A VerticAl empire TThhiiss ppaaggee iinntteennttiioonnaallllyy lleefftt bbllaannkk A VerticAl empire History of the British Rocketry Programme Second Edition C. N. Hill Formerly Charterhouse, UK Imperial College Press ICP Published by Imperial College Press 57 Shelton Street Covent Garden London WC2H 9HE Distributed by World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd. 5 Toh Tuck Link, Singapore 596224 USA office: 27 Warren Street, Suite 401-402, Hackensack, NJ 07601 UK office: 57 Shelton Street, Covent Garden, London WC2H 9HE British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. A VERTICAL EMPIRE History of the British Rocketry Programme (2nd Edition) Copyright © 2012 by Imperial College Press All rights reserved. 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Alvin - A Vertical Empire (2nd Ed).pmd 1 8/29/2011, 2:14 PM Contents Acknowledgements ......................................................................................................... vii Chapter 1: Introduction ................................................................................................... 1 Places.................................................................................................................. 11 Political and Administrative Matters .................................................................. 15 Politics ................................................................................................................ 16 Chapter 2: Rocket Motors ............................................................................................. 27 Rocket Motors in the UK ................................................................................... 33 HTP .................................................................................................................... 35 Hydrogen ............................................................................................................ 41 Solid Fuel Motors ............................................................................................... 53 Chapter 3: Rocket Interceptors ..................................................................................... 65 Designs in Detail ................................................................................................ 73 Facts and Figures ................................................................................................ 78 Chapter 4: Blue Steel ...................................................................................................... 83 Chapter 5: Blue Streak – The Origins .......................................................................... 93 The Warhead ...................................................................................................... 98 A Solid Fuel Design? ....................................................................................... 104 The Missile Design ........................................................................................... 111 Chapter 6: Blue Streak – The ‘Underground Launcher’ .......................................... 125 Chapter 7: Blue Streak – The Cancellation ................................................................ 141 BND(SG) .......................................................................................................... 148 Origins of Skybolt ............................................................................................ 153 Unpopularity of Blue Streak ............................................................................. 175 Chapter 8: BSSLV ........................................................................................................ 179 A Liquid Hydrogen Stage. ................................................................................ 194 Blue Streak with a Centaur Upper Stage .......................................................... 199 Chapter 9: The European Launcher Development Organisation – ELDO ............. 203 The Political Failure of ELDO ......................................................................... 216 v vi A Vertical Empire Chapter 10: Europa ...................................................................................................... 225 The Launches ................................................................................................... 232 Improving Europa ............................................................................................ 237 Europa III ......................................................................................................... 244 Chapter 11: Black Knight ............................................................................................ 249 Chapter 12: Black Knight and the Re-entry Experiments ........................................ 263 Black Knight Launches .................................................................................... 265 Project Dazzle .................................................................................................. 278 Summary of Black Knight Launches ............................................................... 282 Crusade and the 54-inch Black Knight ............................................................. 282 How Successful was Black Knight? ................................................................. 285 Was Black Knight Good Value for Money? .................................................... 286 Chapter 13: Black Arrow ............................................................................................. 289 The Flights ....................................................................................................... 307 The Cancellation .............................................................................................. 311 Black Arrow Improvements ............................................................................. 318 Chapter 14: The ‘Might Have Beens’ ......................................................................... 325 A Black Knight IRBM ..................................................................................... 328 Could Britain Have Launched an Astronaut into Orbit? .................................. 330 Alternative Histories ........................................................................................ 