The Black Arrow & Britain’s Rocket Program

Same here Archibald. I cannot remember the source either a book or a magazine years ago (had me laughing about it too) :D
 
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Nice find Flyaway, I always thought that the Black Arrow rocket was cancelled far too soon after the first and only launch to place the Prospero satellite into orbit, which I may add is still in orbit after fifty years.
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Perhaps - but what satellites would it have launched? A launcher is only a means to an end.
 
Watching this just makes me angry all over again that as per typical the UK government made what I regard as a ridiculously short sighted decision. We in Britain could have been ahead of the curve in small sat launches if we had persisted with this, we might even have actually created a small sat market earlier than it has been if we had maintained this capability.
 
Flyaway said:
Watching this just makes me angry all over again that as per typical the UK government made what I regard as a ridiculously short sighted decision. We in Britain could have been ahead of the curve in small sat launches if we had persisted with this, we might even have actually created a small sat market earlier than it has been if we had maintained this capability.
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Given the electronics of 1970, what type of 'small satellites' would we be launching?
And small really means small. Not 660 kg, but 66 kg.
 
Black Arrow is perfect example of stupidity ignorance of British politician
on first sign of trouble they cancel the program

but the program had issues:
the logistic to build the Rocket in britain and transport to Australia to launch it
had used island of St-Kilda as launch site it would have reduce allot transport cost (the area has tracking station of missile testing)

the low payload
The Prospero satellite has only 66kg mass, but in a 534x1314 km orbit with inclination of 82.04 degrees
Original payload in 220 km orbit would be 135 kilograms
The french send allot low mass satellite with there Diamant into orbit,

next to that was Black Diamant a crossover of the Cora stage with second stage of Black Arrow, to be launch from french space port Kourou
but again stupidity strike again

Irony the Diamant BP4 used faring of Black Arrow build extra by RAE for CNES
 
"on first sign of trouble they cancel the program "

That wasn't why it was cancelled. What's the point of a satellite launcher if you don't have any satellites to launch?
 
As I said at NASAspaceflight forums, same topic - just look at Gunter's space web SCOUT webpage. https://space.skyrocket.de/doc_lau_fam/scout.htm

Scout had 125 flights in 35 years, and that's merely 3.7 flight annually, let's round that to 4 flights. That was the reality of smallsats "market" in the 60's, 70's, 80's, and part of the 90's.
Vought never felt complied to churn more boosters, and SCOUT remained untouched by the Shuttle craze, being too small and too cheap.
And a big chunk of these launches were US military, so captive market hard to crack by any foreigner.
France Diamant flew 12 times in ten years.
 
CNH said:
That wasn't why it was cancelled. What's the point of a satellite launcher if you don't have any satellites to launch?
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It's always possible to launch simple satellite, to prove the concept and whole system capabilities.
At least, the building of rocket and whole launching infrastructure could be justified, IMHO.

Same problem arose for Soviet R-7 launcher - and first "sputnik" has been nearly impractical, but made great impact.
 
R-7 could launch a man into space; Black Arrow could launch a pumpkin.
 
Sat launching boils down to who can do it the cheapest. The US and Sovs could use boosters from their extensive military programmes. It made little sense for UK to compete. Europe developed Ariane after Blue Streak based on France's national deterrent missile programme. China and India do the same. Japan is the exception with a thriving programme but then it was the second biggest economy after US.
 
Ariane 1 was separate from the French ICBM programme. Ariane 3-5 have some commonality in their solid boosters, but that's more a sharing of manufacturing resources than identical hardware.
 
I don't understand why over the past 20-30 years, there has been no government investment in the national rocket project
 
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closest (in terms of time period and industrial potential) example Japan has serious competencies in satellites and launch systems building, think the government was missing the chance in past few decades, they should at least try

meanwhile, South Korea will soon launch a first own mid-class rocket - Nuri
spacenews.com

South Korea to spend $553 million on space projects in 2021

South Korea to spend $553 million on space projects in 2021
spacenews.com spacenews.com
 
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In approx 1970 William Penny (yes that A & H Bomb chap) was asked to decide on the best approach for future investment in the U.K. space business. He recommended ceasing work on launcher and concentrate funds and technical efforts on Satellites.

Pennies recommendation was based on the fact that satellites were getting bigger and competing with those that had government funded large ICBM’s was never going to work.

In a way he was right, but he completely missed the potential of miniaturisation. It’s this which has revolutionised the business top to bottom. It’s even more ironic that he called time on and excellent small sat launcher......the very thing that most are now using as the springboard to space.
 
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Zoo Tycoon said:
In approx 1970 William Penny (yes that A & H Bomb chap) was asked to decide on the best approach for future investment in the U.K. space business. He recommended ceasing work on launcher and concentrate funds and technical efforts on Satellites.

