and cut budget for space as a result. HOTOL wasn't going to work. Skylon may, but in a helluva length of time (2030 !)

So it takes a moon walker to get the iron lady interested in space.

For obvious reasons, in this story space is much more in the British consciousness than in reality. Someone like “Sir James” would certainly know the right way to handle Mrs. T, and she was, basically, a pragmatist (more so this early on than later).

Coming to her with a privately-backed, potentially profit-making scheme in a growth industry would get her attention, if it was done right. She'd be no instant convert, but other factors may yet come into play.

Aside from the technical side, the HOTOL story is a good example of how not to deal with her governement.
Instead of coming up with something that might show a return, lots of talented people spent years and millions of pounds to coming up with a very complex proposal for something that wouldn’t work. In her ruthless view, that was nothing but senseless waste (technically, it was, although in the long term pure research is rarely a complete waste).

 

[sts-200]

This is great.

Glad you are enjoying it so far.
Plenty of background to start, but it will get a whole lot greater as time goes on...

 

[Shevek23]

I'm remembering how the Selene TL kept us in suspense, post after post.

Sure, HOTOL could not work as designed--or it might technically reach orbit and put small objects there, but at the cost of being really massive and expensive to operate, much like STS of OTL, except the USA has deep pockets to waste money out of like that, Britain not so much.

For Skylon to work instead has required decades of development, and now depends not only on making a highly advanced engine concept reliable enough to depend on as the sole engine system (except maybe for some light OMS and reaction control thrusters) but also on really cutting edge ultralight construction incorporating ultralight TPS.

The fact is that I have long been much charmed by Skylon, but just now as it is looking like maybe it will be made a real operational thing, I am having more doubts than ever. Mainly about the ultralight structure thing, which is treated like a sidebar to the emphasis which is the SABRE engine.

In saying HOTOL cannot work at all, actually I wonder if a somewhat heavier and less efficient sort of engine along SABRE lines might not be developed long before the 2010s, with the backing of a government and major corporation. The key difference between SABRE and the LACE concept that IIRC HOTOL always claimed to be centered on is the degree to which one chills the incoming air. Do we try to actually liquefy it, as LACE assumes? When I first read of the concept I thought it was pretty insane--I was trying to imagine how one could take in air that at ram stagnation would be heated to thousands of degrees K, and using some sort of heat pump force all that heat out into the ambient slipstream (which is also hot when it stagnates even a little on the hull, so we'd have a double heat pumping problem) and then take it down to 100 K or so and then deal with the heat of vaporization as well, to get liquid air to feed into a traditional rocket design. The latter is much lighter and simpler than a turbojet engine but the heat pumping? Forget it Jack, it seemed to require orders of magnitude more power to do that if it could be done at all than would be realized in the rocket combustion chamber! Now if someone had told me then, hey man, we don't need to liquefy the air, just chill it down to nearly the point of liquefaction to make it dense and bring chamber temperatures down to something bearable, I'd say well that's a big help, but heat pumping on the fly is still in defiance of physics!

Ah, but the other thing I did not realize is that all these proposals did not rely on heat pumps to try to pump the heat into the atmosphere--but rather relied on the tremendous heat capacity of liquid hydrogen. The main reason LH2 is a fantastic heat sink, by the way, is the combination of a high heat capacity per kilogram/deg, along with the tremendous range of temperature between storage temperatures (between 10 and 20 K IIRC right off the top of my head) and the temperature we wish to bring the hot air input down to, around 100-150 K or so (albeit from a thousand or two degrees initially). Actually the range is much greater since we begin usefully cooling it at temperatures only modestly below its initial one, so the range is some 1000 degrees K or more-so the problem is doable with manageable amounts of hydrogen. Too bad LH2 is such a PITA to store and pump! But it is quite light so that the design can even afford to waste quite a bit of it.

So having said all that, LACE is less insane, a near-cryogenic turbojet like SABRE (it uses heat flows derived from intake air to drive turbopumps, albeit arranged quite differently, with the heat sink property of the hydrogen driving the pumps rather than tapping into heat released from combustion--still it is in jet mode dependent on intake air rather than internally stored fuel and thus in my book a jet engine) seems even more feasible, and I have to wonder if in fact it could be playing its part reliably by 1990 or maybe even earlier!

Meanwhile to make Skylon as advertised, as an integral SSTO that drops nothing off and can be simply refueled and reused airplane-style many times without major refurbishment depends not just on the two-mode engines, but on being able to save structural mass to make for amazingly high mass ratios with modest amounts of propellant. Now HOTOL aimed at the same sort of target and Alan Bond and others involved insist on SSTO or bust, claiming economies worth achieving cannot be done on a "rocket" basis, but only by realizing the pre-STS consensus belief that cheap space access must be based on an airplane like model of operation, not to be achieved for instance by making expendable rockets so cheap the cost of making them is comparable to the per-flight fuel and maintenance costs of an airliner, nor to be achieved by making several separate stages that individually are recycled, since then one not only multiplies maintenance and other turnaround costs per stage by the number of separate stages to be refurbished, but also adds integration costs, as well as imposing yet more costs due to limited ports of operation everything must be brought to first--Skylon, and HOTOL before it, proposed to operate from whatever airfield a purchaser or leaser desired to.

As I say the real key to Skylon success OTL, if achieved, and biggest stumbling block to simply doing it tomorrow or in some better ATL, decades ago, is the question of how light a reliable structure can be made, and whether if it can be done at all, the feat involves orders of magnitude more cost and ongoing PITA maintenance costs that wipe out the alleged economy. We presume as state of the art advances what was impossible yesterday becomes possible today and cheap tomorrow, so sure, maybe someday. Has that day finally dawned, or will it in the 2020s--and if it does, will people like Elon Musk making reusable LV stages out of units that are basically inexpensive EELV stages with a few light add-on gadgets lower the price bar so low Skylon never clears it?

