A Vertical Empire: History of the British Rocketry Programme

388 Pages·2011·21.888 MB·English

by  C. N. Hill

A VerticAl empire
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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
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London WC2H 9HE
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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. This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronic
or mechanical, including photocopying, recording or any information storage and retrieval system now known
or to be invented, without written permission from the Publisher.
For photocopying of material in this volume, please pay a copying fee through the Copyright Clearance Center,
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ISBN-13 978-1-84816-795-7
ISBN-10 1-84816-795-4
ISBN-13 978-1-84816-796-4 (pbk)
ISBN-10 1-84816-796-2 (pbk)
Printed in Singapore.
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
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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!
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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
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