Pennies recommended was based on the fact that satellites were getting bigger and competing with those that had government funded large ICBM’s was never going to work.

In a way he was right, but he completely missed the potential of miniaturisation. It’s this which has revolutionised the business top to bottom. It’s even more ironic that he called time on and excellent small sat launcher......the very thing that most are now using as the springboard to space.
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What an appropriate name ! "not a penny for Black Arrow" or (William Proxmire) "not a penny for this nutty fantasy"
Penny-pinching
(and he was a dickhead too - runs for cover...!)
 
Dickheads don't build atom bombs.
 
Zoo Tycoon said:
In approx 1970 William Penny (yes that A & H Bomb chap) was asked to decide on the best approach for future investment in the U.K. space business. He recommended ceasing work on launcher and concentrate funds and technical efforts on Satellites.

Pennies recommendation was based on the fact that satellites were getting bigger and competing with those that had government funded large ICBM’s was never going to work.

In a way he was right, but he completely missed the potential of miniaturisation. It’s this which has revolutionised the business top to bottom. It’s even more ironic that he called time on and excellent small sat launcher......the very thing that most are now using as the springboard to space.
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He was absolutely correct. While smallsat revenue is increasing rapidly, it's still small compared to high-throughput communications satellites - which are steadily increasing in size even today.

Even taking the recent growth in the smallsat industry into account, for how many decades after 1970 would a smallsat launcher be essentially worthless?
 
drejr said:
Zoo Tycoon said:
In approx 1970 William Penny (yes that A & H Bomb chap) was asked to decide on the best approach for future investment in the U.K. space business. He recommended ceasing work on launcher and concentrate funds and technical efforts on Satellites.

Pennies recommendation was based on the fact that satellites were getting bigger and competing with those that had government funded large ICBM’s was never going to work.

In a way he was right, but he completely missed the potential of miniaturisation. It’s this which has revolutionised the business top to bottom. It’s even more ironic that he called time on and excellent small sat launcher......the very thing that most are now using as the springboard to space.
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He was absolutely correct. While smallsat revenue is increasing rapidly, it's still small compared to high-throughput communications satellites - which are steadily increasing in size even today.

Even taking the recent growth in the smallsat industry into account, for how many decades after 1970 would a smallsat launcher be essentially worthless?
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Eh he was and wasn't, and was :)

Yes satellites got far bigger before they ever got smaller but there was still a plausible 'market' even in the 60s/70s and arguably Black Arrow had potential to grow significantly given enough effort. Whereas British electronics was obviously lagging so making them smaller wasn't really in the cards either. A decision in either direction was going to probably go badly simply because in the end England couldn't afford to do anything significant, especially on its own.

Would a "small-sat" launcher on it's own in the 70s and 80s be "worthless"? Arguably not as the entire concept (as a vague notion at any rate) was out there at the time and LV's such as the Scout were still chugging along, only finally getting 'killed' by the push for everything to flay on the Shuttle. (And once you're forced that direction why would you bother thinking 'small'? :) )

My take is essentially the "choices" as they were seen at the time were really the 'problem' not which one was actually made. Black Arrow wasn't every going to be a 'competitive' LV in any form, that was quite evident from the start. Nor was it likely that satellite production was going to be a viable path since it was obvious at the time that the British were behind and going to stay that way as long as the were going it alone.

Hence the cooperative efforts that were arguably a good start but technically, financially and politically underwhelming in practice. Still the BRITISH first stage worked every damn time :)

So what if more effort had gone into not only Blue Streak but Black Arrow as well. Maybe not as a straight up satellite launcher but primarily as a testbed and test vehicle program?

I have to admit that one thing that always struck me was how 'intact' the Black Arrow first stages came back. Engines smashed flat and the body obviously damaged beyond repair but if you think about it that's a statement in and of itself. How much effort to get it back where you could 'salvage' it if not maybe repair/reuse it? Because in the end that's where rockets were GOING to go at some point and what if England (and Europe) led the way? It's a rather bold and frankly non-intuitive path to even consider let alone choose but at the time in question wasn't that something that England and Europe as a whole were dabbling with? A "third" way?

I doubt anyone with enough "pull" would actually have looked let alone suggested it but I have to wonder....

Randy
 
drejr said:
Even taking the recent growth in the smallsat industry into account, for how many decades after 1970 would a smallsat launcher be essentially worthless?
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Ummm... zero?

