Commonwealth alternative to Europe in Aerospace 1950s to 19??

uk 75

uk 75

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One of the more controversial what-ifs, but fun nevertheless is consideration of what might have happened if the British Government had not decided to concentrate on Europe from the Macmillan Government on.

Assuming the politicians in London, Ottawa, Canberra and ......... had run with the ball.

A closer co-operation in the military field could have led to joint naval task forces in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific to substitute for the failed CENTO and SEATO pacts.

Co-operation on nuclear forces could have seen development of the V force and later aircraft as well as the deployment of a Blue Streak or more sophisticated weapon (Australia in particular should have got more out of this than it did).

A Comonwealth Space Programme with sites in the member countries to allow satellite and later manned orbital missions.

There were major obstacles to all this. For anyone who has read the "Ministry of Space" graphic novel or in the old days Dan Dare and Jeff Hawke, the thought of an alternative to the US and Europe resonates despite the snags (economic chiefly, Europe is our largest market)
 
Hi,
Interesting thought! A better World.
Europe is our largest market? I thought we had global outlook in the fifties/sixties?
spark
uk 75 said:
One of the more controversial what-ifs, but fun nevertheless is consideration of what might have happened if the British Government had not decided to concentrate on Europe from the Macmillan Government on.

Assuming the politicians in London, Ottawa, Canberra and ......... had run with the ball.

A closer co-operation in the military field could have led to joint naval task forces in the Indian Ocean and the Pacific to substitute for the failed CENTO and SEATO pacts.

Co-operation on nuclear forces could have seen development of the V force and later aircraft as well as the deployment of a Blue Streak or more sophisticated weapon (Australia in particular should have got more out of this than it did).

A Comonwealth Space Programme with sites in the member countries to allow satellite and later manned orbital missions.

There were major obstacles to all this. For anyone who has read the "Ministry of Space" graphic novel or in the old days Dan Dare and Jeff Hawke, the thought of an alternative to the US and Europe resonates despite the snags (economic chiefly, Europe is our largest market)
Click to expand...
 
Woomera was shamefully underused. The ultimate might-have-been is neatly encompassed in Arthur C. Clarke's Prelude to Space, even if you don't agree with his choice of launch system.


I think the starting point for this has to be the UK dropping F.155T (at the same time as the thin-wing Javelin) as the best being the enemy of good enough and buying the Arrow. That plus an Australian buy ought to make the aircraft affordable and save the project, although the matters of engine exchangeability (does swapping Gyrons in for the Iroquois risk paralleling the cost and performance penalties seen in the Spey Phantom?) and weapons/FCS have to be sorted out. (At least with the Arrow, you KNOW you have a Mach 2-capable airframe that flies well and that is actual hardware rather than paper promises.) Buccaneer does the Canberra-replacement job for all services, and TSR.2 is delayed until the late 60s or early 70s, when a combination of advances in electronics and systems integration and airframe/engine experience gained on the CF-105 make it an easier "ask" in all respects.


With the TSR.2 costs deferred (or the aircraft possibly evolved out of gradual developments to the CF-105) and F.155T/Javelin canned, there should be quite a few millions spare to dabble in space.
 
With the TSR.2 costs deferred (or the aircraft possibly evolved out of gradual developments to the CF-105) and F.155T/Javelin canned, there should be quite a few millions spare to dabble in space.
Click to expand...
Making the classic mistake of thinking that if money was saved on X, it would be spent on Y.
Besides, Woomera was fairly useless in terms of satellite lauching.
 
do i see here canada Avro Arrow, P.1154, TSR.2 flying for RAF, RAAF, RCAF ?
the Black Prince launching satellites for Commonwealth ?
 
Michel

As some of you know I do have a tendency to stray from What-if into Fantasy in my threads. A Commonwealth military equipped with Arrows and TSR2s and operating a developed Blue Streak/Black Prince/Waverider space force. For a generation who grew up with the likes of Dan Dare and Jeff Hawke or the TV stuff from Gerry Anderson bring it on please!

On a more mundane level, the wider Commonwealth also offered scope for co-operation. So a Space Launching site should not have presented a problem. Woomera might have been more military than civil?
 
Ascension Island or somewhere in the British Indian Ocean Territory would be better, did anyone ever consider it? even back of a fag packet scribblings?
Click to expand...
Ascension Island would have been too inaccessible. Indian Ocean territories blown away with the wind of change.
Barbados was once considered for Black Arrow, using some of NASA's range facilities.
 