And this takes us back to the question--is there something else other than Alan Bond's "my way or the junkyard!" notion of how to leverage some British tech or other into something feasible with 1980s materials and general tech proficiency, that enables consistent, sufficiently convenient, more economical access to space than the existing or easily projected competition?

It does not have to be HOTOL related at all. Or it could be some kind of compromise--say they see the light about not trying to actually liquefy the air, but don't attempt to make the same airbreathing engine also serve as a rocket engine, and compromise on the SSTO model--use dedicated SABRE type engines that just serve as turbojets (as in RL's own proposed "Scimitar" downgrade for the LAPCAT SST design) to air-launch a worthwhile sized more traditional rocket upper stage, then fly back the separated airbreathing launch platform. I'm not at all saying this is what it must or should be, just that there are plenty of options to choose from.

Because as far as I can tell, the American Shuttle design is still very much off on the wrong foot. I wrote an earlier post around some notions I had to make it better, and acknowledged the ways the described program is arguably better than OTL--but it still is not really very good for practical purposes. It might be made a lot better than OTL pretty easily IMHO.

It brings us back to the basic criticism of the whole arc of TLs, which at the end of the day, to make Selene project plausibly survive as an Anglo-French project that completes its mission to putting human boots on the Moon, the USA had to be handed "the idiot ball" and implausibly horn out. The very best author justification for this never rang quite true to me. I enjoyed the TL, but I just don't think the USA of the 1960s and '70s would sit back and allow some other power, even a pair that are our closest and most important allies, "steal" (or even earn) all the glory of the first human moon landing, and at several junctures, despite the not too crazy author claim that a complacent USA is sticking to a methodical plan for developing space assets they deem superior to the options developed by Selene and other parallel British and French work, and intend to go the Moon on a more cost-effective and massive scale sometime in the foreseeable future.

It would not be inconceivable for American leadership to even convince themselves, and rinse the flavor of sour grapes from their mouths with yet more honeyed rationalizations, that the Moon is a sideshow and stunt, of little use or importance in the long run.

BUT, the author making this plausible in the crucial decade of 1965-75 was predicated on the Americans being very seriously and reasonably convinced that the more methodical, plodding work our space program was doing would in fact lead over time to superior cost-effectiveness. What that means is, the US Shuttle Decision of 1970 should have been very soberly and methodically thought out, and the resulting Space Transportation System (no such term exists in this TL's canon yet) should indeed be something very very hard to beat while still using rockets in any form at all. At any rate, if we the fans of the TL can in our amateur ways improve on the half-assed system that has been been proposed for the TL, then damn it, the Americans were simply kidding themselves and have nothing to show for it worth speaking of.

In short--Idiot Ball.

I do not doubt that clever combinations of ATL tech (such as routine use of methane as an operational fuel) and potentials overlooked OTL can come up with something competitive with OTL STS, and perhaps be something a British firm with HMG backing can make and profit from. But, BAC and HMG should not be competing with an American Shuttle that is downsized and attempts even less reuse economy than we at least pretended to try for OTL. The very fact that the American ATL Shuttle is downsized is in a way a help, but on the whole, while it might deliver modest cost savings for each customer, if flown at a rate an order of magnitude or more greater than we reached OTL (as its more modest engineering might conceivably enable), it only promises at best moderate savings versus EELV.

Now such moderate savings might be enough to capture the market globally, and even savings to commercial customers no more than say 20-25 percent of the same hardware going up on EELV represents opportunity to gain more revenue with more launched hardware at the same overall cost as OTL with EELV set the baseline. More hardware in space should mean more revenue from the bigger investment, which in turn gives the companies generally contracting for launches more capital to expand operations further. I would think any tendency of some companies to take the extra revenue as surplus and invest it elsewhere would at least be compensated, if not exceeded, by new players being attracted by lower launch prices. In short, even modest success in offering lower prices to orbit on launchers in the size range customers are interested in should lead to a virtuous circle of expansion, which in turn should justify investment in yet more infrastructure to lower costs to orbit further, widening the expanding spiral of increased space activity still more.

So, it follows that if a British scheme can cut it at only modestly lower cost than American Shuttle, it could be Britain rather than the USA who expands the market in this way.

But only if the Americans, with their strategic choice to excel in the rationality of their LEO operations, including launch systems, have in fact been quite incompetent at their self-appointed task. If they were good at what they claimed to be all about, they'd have foreseen the best options and backed them. It doesn't mean they would be infallibly omniscient, they might reasonably overlook something--but only if that something was eclipsed by something else good enough to justify putting a finger down and saying "this is the right way, this wins us enough."

I've been pretty harsh and absolute here, and I do want to back off. Of course OTL the American system of doing space operations has proven obtuse and even, to some observers, infuriatingly stupid. But many of these critics after all blame a dysfunctional system developed under the unsustainable drive of Kennedy's moon race deadline; that Apollo ruined NASA essentially, and any alternative lines of space development too. Here that has been avoided and so that excuse will not fly.

But it may be, and I suspect it is so, that Apollo is not to blame after all, and that the frustrations that so bother us now are perhaps some mixture of "space is really a lot harder than it looks" and inherent, deep seated deficiencies in the whole American approach to technology--indeed perhaps deeper and wider seated in say capitalism as a whole. Which is not to say I'm saying Soviet Communism had the answer either; it may be, to paraphrase Churchill's little quip about democracy, that capitalism is by far the worst system--except when compared to any other!

