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That’s not quite the full story tho’. Where’s the bit about NASA is promising to launch British payloads at a huge discount then reneging the instant Black Arro
by gaius 8y ago
That’s not quite the full story tho’. Where’s the bit about NASA is promising to launch British payloads at a huge discount then reneging the instant Black Arrow was cancelled? That’s why the Treasury was fooled into not supporting it.
- DrLevingston 8y agoOnce again the US is blamed for everyone's woes and troubles. Not sure what you're talking about, but it seems like a poor excuse for not having a successful space program.
- gsnedders 8y agoThat was far from the only thing that led to its cancellation; another was that there simply wasn't a need to launch enough to prove the launch vehicle. FWIW, the report that led to its cancellation was written by William Penney, who had led the British nuclear programme.
- gaius 8y agothe report that led to its cancellation was written by William Penney Civil Servants often get it badly wrong, Beeching for example. Or who was that other bungler that killed off AI? The U.K. could have been leading the world in both aerospace and computing today if it wasn’t for those Latin-verb-conjugating clowns.
- gsnedders 8y agoIf someone else had been given Beeching's job (make British Rail stop losing money, hand-over-fist), what would they have recommended instead of mass closures? While they might have differed in what they suggested closing, I don't think the outcome would've been all that different.
- Lio 8y agoThey could have kept the land the routes ran over though. One of the reasons Beaching gets so much blame is that not only did he close lines he sold parts of them off for little return so that they couldn’t be reopened without compulsory purchase orders because they've been built on. Today we could massively improve our transport infrastructure if that hadn’t happened.
- ggm 8y agoThe Lighthill report was not a bungle: it was an honest and dispassionate review which showed how massively overstated the UK A.I. claims were. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthill_report https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lighthill_report (I'm biased. Sue me)
- gaius 8y agoHere’s the funny thing tho’ we can contrast AI with nuclear fusion. No one questioned that fusion would be a decades-long effort. Now in the present day AI is starting to pay off big time, and fusion is as far out of reach as ever. One had its funding slashed, the other didn’t. If it wasn’t a bungle it was remarkably short-sighted. It just infuriates me how much U.K. engineers could accomplish if we weren’t fighting with our own government bureaucracies the whole time and could concentrate on the work
- ajross 8y agoI've actually never heard that bit. Is there a link? But the US was hardly the only player in the game. This was 1971, the technology side of the space race was winding down, and ESA/Ariane launch capability was right around the corner. I don't think "British" satellites really suffered much in the market for this decision in hindsight.
- gsnedders 8y agoESA wasn't founded till 1973, and Ariane 1 doesn't fly until the end of 1979. ELDO is more relevant here, as the Europa rocket was a joint project (of which Britain was a major part; it was partly based on the Blue Streak ICBM).
- masklinn 8y agoOTOH the UK had left ELDO to focus on Black Arrow (hence the replacement of the old Blue Streak stage by Diamant's, and possibly the move from Woomera to Kourou)
- gsnedders 8y agoIt sort of left in the mid-60s, AFAIK. (Still, by the end, almost a third of the funding for Europa was British.)
- gaius 8y agoIs there a link? It's documented in the book Vertical Empire, I don't know of an online copy, I'm afraid. https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Vertical-Empire-History-Programme-1950-1971/dp/1860942687/ref=smi_www_rco2_go_smi_9905632998?_encoding=UTF8&%2AVersion%2A=1&%2Aentries%2A=0&ie=UTF8 https://smile.amazon.co.uk/Vertical-Empire-History-Programme... <-- not an affiliate link, just a reference https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow#Cancellation https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Arrow#Cancellation <-- brief mention here
- pinewurst 8y agoTry http://www.spaceuk.org/ba/blackarrowcancellation.htm http://www.spaceuk.org/ba/blackarrowcancellation.htm
- masklinn 8y agoIt also explains why the UK abandoned their spaceflight program, but the French pushed for a joint European program which could rival the American and Soviet ones instead of piggybacking on them. 60s~70s France was very much against depending on either the US or the USSR, and they kept up Diamant launches until Ariane I started looking like it was happening (though it would still be 4 years until its maiden flight).
- georgeecollins 8y agoSadly (from my point of view as an American) it seems the French were prescient.
- hardlianotion 8y agoTreasury has mucked up all sorts of programmes without needing US help.