A launch vehicle is not an island unto itself. It can lead into other things. For example, the SpaceX Falcon 1 essentially failed. It was supposed to lead to the Falcon 5, and *that* failed. Then it led to the Falcon 9, which succedded, and that led to the Falcon 9 Heavy, which has also succeeded, and is leading to the Starship/BFR, which hopefully will succeed. But Starship would have *never* existed had there not been a Falcon 1. What could the UK have produced had Black Arrow been simply the first step, rather than the last gasp?
 
Orionblamblam said:
What could the UK have produced had Black Arrow been simply the first step, rather than the last gasp?
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A launch vehicle economically uncompetitive with its American equivalent and launched from French or Australian territory.

More likely a somewhat larger workshare in something like Ariane.

RanulfC said:
My take is essentially the "choices" as they were seen at the time were really the 'problem' not which one was actually made. Black Arrow wasn't every going to be a 'competitive' LV in any form, that was quite evident from the start. Nor was it likely that satellite production was going to be a viable path since it was obvious at the time that the British were behind and going to stay that way as long as the were going it alone.
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Well this is kind of a Catch-22, isn't it? If you don't have satellites what are you going to put on your launch vehicle? The few Scout research payloads that weren't NASA/US military?

In fact there weren't enough satellites to support even the limited Black Arrow test program.

Until commercial satellites started to take off people who didn't need ICBMs had quite a dilemma.
 
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The lack of any feasible launching site would count against it.
Who would pay the R&D costs? The MoD wouldn't have given up any portion of its tight R&D budget, the MoA simply disappeared into MinTech which after a few years sunk into that mammoth, the Department of Trade and Industry - a body singly uninterested in aviation and space flight. The British National Space Centre didn't emerge until 1985, many years later.
Britain in the late 60s and 70s wouldn't even fund any kind of supersonic aircraft on its own, let alone an entire rocket programme. Wilson's government wouldn't even fund Beagle Aircraft building light aircraft, so a multi-million pound space programme was unlikely without chances of big success and Britain had been burned by a succession of high technology gambles that went nowhere (Concorde, AGR etc.).
 
I have high hopes for Skyrora and don't want to believe that this company can suffer the same fate as Black Arrow. I read one article once ago, where authors mentioned that Skyrora decided to go rough and organized a launch in Ireland to show its independence. However, Laura Edison, Skyrora General Counsel, mentioned in her interview that the company aims to be a leading launch company. So, Britain has all the chances to become a spacefaring nation, and I think the government will avoid rash decisions.
 
drejr said:
Orionblamblam said:
What could the UK have produced had Black Arrow been simply the first step, rather than the last gasp?
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A launch vehicle economically uncompetitive with its American equivalent and launched from French or Australian territory.
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Economic competitiveness in the short term is not necessarily the end-all. Sometimes you need a loss leader.


drejr said:
Well this is kind of a Catch-22, isn't it? If you don't have satellites what are you going to put on your launch vehicle?
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Space probes. British citizens off to explore the universe and claim bits of it for Her Royal Majesty. Members of the Royal Space Navy out to plant the flag, claim new lands for the Empire and sing Rule Britannia, assuring that the British Empire would still be a going concern well into the 21st Century. People overlook the practical value of national morale boosting.
 
CNH said:
Orionblamblam said:
CNH said:
Dickheads don't build atom bombs.
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Remind me to insert photos of the leaders of the USSR, Red China, Iran, North Korea.
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None of them built atom bombs. They got competent people to do it for them.
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By that reasoning, *nobody* built atom bombs. At best, individuals worked on some small part, be it theory or polishing a bolt.

But even so... "Klaus Fuchs," "Ted Hall," "George Koval," "David Greenglass." History would have been better off had these Manhattan project workers never been, erased from existence the moment of conception. "Dickhead" doesn't *begin* to describe these monsters who gave atom bombs to the worst ideology Earth has seen arise in a thousand years,
 
CNH said:
None of them built atom bombs. They got competent people to do it for them.
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The Soviet copy allot from Manhattan project, not as copy cat, but shorten the R&D of there Atomic bomb.
As so fast possible deterrence in case US attack on USSR

Pakistan copy entire library of Belgium Nuclear research center Mol
They faxed, Scanned, E-mailed and photocopy everything, the Pakistan students got in there hands.
Belgium personnel found this odd and Belgium Intelligent servis nothing to investigate
until Pakistan successful tested there Atomic Bomb

How People Republic of Korea got Bomb is a mystery
But since they the habit to kidnap every one they needed
I would not surprise there have nuclear weapon Specialist as guest for life...
 
RanulfC said:
My take is essentially the "choices" as they were seen at the time were really the 'problem' not which one was actually made. Black Arrow wasn't every going to be a 'competitive' LV in any form, that was quite evident from the start. Nor was it likely that satellite production was going to be a viable path since it was obvious at the time that the British were behind and going to stay that way as long as the were going it alone.
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Orionblamblam said:
drejr said:
Orionblamblam said:
What could the UK have produced had Black Arrow been simply the first step, rather than the last gasp?
Click to expand...