Many people believe that is the case for real; I think I'm being more an optimist than pessimist by hoping it is not so! But the alternative to capitalism that might be superior is clearly not easily achieved and clearly not lying ready to hand at this moment or any other in previous history.

But even proving conclusively and mathematically that no system can be superior to modern styles of global capitalism cannot prove that it lacks flaws all the same. Looking at how the American space program has been faring these past few decades I think it is a mistake to blame STS; the basic problems like very deep and I happen to think I could show how to have done far better with STS tech without spending a whole lot more money initially, and being able to leverage resulting expansion of space industry to cover that investment.

It may be then that the author has not so much handed the USA an Idiot Ball, as properly identified our proud possession of it all along.

 

[sts-200]

I'm remembering how the Selene TL kept us in suspense, post after post.

Sure, HOTOL could not work as designed--or it might technically reach orbit and put small objects there, but at the cost of being really massive and expensive to operate, much like STS of OTL, except the USA has deep pockets to waste money out of like that, Britain not so much.

For Skylon to work instead has required decades of development, and now depends not only on making a highly advanced engine concept reliable enough to depend on as the sole engine system (except maybe for some light OMS and reaction control thrusters) but also on really cutting edge ultralight construction incorporating ultralight TPS.

The fact is that I have long been much charmed by Skylon, but just now as it is looking like maybe it will be made a real operational thing, I am having more doubts than ever. Mainly about the ultralight structure thing, which is treated like a sidebar to the emphasis which is the SABRE engine.

In saying HOTOL cannot work at all, actually I wonder if a somewhat heavier and less efficient sort of engine along SABRE lines might not be developed long before the 2010s, with the backing of a government and major corporation. The key difference between SABRE and the LACE concept that IIRC HOTOL always claimed to be centered on is the degree to which one chills the incoming air. Do we try to actually liquefy it, as LACE assumes? When I first read of the concept I thought it was pretty insane--I was trying to imagine how one could take in air that at ram stagnation would be heated to thousands of degrees K, and using some sort of heat pump force all that heat out into the ambient slipstream (which is also hot when it stagnates even a little on the hull, so we'd have a double heat pumping problem) and then take it down to 100 K or so and then deal with the heat of vaporization as well, to get liquid air to feed into a traditional rocket design. The latter is much lighter and simpler than a turbojet engine but the heat pumping? Forget it Jack, it seemed to require orders of magnitude more power to do that if it could be done at all than would be realized in the rocket combustion chamber! Now if someone had told me then, hey man, we don't need to liquefy the air, just chill it down to nearly the point of liquefaction to make it dense and bring chamber temperatures down to something bearable, I'd say well that's a big help, but heat pumping on the fly is still in defiance of physics!

Ah, but the other thing I did not realize is that all these proposals did not rely on heat pumps to try to pump the heat into the atmosphere--but rather relied on the tremendous heat capacity of liquid hydrogen. The main reason LH2 is a fantastic heat sink, by the way, is the combination of a high heat capacity per kilogram/deg, along with the tremendous range of temperature between storage temperatures (between 10 and 20 K IIRC right off the top of my head) and the temperature we wish to bring the hot air input down to, around 100-150 K or so (albeit from a thousand or two degrees initially). Actually the range is much greater since we begin usefully cooling it at temperatures only modestly below its initial one, so the range is some 1000 degrees K or more-so the problem is doable with manageable amounts of hydrogen. Too bad LH2 is such a PITA to store and pump! But it is quite light so that the design can even afford to waste quite a bit of it.

So having said all that, LACE is less insane, a near-cryogenic turbojet like SABRE (it uses heat flows derived from intake air to drive turbopumps, albeit arranged quite differently, with the heat sink property of the hydrogen driving the pumps rather than tapping into heat released from combustion--still it is in jet mode dependent on intake air rather than internally stored fuel and thus in my book a jet engine) seems even more feasible, and I have to wonder if in fact it could be playing its part reliably by 1990 or maybe even earlier!

Meanwhile to make Skylon as advertised, as an integral SSTO that drops nothing off and can be simply refueled and reused airplane-style many times without major refurbishment depends not just on the two-mode engines, but on being able to save structural mass to make for amazingly high mass ratios with modest amounts of propellant. Now HOTOL aimed at the same sort of target and Alan Bond and others involved insist on SSTO or bust, claiming economies worth achieving cannot be done on a "rocket" basis, but only by realizing the pre-STS consensus belief that cheap space access must be based on an airplane like model of operation, not to be achieved for instance by making expendable rockets so cheap the cost of making them is comparable to the per-flight fuel and maintenance costs of an airliner, nor to be achieved by making several separate stages that individually are recycled, since then one not only multiplies maintenance and other turnaround costs per stage by the number of separate stages to be refurbished, but also adds integration costs, as well as imposing yet more costs due to limited ports of operation everything must be brought to first--Skylon, and HOTOL before it, proposed to operate from whatever airfield a purchaser or leaser desired to.

As I say the real key to Skylon success OTL, if achieved, and biggest stumbling block to simply doing it tomorrow or in some better ATL, decades ago, is the question of how light a reliable structure can be made, and whether if it can be done at all, the feat involves orders of magnitude more cost and ongoing PITA maintenance costs that wipe out the alleged economy. We presume as state of the art advances what was impossible yesterday becomes possible today and cheap tomorrow, so sure, maybe someday. Has that day finally dawned, or will it in the 2020s--and if it does, will people like Elon Musk making reusable LV stages out of units that are basically inexpensive EELV stages with a few light add-on gadgets lower the price bar so low Skylon never clears it?