UK75, I sort of share your dream, but I think the Waverider space force is for the children (or possibly grandchildren) of the men who fly the Arrows and the TSR2s. Also I agree with Woomera being a better military than civilian liftoff site (although again, with Clarke's choice of a nuclear propulsion system for his fictional British civilian moon shot, the Australian desert was the only reasonable place to put it). There's been talk about a spaceport at Cape Yorke (northern Queensland, above the Tropic of Capricorn and better for near-equatorial orbit injection) for some time, but never more than talk. I suspect the civilian port (for developed technology) would have been there, with Woomera as the military pad and general proving ground.


Another big what-if is India, and the extent to which it remains Anglophilic as opposed to approaching the Russians (to the extent that it did).
 
Hi,
With the light weight single stage agreed, a capsule would be sub-orbital.
According to former de Havilland people who worked on the project seven tons to LEO (300n.mile) was expected from a RZ12 + LH/LOX upper stages. From a mature vehicle even more.
With the intended RZ13 (cancelled April 1960) you have a first stage equal to the Titan 1.
With the RZ14 you have an engine that is as powerful as an early Shuttle engine with about the third the mass.
With High Energy (LH/LOX) upper stages it could put up the equivalent to a Soyuz plus a Freelander!
You then have to remember the Middle weight lift vehicles for which the Woomera Launch facilities were built, much bigger payload!
Woomera was intended for military launches and global near polar orbits are more important. There were plenty of alternative equatorial sites looked at and remember de Havilland had a small dedicated team working on recoverable BSSLV in the 1950’s
Remember the Australians were expecting manned space craft by 1965 or shortly there after, thats why they built 6A and 6B with a million pound thrust capacity!




pathology_doc said:
UK75, I sort of share your dream, but I think the Waverider space force is for the children (or possibly grandchildren) of the men who fly the Arrows and the TSR2s. Also I agree with Woomera being a better military than civilian liftoff site (although again, with Clarke's choice of a nuclear propulsion system for his fictional British civilian moon shot, the Australian desert was the only reasonable place to put it). There's been talk about a spaceport at Cape Yorke (northern Queensland, above the Tropic of Capricorn and better for near-equatorial orbit injection) for some time, but never more than talk. I suspect the civilian port (for developed technology) would have been there, with Woomera as the military pad and general proving ground.


Another big what-if is India, and the extent to which it remains Anglophilic as opposed to approaching the Russians (to the extent that it did).
Click to expand...
 
The Blue Streak makes for some fascinating whatifs, before and after Europa.
Before: as much as I love the Arrow, whatif Canada invested the sums in the Blue Streak, taking over in 1960 ? to orbit Alouette 1 ?
After: in 1972, as Europa closed down, no less than seven Blue Streak were left, F12 to F18...
 
on Launch site discussion
forget everything in India ocean or Pacific, take a site in Atlantic !

The French had same problem for there new Space port and after long consideration, they build Guiana Space Centre near Kourou in French Guiana.
Easy to reach, not passing true problems zones like suez channel or Somalia.

Trinidad and Tobago would be ideal
in 1960 part of Oversea British territory, today a republic within the Commonwealth.
lies 10° north to equator, Launch from Tobago could reach equator or high polar orbits.
easy to reach from Great Britain Canada by ship (yes Australia need the Panama channel to reach Trinidad and Tobago, by ship)
good infrastructure just like in French Guiana.
 
It is a shame that post 1960 the Blue streak couldn't be used for its IRBM role - by hatever partner GB could find: Canada, Australia, France...

Note that the Blue Streak biggest flaw (boiling LOX) could have been corrected. Keep kerosene as fuel, but change the oxidizer.
But what oxidizer ? that's one very annoying thing (among many) with chemical rockets: too few oxidizer options, all of them deeply flawed
- LOX (it boils)
- fluorine (better not to think about it)
- HTP (unstable and explosive)
- N2O (laughing gas) - mild cryogenic, bad performance

And this leave the oxidizer part of storable propellants: N2O4, NTO, whatever its name.
Now, switching a rocket engine oxidizer from LOX to N2O4 has been done many times.
Example: Titan I > Titan II LR-87. They also changed the fuel, in this case.

The Agena started with kerosene fuel and storable oxidizer, then become 100% storable.

Many other examples. Basically: changing from kerolox to storables OR a mix of the two can be done rather easily. Mostly because densities and temperatures (except for LOX) are very similar.

Now imagine Roll Royce created a RZ.3 still running on kerosene fuel, but having N2O4 oxidizer.