A launch vehicle economically uncompetitive with its American equivalent and launched from French or Australian territory.
Click to expand...


Economic competitiveness in the short term is not necessarily the end-all. Sometimes you need a loss leader.
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Yes, this is why Black Arrow was cancelled. The US had the ultimate loss leader.


drejr said:
Well this is kind of a Catch-22, isn't it? If you don't have satellites what are you going to put on your launch vehicle?
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Space probes. British citizens off to explore the universe and claim bits of it for Her Royal Majesty. Members of the Royal Space Navy out to plant the flag, claim new lands for the Empire and sing Rule Britannia, assuring that the British Empire would still be a going concern well into the 21st Century. People overlook the practical value of national morale boosting.
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This is fine for Dan Dare but if the actual British Empire isn't a going concern, neither is the British Space Empire.

The morale boost of my 4th of July display probably isn't going to be very impressive if my neighbor is ten times wealthier than me and also inherited a fireworks factory.
 
drejr said:
The morale boost of my 4th of July display probably isn't going to be very impressive if my neighbor is ten times wealthier than me and also inherited a fireworks factory.
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No, it won't be terribly impressive. But how impressive will it be if you simply give up and have no fireworks display of your own?

Most of the things I've done have been done *far* better by other people. But I still take some pride in the piece of crap sci-fi stories I've written, the patents I earned, the sculpture and whatnot I've done. Imagine how impressed people would be with the tiny little nation of Englandistan if they actually powered through and launched their first Britnaut in, say, 1980, landed a Beefeater on the Moon in 1990, staked a claim on Mars in 2010? Sure, seen from the vantage point of 1970 or so such a set of goals would have seemed both difficult *and* likely to be far less impressive than what the US and USSR were likely to accomplish. But had the Brits actually gone through with it, they'd be the leaders in spaceflight today. And even if the US and USSR had gone full "2001," Britain would *still* be far ahead of where they wound up. And don't say they couldn't have done it: SpaceX seems able to pull it off with *far* less resources than the British Empire could have thrown at it.

So, yeah, your cheapass fireworks will pale compared to your Kardashian neighbors display. But it'll be *yours.* And honestly... will the fact they spent ten times as much give them ten times the pride in accomplishment?
 
Orionblamblam said:
And don't say they couldn't have done it: SpaceX seems able to pull it off with *far* less resources than the British Empire could have thrown at it.
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No it doesn't.

Orionblamblam said:
So, yeah, your cheapass fireworks will pale compared to your Kardashian neighbors display. But it'll be *yours.* And honestly... will the fact they spent ten times as much give them ten times the pride in accomplishment?
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I don't know, chances are they came from his factory.

I'm sure the people who worked on Black Arrow felt enormous pride in accomplishment after a successful launch. In terms of national morale, it's hardly likely launching something that looked vaguely similar to Sputnik in 1971 gave the British public anything like a tenth of the pride in accomplishment Americans got from a lunar landing years earlier.
 
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Orionblamblam said:
drejr said:
The morale boost of my 4th of July display probably isn't going to be very impressive if my neighbor is ten times wealthier than me and also inherited a fireworks factory.
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No, it won't be terribly impressive. But how impressive will it be if you simply give up and have no fireworks display of your own?

Most of the things I've done have been done *far* better by other people. But I still take some pride in the piece of crap sci-fi stories I've written, the patents I earned, the sculpture and whatnot I've done. Imagine how impressed people would be with the tiny little nation of Englandistan if they actually powered through and launched their first Britnaut in, say, 1980, landed a Beefeater on the Moon in 1990, staked a claim on Mars in 2010? Sure, seen from the vantage point of 1970 or so such a set of goals would have seemed both difficult *and* likely to be far less impressive than what the US and USSR were likely to accomplish. But had the Brits actually gone through with it, they'd be the leaders in spaceflight today. And even if the US and USSR had gone full "2001," Britain would *still* be far ahead of where they wound up. And don't say they couldn't have done it: SpaceX seems able to pull it off with *far* less resources than the British Empire could have thrown at it.

So, yeah, your cheapass fireworks will pale compared to your Kardashian neighbors display. But it'll be *yours.* And honestly... will the fact they spent ten times as much give them ten times the pride in accomplishment?
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What was the point of landing a man on the moon?
 
Oh dear, rather like discussing the Bomb, this has become somewhat emotive in conversation.
Folks try to avoid the realm if Alternative History, or take this argument there not here.
 

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