And this takes us back to the question--is there something else other than Alan Bond's "my way or the junkyard!" notion of how to leverage some British tech or other into something feasible with 1980s materials and general tech proficiency, that enables consistent, sufficiently convenient, more economical access to space than the existing or easily projected competition?

The junkyard can be found second left, then on the right, Mr Bond... but we have other things for you to do.

I wish REL nothing but success, but their attitude has often left much to be desired (for some very understandable reasons). It seems they're finally starting to grow up and form strategic and investment partnerships, with the intention of actually bring some of their technology to market.
That sounds like the start of a practical business plan.

Saying "For only £20Bn, it would be possible to revolutionize everything ... oh, and we can't actually do it ourselves, we just known this little bit of how to do it."
I've got a nice bridge over some swamp land...

It does not have to be HOTOL related at all. Or it could be some kind of compromise--say they see the light about not trying to actually liquefy the air, but don't attempt to make the same airbreathing engine also serve as a rocket engine, and compromise on the SSTO model--use dedicated SABRE type engines that just serve as turbojets (as in RL's own proposed "Scimitar" downgrade for the LAPCAT SST design) to air-launch a worthwhile sized more traditional rocket upper stage, then fly back the separated airbreathing launch platform. I'm not at all saying this is what it must or should be, just that there are plenty of options to choose from.

Because as far as I can tell, the American Shuttle design is still very much off on the wrong foot. I wrote an earlier post around some notions I had to make it better, and acknowledged the ways the described program is arguably better than OTL--but it still is not really very good for practical purposes. It might be made a lot better than OTL pretty easily IMHO.

The shuttle of the story has some some advantages over the real one, but it's far from ideal. Ditto the story's version of NASA. Both have a little bit more "wiggle room" than they had in reality.
There's plenty to come there, some good, some bad, some much more exciting.

It brings us back to the basic criticism of the whole arc of TLs, which at the end of the day, to make Selene project plausibly survive as an Anglo-French project that completes its mission to putting human boots on the Moon, the USA had to be handed "the idiot ball" and implausibly horn out. The very best author justification for this never rang quite true to me. I enjoyed the TL, but I just don't think the USA of the 1960s and '70s would sit back and allow some other power, even a pair that are our closest and most important allies, "steal" (or even earn) all the glory of the first human moon landing, and at several junctures, despite the not too crazy author claim that a complacent USA is sticking to a methodical plan for developing space assets they deem superior to the options developed by Selene and other parallel British and French work, and intend to go the Moon on a more cost-effective and massive scale sometime in the foreseeable future.

It would not be inconceivable for American leadership to even convince themselves, and rinse the flavor of sour grapes from their mouths with yet more honeyed rationalizations, that the Moon is a sideshow and stunt, of little use or importance in the long run.

BUT, the author making this plausible in the crucial decade of 1965-75 was predicated on the Americans being very seriously and reasonably convinced that the more methodical, plodding work our space program was doing would in fact lead over time to superior cost-effectiveness. What that means is, the US Shuttle Decision of 1970 should have been very soberly and methodically thought out, and the resulting Space Transportation System (no such term exists in this TL's canon yet) should indeed be something very very hard to beat while still using rockets in any form at all. At any rate, if we the fans of the TL can in our amateur ways improve on the half-assed system that has been been proposed for the TL, then damn it, the Americans were simply kidding themselves and have nothing to show for it worth speaking of.

In short--Idiot Ball.

I do not doubt that clever combinations of ATL tech (such as routine use of methane as an operational fuel) and potentials overlooked OTL can come up with something competitive with OTL STS, and perhaps be something a British firm with HMG backing can make and profit from. But, BAC and HMG should not be competing with an American Shuttle that is downsized and attempts even less reuse economy than we at least pretended to try for OTL. The very fact that the American ATL Shuttle is downsized is in a way a help, but on the whole, while it might deliver modest cost savings for each customer, if flown at a rate an order of magnitude or more greater than we reached OTL (as its more modest engineering might conceivably enable), it only promises at best moderate savings versus EELV.

Now such moderate savings might be enough to capture the market globally, and even savings to commercial customers no more than say 20-25 percent of the same hardware going up on EELV represents opportunity to gain more revenue with more launched hardware at the same overall cost as OTL with EELV set the baseline. More hardware in space should mean more revenue from the bigger investment, which in turn gives the companies generally contracting for launches more capital to expand operations further. I would think any tendency of some companies to take the extra revenue as surplus and invest it elsewhere would at least be compensated, if not exceeded, by new players being attracted by lower launch prices. In short, even modest success in offering lower prices to orbit on launchers in the size range customers are interested in should lead to a virtuous circle of expansion, which in turn should justify investment in yet more infrastructure to lower costs to orbit further, widening the expanding spiral of increased space activity still more.

So, it follows that if a British scheme can cut it at only modestly lower cost than American Shuttle, it could be Britain rather than the USA who expands the market in this way.

But only if the Americans, with their strategic choice to excel in the rationality of their LEO operations, including launch systems, have in fact been quite incompetent at their self-appointed task. If they were good at what they claimed to be all about, they'd have foreseen the best options and backed them. It doesn't mean they would be infallibly omniscient, they might reasonably overlook something--but only if that something was eclipsed by something else good enough to justify putting a finger down and saying "this is the right way, this wins us enough."

I've been pretty harsh and absolute here, and I do want to back off. Of course OTL the American system of doing space operations has proven obtuse and even, to some observers, infuriatingly stupid. But many of these critics after all blame a dysfunctional system developed under the unsustainable drive of Kennedy's moon race deadline; that Apollo ruined NASA essentially, and any alternative lines of space development too. Here that has been avoided and so that excuse will not fly.