331 Chapter 15: Conclusions .............................................................................................. 335 Could the UK Once Again Become Involved in a Launcher Programme? ...... 344 Appendix A: Original Documents ............................................................................... 347 History of the Saunders Roe SR53 and SR177. ............................................... 347 K11 Underground Launcher ............................................................................. 351 Use of Spadeadam for Space Firings. ............................................................... 356 Space and the Future of The European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO). ...................................................................................... 358 Appendix B: A Black Knight Launcher? ................................................................... 363 Appendix C: Timeline .................................................................................................. 369 Further Reading ........................................................................................................... 373 Archives ........................................................................................................... 375 Index .......................................................................................................................... 377 Acknowledgements This book would not have been possible without the help given by very many people. Ed Andrews, the Central Services Manager of Westcott Venture Park. Alan Bond of Reaction Engines. Roy Dommett CBE, of the RAE and DERA, who was involved in much of the work detailed in this book, and whose sharp and percipient comments have thrown light on many of the ideas outlined. Wayne Cocroft of English Heritage for his help and assistance with the Spadeadam and High Down sites. Andy Davis for the photograph of the VC 10 as a Skybolt carrier. Guy Finch for his encyclopaedic knowledge of aircraft, Blue Streak and the rocket interceptors. Professor Edward James, who set me on this search following an interview when I applied for his MA course in Science Fiction at Reading University, and after reading his book Science Fiction in the Twentieth Century, where he notes that Dan Dare ‘gave a whole generation of British boys… a totally false impression that Britain was going to dominate the space race.’ James Macfarlane of Airborne Engineering Limited, Westcott Venture Park. Doug Millard, Space Curator at the Science Museum, who with great kindness started me on my research by allowing me access to his filing cabinet. He also was the first to put the idea in my mind: why do you want to launch satellites anyway? Kate Pyne, official historian at the AWRE, Aldermaston, for answering blundering questions with tact. Dave Wright, who has pursued Blue Streak with dogged perseverance, and without those endless telephone conversations this book would not have been possible. Many of the ideas outlined in this book originated from him. Thanks too to his wife Lesley for her patience! vii viii A Vertical Empire The staff at the Public Record Office in Kew, the ELDO section of the Historical Archives of the European Union at the European University Institute of Florence, the Coventry History Centre and the Science Museum at Wroughton. Thanks also to David Cheek of GKN Aerospace, Susan Kinsella, Tom Lukeman, Sean Potter and Barrie Ricketson, for their help and suggestions. Any mistakes are entirely due to me. Images and copyright: Thanks to GKN Aerospace for supplying images. Also images from the Defence Evaluation Research Agency: © (British) Crown Copyright, 2000 Defence Evaluation and Research Agency, reproduced with the permission of the Controller Her (Britannic) Majesty’s Stationery Office. The image of the ‘underground launcher’ on page 122 is by kind permission of English Heritage, and is copyright English Heritage. It was drawn by Allan Adams, and I am grateful to Wayne Cocroft for his help in obtaining the image. Chapter 1 Introduction It has been said that Britain acquired an empire in a fit of absent-mindedness. It might also be said that it acquired a rocketry programme in a similar fit of absent-mindedness. The UK space programme, or rocketry programme, has always been so low key that the public perception is that the UK has never even had a space programme. Yet for a time in the late 1950s and throughout the 1960s, the programme was technically as advanced as any in the world. If it did not achieve the high profiles of Sputnik, Vostok or Apollo, it is in the main because the projects were less ambitious, subject to much greater financial restrictions, and had a more modest goal. Most of the work was driven by the needs of the military. This was true too in the USA and USSR, but there the civilian effort also became caught up in the Cold War propaganda battles. Kennedy’s cry to arms ‘… to put a man on the moon before this decade is out …’ had no resonances in the UK, and the motives that drove many of the other projects in the US were also very often military in origin, even if they have been used in civilian guise. GPS began as a way for nuclear submarines to fix their position so they could launch their missiles more accurately. It must be admitted at the outset that almost all the work described here began life as a military project designed to obliterate cities and their inhabitants. The biggest project of all described in this book is Blue Streak, whose sole purpose was to launch hydrogen bombs at the USSR. It was only later that its application to a satellite launcher was seized upon as a political fig leaf for an embarrassed Government, and even then many of the potential satellites might well have been military. Likewise, Blue Steel was intended to deliver megaton warheads. Black Knight was a research vehicle whose initial function was to act as a test bed for Blue Streak and to research re-entry vehicles for nuclear warheads. Black Arrow and Skylark were the only major projects discussed here whose applications were intended to be solely civilian and scientific. In the end, though, the British work on rocketry and satellite launchers died, mainly as a consequence of lack of funding, political vacillation and a perceived 1