That prop combo was rarely used NOT because performance is bad or because they are uncompatible

N2O4/Kerosene

N2O4/Kerosene
www.astronautix.com www.astronautix.com

- rather, it was an hybrid of kerolox and storables...
 
According to this link...


NTO/kerosene = specific impulse 267 at sea level. Not quite as good as "100% storables" (276 - 286) but slightly better than HTP/kerosene at 258.

It doesn't makes a big difference, as far as IRBM are concerned...
 
Well sorry to hijack that thread but I'm pondering about a purely anglo-french ELDO / Europa program. Starting from the ELDO-A & ELDO-B proposals of 1966, which were pretty excellent ideas but came too late.

I'm wondering whether the anglo-french should not go the ELDO-A / ELDO-B way right off 1961 and without Germany and its (dismal) Astris third stage.

Just the anglo-french and

- ELDO-A = a Blue Streak + Coralie + solid-fuel kick stage stage 3 (borrowed from french Didamant and missiles)
Meanwhile by 1964 the anglo-french found they are both working on hydrogen stages for their smallish launchers (Diamant and Black Knight, somewhat): RZ.20 versus H3.5
Startled, they decided to blend RZ.20 and H3.5 into a common hydrolox upper stage optimized for the Blue Streak, notably the maximum weight that can stand on top without crushing it. OTL ELDO-B and Europa III-A (1966 & 1970) show the way: let's call it HM-14, just for the fun.

- ELDO-B: Blue Streak + HM-14 (and some boosters to help performance: P16 or L17, just like Ariane 4 PAP and PAL... now that's interesting !)

Now I'll check how much can a "Blue Streak / HM-14 " lift into orbit... GTO / GEO included.

This is not "the Selene project" by any mean but rather an optimized anglo-french - Blue Streak scenario.
 
Okay so I have done some simple basic rocket maths and the results are pretty interesting.

So, we have only two "Europas" and only the anglo-french.

Europa 1
-Blue Streak + Coralie + solid-fuel P2 (from Diamant / french missiles etc. etc.)

Europa 2
-Blue Streak + H14
(the maximum HZ.20 / HM-4 stage that can go ontop of the Blue Streak without crushing it. Also the combined weights of Coralie, Astris and PAS: 11 + 3 + 1 tonnes, so total 14 tonnes: conservative number, could be 15 or 16 tonnes, so H15 or H16 - whatever)

And basta, that's it. From 1961 onwards, the anglo-french go full bore on these two launchers: Concorde and Jaguar style, for the best and for the worse, obviously.

So, what performance for Europa 1 and Europa 2 ?

- Europa 1 can lift 1500 kg to LEO, then I removed a zero from my equations... and got 150 kg to GEO (3900 m/s)

- Europa 2 is even more astonishing. Blue Streak + H14 is akin to a... miniature Atlas Centaur (!) hence I got 8000 pounds (3630 kg) to LEO. Which is, guess what ? the weight of a Gemini capsule (!). Note that the MOL Gemini-B got weight trimmed to 6500 pounds.

So - this is completely astonishing.

A- the anglo french would got a workable rocket
B- it could lift satellites to GEO straight ahead (to you, Symphonie)
C- provided they managed to pull out that H-14 stage, it would become a miniature Atlas Centaur with excellent performance.

My mind is completely blown. Had the anglo-french in 1961, gone the Concorde way on Europa... that is "only the two of us, no Europe" - hell of an alternative history.
 
More on this. Checked ESA history.

The origins of Europa (1960-1964)

-British cancell Blue Streak in April 1960

-From this moment to January 1961 the French are onboard for the 2nd stage (= Coralie)

-BUT they blackmail the British

-space science budget ain't enough, we need our military budget to help

-but in exchange, we want the Blue Streak military secrets

-which drive Washington crazy

-British solution: dispatch the third stage to the continent (Astris incoming)

-Next big players of course are Germany and Italy

-BUT Italy is in love with the Scout rocket, from their San Marco platform off Kenya

-Germany has been given the third stage, but is also leading the pack of small countries

-if Germany goes away, they will follow (Danemark, Belgium...)

-Germany (as usual) wonders about US rockets

So, whatif Italy and Germany and all the others went away by summer 1961 ?

Back to December 1960 square one: anglo-french. But would the French pay, outside their military ? Not sure at all ! By 1961 Diamant and the "P10 missiles" were in infancy.

The only way would be for the French to be persuaded to fun the second stage (Coralie) without the military budget nor... blackmail.​
 

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End result: 4*P16+Blue Streak+H12+P2 = 1 tons to GEO. And 5 tons to LEO. Close from Ariane 1, when you think about it.
 

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