But it may be, and I suspect it is so, that Apollo is not to blame after all, and that the frustrations that so bother us now are perhaps some mixture of "space is really a lot harder than it looks" and inherent, deep seated deficiencies in the whole American approach to technology--indeed perhaps deeper and wider seated in say capitalism as a whole. Which is not to say I'm saying Soviet Communism had the answer either; it may be, to paraphrase Churchill's little quip about democracy, that capitalism is by far the worst system--except when compared to any other!

Many people believe that is the case for real; I think I'm being more an optimist than pessimist by hoping it is not so! But the alternative to capitalism that might be superior is clearly not easily achieved and clearly not lying ready to hand at this moment or any other in previous history.

But even proving conclusively and mathematically that no system can be superior to modern styles of global capitalism cannot prove that it lacks flaws all the same. Looking at how the American space program has been faring these past few decades I think it is a mistake to blame STS; the basic problems like very deep and I happen to think I could show how to have done far better with STS tech without spending a whole lot more money initially, and being able to leverage resulting expansion of space industry to cover that investment.

It may be then that the author has not so much handed the USA an Idiot Ball, as properly identified our proud possession of it all along.

To (debatably) quote the aforementioned gentleman.
"You can always count on the Americans to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else."
There might be an element of that to this story, and a lot more besides.

If you think Selene was a "10" on the improbability scale, this one goes up to 11.

 

[sts-200]

Last Man Standing
​

The 1970s had not been kind to Britain's aviation and aerospace firms. Stripped of the life support that was provided by the Selene Project, they had to survive against fierce American and increasing European competition in all areas of their businesses. Old, once-famous names such as Saunders-Roe and Bristol-Siddeley had gone in the 1960s, and the ‘70s would see the end of many of their larger successors. The bankruptcy of Rolls-Royce in 1971 should have been a warning shot, but the warnings were not heeded. The government bailed out Rolls, using an unsatisfactory mixture of nationalisation and subsidy that would set the pattern for the next few years. The process reached its conclusion with the Aircraft Industries Act of 1977, which included the nationalisation of the then-bankrupt Hawker-Siddeley. Only the British Aircraft Corporation managed to survive, just barely staying solvent thanks to the pan-European MRCA-Tornado project and the ongoing need to build and maintain Black Anvil rockets.

However, being the last man standing had its advantages; the market had been forcefully cleared of lame-duck firms struggling to compete, and with the right blend of skill, timing and luck, the future might now be very different. The firm had to grow, and in 1978 a revitalised Board of Directors saw past the near-term gloom to plan for a bright future. There would be expansion into new markets through joint ventures or acquisitions, and the existing business would need to be sustained.

To survive, they believed that BAC must:

- Gain a significant presence in the civil aviation market.
- Form a partnership with a significant American firm to help gain access to the giant US defence market.
- Diversify its UK Defence business.
- Revitalise the Space Division.

Roughly speaking, the priorities were in that order, but sometimes life gets in the way.

In fact, the first step was already well underway. With government assistance, in 1979 BAC joined the pan-European Airbus programme and the UK would later be selected to lead the development of the consortium's new smaller aircraft, the A320. Signed in 1982, part of that deal would see the British government lending BAC some of the nationally-owned assets of the former Hawker-Siddeley, and that arrangement would be formalised the next year when the assets were sold out of public ownership directly to the firm. The low sale price and the fact that there was no real bidding process would go on to cause controversy for years afterwards. The government argued the assets had to be UK-owned, and in any case would be virtually worthless without the involvement of BAC, Britain’s largest remaining aerospace company. The opposition labelled it as the worst excesses of privatisation, selling off Britain's "family silver" for a fraction of its value.

Through 1983 and '84, the acquisition of most of the ex-Hawker defence and aviation business furthered BAC's other goals. In 1978, the British government had agreed to a joint venture with the American firm McDonnell Douglas to develop an improved version of the Harrier strike aircraft. Support for the project was on-and-off over the next few years, as the US kept changing their requirements and the British government were hesitant about spending anything more than pocket-change on the project. Defence reviews and cuts further muddied the waters, but by 1983, the US Marine Corps knew what they wanted (and, more importantly, had Congressional approval) and the UK need was clearer - both the RAF and Royal Navy needed new aircraft. BAC's enthusiasm for their new acquisitions helped apply a bit more pressure to move matters forward, and in the autumn, the two firms signed a deal to develop the Harrier II - a single design that met both USMC and RAF requirements.

The Space Division had started at the bottom of the pile, and it might have remained there quietly fading away into obscurity, if there had not been an opportunity, a need and some leftovers at just the right time.

 

[Archibald]

I often wonder how high could propellant fraction get with current technology.
First, the cold numbers
LH2 / LOX takes 92% of total all-rocket SSTO lift-off mass.
Denser propellants (kerolox or storables or keroxide) needs 95% or so (from memory)

For the sake of comparison, NASA X-33 fact sheet
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/x33.html

If somebody can do the math (I'm lousy at maths) I've found a propellant fraction of 74% which makes the X-33 entirely suborbital - well, that is not surprising, since it was the Venture Star, not the X-33, that was to get into orbit - Mach 25.
The X-33 stopped at Mach 15 (on paper. RanulfC would told you it had degraded to a miserable Mach 6 by 2001).
Does anybody thing we can get a 85% or 90% payload fraction with current technology ?

Skylon is around 85% or so, you would think that SABRE would provide Skylon with a more relaxed mass fraction.

