Britain in Space

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Money was no object. They had not realised - few had - that Britain was bankrupt.

Ivan Southall from his book Woomera, 1962

In November 1953 Britain exploded an independently-developed nuclear weapon at Emu, Australia. Initially it was believed that The RAF would be able to deliver nuclear weapons to their targets with the Vulcan, Valiant and Victor bombers. It was soon realised, though, that these aircraft were too vulnerable to Soviet air defences, so a ballistic missile, like those being developed by the Americans and Soviets, would be required.

Blue Streak on Test Stand
The engineer dressed in white (lower left)
gives a good indication of scale
© Bae Systems (British Aerospace)

The de Havilland Aircraft Company won the contract to build the British missile, which was called "Blue Streak". Rolls Royce would provide the rocket engines and decided that it would be quicker to licence an existing rocket engine rather than start development from scratch, so they purchased the technology of Rocketdyne's S3D rocket engine and improved it, making it lighter, more powerful, and more efficient. This became the RZ2, which would power the Blue Streak.

In August 1959, the first engines were tested at the Spadeadam Test Site in Cumbria. Blue Streak would be the equivalent of the American Atlas missile, which in its launcher incarnation would launch the Mercury manned flights, and of which versions are still launching commercial satellites today.

However, in April 1960, Blue Streak was suddenly cancelled as a weapons system. The silos that the missile would be launched from were far too vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike by an enemy. In addition, the Kerosene and Liquid Oxygen that powered Blue Streak meant that the missile took a long time to fuel. So long, in fact, that Soviet missiles would be able to hit the UK before the Blue Streaks had finished fuelling. Blue Streak was to be replaced as Britain's nuclear deterrent by the American Skybolt Air Launched Ballistic Missile, which was itself eventually cancelled. The final launch system for Britain?s nuclear weapons was the American Polaris Submarine Launched Ballistic Missile system. Submarine-based missiles continue to be the British nuclear delivery system to the present day.

Despite the cancellation of Blue Streak, Britain had put too much into the project for it to be simply abandoned. Something had to be salvaged from the project! The solution was to be Dr. Geoffry Pardoe's 1959 suggestion that Blue Streak could form the first stage of a satellite launcher.

His concept used Black Knight as a second stage and a military solid rocket as a third. The proposal eventually evolved into Black Prince , an all British launcher. When the project was offered to the Commonwealth (Australia and Canada), in order to spread the cost though, little interest was shown. Following this, European participation was sought, and the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) was formed with France, Germany, Italy, Belgium and Holland. Australia was also a member as it contributed the launch facilities at Woomera.

ELDO's first rocket, Europa I , was really nothing more than a redesigned Black Prince: Blue Streak as a first stage, a French second stage, a German third stage, and satellites produced by Belgium and Holland. The Europa I project allowed work to continue on Blue Streak, and the first Blue Streak was taken from the de Havilland factory at Derby to be tested at Spadedam, taken down again, shipped to Adelaide, driven to Woomera, and finally assembled on Launchpad 6a. This rocket was launched on 5 June 1964, working perfectly. Several more test flights took place, all of which were successful. The project was continued with flights using Blue Streak and the French and German stages. Unfortunately, The French and German Stages failed on several occasions. The Blue Streak first stage always worked perfectly, on each of the eleven times it was fired, a 100% success rate matched only by America's Saturn V.

Europa I's failure (and that of its successor, Europa II), gave the British government the excuse it had been looking for to scale down British space commitments. In 1968 Minister of Technology Tony Benn announced that Blue Streak was to be cancelled completely. This decision took Britain out of rocketry, and allowed France to take the lead with the largely French-built Ariane rocket series. Today, the last Blue Streaks a re museum pieces in Scotland, Belgium and French Guiana, while RZ2 engines designed to take spacecraft into orbit are kept in a Science Museum store near Swindon.

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