The rocket equation runs counter-intuitively because of the logarithm in it. I mean, for the layman, on paper, 85% propellant mass fraction sounds close from 92%, yet at the end of the day, 92% get the SSTO into orbit (9 km/s), while 85% get it suborbital, around 6 km/s.

 

[TheBatafour]

Good to see the Selene Project get a sequel! I remember the tension right up until the end, and though its premise was slightly implausible, the execution compensated for it nicely. Looking forward to this too!
The only criticism I have is that the epilogue to the Selene project was rather disappointing, things mostly turning out like OTL, and the sequel seems to pick up from there. I would rather have seen the opportunities of the ATL capitalised upon, with a truly improved space shuttle (and a more careful US space policy in general), the salvaging of the N1 program and political developments such as a Britain-less EEC and a more economically integrated Commonwealth. I understand that you want to keep it simple and focus on the technical side, but the Falklands update shows you're at least somewhat interested in the effect of space policy on politics, so I would have liked to see more butterflies flapping in this regard.

 

[sts-200]

I often wonder how high could propellant fraction get with current technology.
First, the cold numbers
LH2 / LOX takes 92% of total all-rocket SSTO lift-off mass.
Denser propellants (kerolox or storables or keroxide) needs 95% or so (from memory)

For the sake of comparison, NASA X-33 fact sheet
https://www.nasa.gov/centers/marshall/news/background/facts/x33.html

If somebody can do the math (I'm lousy at maths) I've found a propellant fraction of 74% which makes the X-33 entirely suborbital - well, that is not surprising, since it was the Venture Star, not the X-33, that was to get into orbit - Mach 25.
The X-33 stopped at Mach 15 (on paper. RanulfC would told you it had degraded to a miserable Mach 6 by 2001).
Does anybody thing we can get a 85% or 90% payload fraction with current technology ?

Skylon is around 85% or so, you would think that SABRE would provide Skylon with a more relaxed mass fraction.

The rocket equation runs counter-intuitively because of the logarithm in it. I mean, for the layman, on paper, 85% propellant mass fraction sounds close from 92%, yet at the end of the day, 92% get the SSTO into orbit (9 km/s), while 85% get it suborbital, around 6 km/s.

-At a stage level it’s been done. The later versions of the S-II had a PMF of about 92%. The S-IC, the old Atlas cores and the Titan upper stage were even better, although not with Hydrolox.
None of those were integrated vehicles however, so by the time you have added attachment points, payload fairing, guidance etc... the numbers are not so good. Then you need a payload on top of that.

More to come in the story there (although not for few installments yet).

 

[sts-200]

Good to see the Selene Project get a sequel! I remember the tension right up until the end, and though its premise was slightly implausible, the execution compensated for it nicely. Looking forward to this too!
The only criticism I have is that the epilogue to the Selene project was rather disappointing, things mostly turning out like OTL, and the sequel seems to pick up from there. I would rather have seen the opportunities of the ATL capitalised upon, with a truly improved space shuttle (and a more careful US space policy in general), the salvaging of the N1 program and political developments such as a Britain-less EEC and a more economically integrated Commonwealth. I understand that you want to keep it simple and focus on the technical side, but the Falklands update shows you're at least somewhat interested in the effect of space policy on politics, so I would have liked to see more butterflies flapping in this regard.

-I debated starting this as a completely new story, rather than trying to pick up the pieces, but I enjoyed writing Selene and there are a few advantages of starting with a slightly different world. The first few instalments are part of my attempt to stop the rot (as you say, clearly indicated at the end of Selene), rather than rewriting the end of the old story.

I tried to weave Selene into real history rather than create something totally new. I’m aiming for a slightly different style this time, as well as a different story.

 

[sts-200]

The Cavalier Attitude
​

In 1973, after the rush to bring the missile up to fully operational status, planners at the MoD began to consider the long-term future of the Black Anvil system. It had its faults, but it was still a highly advanced weapon, and would certainly be capable of meeting its original requirement of carrying Britain's nuclear deterrent through to 1980. However, the USSR was known to be proceeding with an anti-missile programme, and while analysts were confident of Black Anvil's ability to punch through any such system in the near term, further improvements would be needed to guarantee its effectiveness in the long run. In those cash-strapped times, there was never going to be funding available to develop a new weapons system, and so planning focussed on how Black Anvil could be improved to meet the expected threats and countermeasures of the 1980s.

What followed was project “Cavalier”, an exercise that showed off the best of British; but only in the fields of poor planning, inadequate specification, political interference and project creep. Where Black Anvil's original developers were single-minded to a remarkable degree (the first rocket flew only 59 months after the contract was signed), Cavalier drifted from being a modest mid-life upgrade into a nearly complete rework of the missiles. Early ideas to revise the guidance system and add new decoys and jammers to the existing rockets became mired in technical problems and international politics. As deployed, Black Anvil was intended as a decapitation weapon which would be used to destroy the enemy's C3 facilities. Although it was British designed, built, owned and operated, in practice it needed to serve "with the support" of the USA; it must fit in with the US-led strategies of NATO's nuclear umbrella. The rockets were built to carry six 1.4 Megaton warheads, but in response to more numerous and widely dispersed Soviet facilities, it would be preferable if the number of bombs could be increased. The Cavalier programme therefore expanded to include new, smaller, lighter warheads and more accurate RVs. As if that were not enough, concerns over the shelf life of the existing missiles prompted plans for them to be renewed, and as part of that process it made sense to incorporate reliability improvements into the engines and control systems. With all these changes, the Cavalier project became an extensive rework of the Black Anvil missile design, and it would be a project which many in the Treasury, and even some in the MoD, wished had never been started.

Nevertheless, there were no obvious alternatives available, and so the program had to be pursued. Despite the delays and overruns, the technical side was a success and in 1981, the new missiles were starting to reach their silos. However, within a year the programme was cut back following Australian objections and the results of the Defence Review, and the six silos at Maralinga would never receive their 'Cavaliers'. The remaining sites on Ascension, Christmas Island and in the north of Scotland were all converted by the spring of 1984. As the project neared its completion, there were discussions surrounding the shutdown of the Black Anvil and Orion rocket engine assembly lines. Could the jigs and tools be preserved, or should they be scrapped? What about the workforce?

Besides these issues of ongoing employment and skills, the expanded Cavalier programme had left 27 old Black Anvil Block 3 missiles surplus to military requirements. Aside from the obvious need to remove the warheads, many Top Secret parts had been stripped from the rockets before they even left their silos. Stable platforms, electronic jammers, RV deployment systems and decoys were just as valuable and secret as the nuclear weapons and their RVs. However, the mechanical systems of the rockets were not so highly restricted, and indeed many details were well known to the public thanks to the vehicle's role in Britain's space programme.

Once everything the MoD considered to be secret was removed, the missiles were extracted from their silos and shipped back to the UK. Their value was little more than scrap, other than to one particular organisation: BAC. The British Aircraft Corporation had originally designed and built them, and now only they had the expertise to even consider doing anything useful with the rockets. After several months of back-and-forth negotiation, the deal they reached with the government was simple; stripped of their guidance and RV carriers, the complete rockets would be made available to BAC on the understanding they would be scrapped (in which case no payment was due), or used for commercial and experimental purposes (in which case a share of any revenues would be paid to the government).

Originally, the government wanted to sell the missiles to BAC, however the firm refused to pay for both their purchase and their upkeep. They were very nearly sold as scrap, on the principle that would bring in at least some immediate revenue for the nation, however the somewhat shady connections of the bidders persuaded ministers that the old but still high-tech rockets would be safer in the hands of a trustworthy defence contractor.

Although the story may well be apocryphal, a suggestion that the Army "drive a couple of combat tractors over the damned things..." supposedly produced an equally memorable, retort "BAC'll have you shot if you do that … and they'd make the bullets to do it!" (at that time the firm was negotiating to acquire the Royal Ordinance, which supplied many of the Army's small arms).
Whether that story is true or not, at least the MoD wouldn’t have to store the awkwardly large missiles. BAC, on the other hand, would have to work out where to put them, and in the end they came back to Filton, to a unused hangar right next to the factory where they had originally been built.

What made it all worthwhile for the firm was the capital value of the rockets. Since the very shaky days of the late '70s, their finances had improved dramatically. Nevertheless, several years of heavy investment in new acquisitions and projects was driving up liabilities in the short term. The 27 rocket cores now in their possession were valued at £7 million each, a useful capital asset that helped to keep the books healthy.

 

[Archibald]

I like the name cavalier. I suppose it is an "easter egg" related to OTL Chevaline.

 

[sts-200]

I like the name cavalier. I suppose it is an "easter egg" related to OTL Chevaline.

It certainly is, although the long-term results will hopefully be better than with Chevaline.

Its also a play-on-words with an old English expression "a cavalier attitude" - meaning to charge in without any clear plan, in the cheerful but misguided hope that everything will go your way.

 

[sts-200]

Quite Recently, in a Lab very, very close by…​

"If you own a Frankie T-shirt, do not leave your house. Stay inside and keep the windows firmly shut.
If you are caught in the open wearing one, start a nuclear war"

By the early 1980s, the increasing practicality of "smart weapons" that could deliver precision strikes made strategists and planners start to question the theories of silo-based deterrent missiles. Even when using current technology, Operation BLACK BUCK had driven home the point that long-range missiles could hit remarkably small targets, and more secretive test flights had shown even better results.

On the whole, military commanders were not impressed by the concept of a “Long Range Tactical Missile System” (inevitably given a silly acronym; L-TaMS). It was expensive and could carry only a tiny payload – millions of dollars for a missile, when the same result could be achieved with an aircraft and one of the new laser-guided bombs. As with any piece of fancy kit, they were prepared to admit that it could have a few niche uses, but other weapons appeared to be far more practical. At the strategic level there were equally important considerations; the concept did not fit well with theories of proportionate response and escalation. If the use of non-nuclear ICBMs became widespread, how could anyone tell what might become a real nuclear strike?

Minor attacks could be misinterpreted as nuclear ones, or a series of non-nuclear attacks on “pinprick” targets could be the prelude to a larger strike.

A combination of treaties, back-room agreements and a general thaw in East-West relations had kept this (and other) disruptive ideas off the table for most of the ‘70s, but now they were back, and neither side could risk being left behind.

As great a concern was the reality of advancing technology. Counter-force bunker or silo-busting traditionally required heavy, powerful warheads, but the upcoming generation of ICBMs would be much more accurate, allowing lightweight multi-kiloton weapons to do the job instead.

In the near term, options such as "dense pack" and mobile missiles might help, but if deterrent forces were to become more vulnerable to pre-emptive strikes, their credibility could be threatened.

One option would be to build deterrents that are less vulnerable to attack, and submarine-launched missiles and several different types of orbital weapons systems received renewed attention from both sides.

The other way out would be to reduce the reliance on deterrent, and to start trying to defend instead. That is, to physically stop enemy missiles from reaching their targets.

The Strategic Defence Initiative would be a program of two halves. The media and the public's attention were naturally drawn towards the sci-fi aspects of the project, egged on by everything from White House enthusiasm to spectacular graphics that owed more to corporate advertising than to any practical defence system. The moviegoing public's recent enthusiasm for space-opera thrillers and the President's natural showmanship made it easy for the media to glamorise what would be a very serious and very expensive undertaking.

Behind the scenes, it was very different. One side of the initiative focussed on exotic research; the particle beams and X-Ray lasers of sci-fi fame, as well as advanced materials, novel propulsion systems and even theoretical Physics. The other side was far more practical; it was another Manhattan or Selene Project - engineers working to develop and deliver something that they knew could work, and to do so within a few years. Both sides would be pushing back the frontiers of research and technology, but on different timescales and with different levels of risk.

The problem everyone faced was the same: How do you prevent 10,000 nuclear warheads from reaching their targets?

It is preferable to destroy enemy missiles as they lift off and accelerate away into space. A rocket in powered flight is very easy to detect and target - it is a huge IR source, besides being a good radar reflector. However, it is also over enemy territory on the far side of the world, so while detecting it is easy, no interceptor missile could possibly reach it during the few minutes of boost phase. This is where the advanced concepts came in; blowing up a thin-skinned missile as it left the atmosphere by using a laser beam directed from orbit would be an ideal solution. However, high power reflected lasers or even more exotic nuclear-pumped beams would take years, if not decades to develop (if they could be built at all), so other near-term solutions were also needed.

Two concepts would emerge as clear favourites; chemical lasers and interceptor satellites. Chemical lasers could be made to produce very high power outputs, while still being sufficiently small to be capable of being fitted onto a satellite (albeit a rather large one). Interceptor satellites that were already orbiting over enemy territory would be close enough to hit ballistic missiles early in their flight.

By 1984, it seemed possible that either (or both) of these concepts could be ready for initial deployment by the end of the decade. In addition to all the ground-based research and development, both solutions would require massive space-based infrastructure. Although small relative to the building-sized experimental lasers on Earth, a chemical laser satellite would have a mass of at least 70 tons, and a fleet of them would be needed in orbit at any one time. This was far beyond the capability of any existing launch vehicle, but designs for heavy-lift rockets had been included in scope of the USAF's Future Launch Vehicle program.

The interceptor satellite concept had different drawbacks and advantages. The biggest advantage was a lower level of technical risk, the biggest disadvantage was the scale. Thousands of small spacecraft would be needed, and it would be necessary to communicate with all of them. Each satellite would be relatively simple; a basic stabilisation system, propulsion motor, explosive warhead and a sensor to detect the target in the final stages of approach. It would be guided towards its target by radio command, then released to destroy it once it was within a few dozen miles. The “killer satellite” concept had been dreamt up in the 1960s, and the early ideas were little more than the space-based equivalent of radio-guided missiles. As understanding of the challenges increased and technology improved, the satellite designs became smaller and smarter. Thanks to advances in space worthy computers and electronic navigation, the concept moved on to "Smart Rocks", then to "Brilliant Pebbles", which would be capable of following a programmed path to a designated position, rather than being externally guided. Such improvements greatly reduced the amount of communication that would be needed, but even so the challenge was immense.

During a nuclear attack, it was assumed that up to 2,000 missiles might be detected by satellites or ground-based radars. Powerful computers in the US would track these targets and assign one or more "Pebbles" to each one. Dispersed across a range of low Earth orbits, most of the Pebbles would be in completely the wrong place (i.e. a satellite orbiting over New Zealand cannot hope to hit a missile launched from Siberia), so there would need to be enough of them in the right place at all times. Realistically, this meant at least 10,000 satellites, 2-3,000 of which would need to be commanded to attack within about 10 minutes after the Soviets launched their missiles. Pebbles that are in the right place to attack will be scattered in orbit all across the Eastern hemisphere (i.e. those that are within a couple of thousand miles of the USSR), meaning that communicating with them via ground stations is utterly impractical. Although they will be able to steer themselves and even pick up a target once they approach it, the Pebbles would benefit from regular guidance updates after the initial order to attack. A satellite system would therefore be needed to attempt to relay targeting data to a minimum of 3,000 satellites at least once every two minutes, and to do so under conditions where active jamming and EMP interference can be expected.

This means powerful signals, high-gain beams and overlapping coverage of the entire low-Earth orbit constellation. Big geostationary satellites appeared to be the obvious choice, with large deployable antennas to focus wideband signals both down towards the Earth and to 'skim' the atmosphere to allow low-interference communication with Pebbles as they come over the horizon.

Although these satellites needed would be bigger and more capable than anything that had come before, this was an area where the UK had considerable technical experience. The “Hermes” TV relay satellites were still the largest and most powerful geostationary platforms ever launched. Naturally, the demands of wideband transmission, steerable spot beams and military-grade encryption would be quite different from those of a TV relay system, but British engineers had the experience of building and operating high-power signal transmitters in space over a period of many years, and it was in niche areas such as this that the British government and its defence contractors sought to capitalise on SDI.

 

[Archibald]

It certainly is, although the long-term results will hopefully be better than with Chevaline.

Its also a play-on-words with an old English expression "a cavalier attitude" - meaning to charge in without any clear plan, in the cheerful but misguided hope that everything will go your way.

Funnily enough the word cavalier also exists in French with the same meaning.

 

[Archibald]

SDI craziness and hype, exposed. I wonder how will the Soviets react.

 

[Julius Vogel]

So BAC basically will fund it's development off of the back of Star Wars? Hahaha that is v cute

 

[Archibald]

Lowell Wood initial plan - "smart rocks" - were to be as light as some grammes, and there would have been ten of thousands of them. It makes breakthrough starshot looks realistic when you think about it.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/arch...08d-a5d0-19167462228a/?utm_term=.80fc6d0e7966