Although it may seem as though it was a two horse race between the USA and the
USSR from a mid-1950s a small Club of Nations one by one gained the ability to
independently launch satellites using their own rockets and in chronological
order they were the Soviet Union, United States,
France, Japan, China and the United Kingdom. Whilst the Americans are Soviets
threw billions of dollars in rubles and the power of a state at the problem
of space, the British after the Second World War were almost bankrupt and
shadows of their former industrial might but they still had the brains and wanted
a seat at the top table of the New World Order.
The price of entry to this exclusive club was a nuclear deterrent as the US
government refused to share information about the atomic bomb on which many top
British scientists had worked to develop, Britain knew that it would have to
develop its own bomb and missile delivery system to match that of a
Soviets and keep up with the U.S. Britain's heavy missile Bluestreak had
been in slow development between 1955 and 1960 but costs over ran alongside
growing skepticism from the British government, two years later the Nassau
agreement between the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan and John F
Kennedy confirmed the sale of American Polaris missiles instead as Britain's
ICBM launch system. Rather than waste the millions of pounds and years of
development that went into the homegrown rocket technology
the British government approved a development of Blue Streak into a
satellite launcher called Black Prince. However the cost would be significant
and neither the UK government nor any member of the Commonwealth would help
fund the program. With the risk of Blue Streak going unused British aviation
minister Peter Thornycroft approached a French government in 1960 and offered
rocket as Britain's contribution to the new European Launcher Development
Organizational 'ELDO'. Blue Streak would serve as the lower stage of a joint
satellite launch system called Europa. Britain's rocket engineers were back in
business and blue streak began testing in 1964 at Woomera, South Australia. The
remote test site covered a vast area over 47,000 square miles or 122 thousand
square kilometers over half the area of britain. Blue streak flew ten times from
Woomera until 1970 but in 1971 after a failed launch and review the rocket was
retired to be replaced with the french Ariane design. But Britain's dream of an
independent orbital capability was not forgotten some hope that Woomera would
grow to become a Commonwealth spaceport perhaps one day launching joint UK
Australia missions to the moon and beyond. Back in Britain the engineering
firm Saunders-Roe later Westland and Bristol Siddeley bought out by
Rolls-Royce in 1968 still had contracts to develop a small launcher that would
be compatible with the ELDO lower stage. The project was named a Black Arrow
following the ministry of supplies convention of rainbow codes assigning a
color and a noun to research programmes. Black arrow would be as much a technical
demonstrator to show the viability of the HTP kerosene powered engines
developed for the Black Knight as it was a potential commercial launch system. The
rocket would burn 85% high-test peroxide or HTP and kerosene on the two lower
stages something that the british had perfected and would use a solid fuel
third stage to deliver a small satellite to orbit. HTP was originally developed by
the Germans in World War 2 for by propellant rockets like the Walter HWK
509 in the Messerschmitt Me 163.
High-Test Peroxide is the same as people used to bleach their hair blonde but instead of the 2
to 4% concentration for hair bleach HTP is between 70% and 98%.
Although not as reactive as some of the other oxidizers like
hydrazine it is one of the easiest to handle, it doesn't give off poisonous
fumes and if spilt it can be washed away with a hose and water. But it will still
set fire to or explode anything organic it touches and is liable to
spontaneous combustion at temperatures above 150 degrees Celsius. Black arrow
played to British strengths. HTP fuel technology had already been developed in
experimental British submarines and torpedoes the fuel also has the
advantage of not requiring cryogenic storage and all the extra handling and
insulation that goes with it. Very convenient for launches in the hot
Australian desert. It is also energy dense liquid hydrogen takes up 17 times
the volume for the same given weight this makes an HTP rocket much smaller
and cheaper to make. As a bipropellant fuel mixture HTP is hypergolic, meaning
that it ignites on contact with kerosene when decomposed in the engine removing a
potential point of failure namely the ignition of a fuel and it will ignite in
space where there is no oxygen. It also produced a very clean exhaust plume.
Static firing test took place at High Down on the Isle of Wight where
Saunders-Roe were based. From here the rocket was shipped to Woomera rocket
range for the first demonstration flight on the 27th of June 1969. Codename 'R0'
the first launch carried a dummy payload but on launch some of a rocket vectoring
nozzles started to rock backwards and forwards causing a rocket to go into a
roll oscillation. It reached around 9,000 feet before it was destroyed by the
Range Safety Officer. The second test launch 'R1' was almost a year later on
March the 4th 1970 for the first time the fairing was painted bright red for
visibility earning the black arrow the nickname 'The lipstick rocket'. This time
the first and second stages worked exactly as planned. On the 2nd of
September 1970 Black Arrow had his first chance to deliver a working satellite
into orbit 'R2' would carry the 'Orba' satellite built from spare parts due to
the project's shoestring budget. Orba was a 13 kilogram or 29
pounds sphere containing an instrument to measure atmospheric density as its orbit
decayed. However during the launch the second stage shut down 13 seconds early
an Orba burned up on re-entry. Black Arrow would have to wait another year
for its next launch. The 'R3' rocket carried a satellite that was to be named
'Puck' after the nimble wanderer of the night in the Shakespeare play 'A
Midsummer Night's Dream' it weighed 66kg 146 pounds and
was designed to test a variety of satellite systems and detect
micrometeorites in low orbit. As the R3 rocket was enroute to
Australia the British government announced for surprise cancellation of
the Black Arrow project for so-called economic reasons. However behind the
scenes there were other issues. NASA had offered their Scout launcher for future
satellites for almost free, although this offer was later withdrawn after the
cancellation of the black arrow and the 'R2' failure had sowed doubt regarding the
Black Arrows reliability. The lack of resources and infrequent testing also
slowed down development to a crawl. There was also little in the way of any
commercial prospects in 1971, there was no satellite business as we know it now,
it was too small to launch many of the larger satellites of the day and
miniaturization of the electronics still had many years to go before commercial
satellites would be small enough to make use of the Black Arrow. Also it seems in
order to placate the French with their own Diamant launcher later to become
Arianne, the British Prime Minister Edward Heath in secret talks offered to
cancel the Black Arrow project after the UK joined the common market, suggesting
that neither the UK nor the French had any further use for the Black Arrow and
effectively removing any competition for the european launch system. On being told
that this would be the last launch but team changed the name of a satellite
from 'Puck' to 'Prospero', another character from Shakespeare this time the sorcerer
in 'The Tempest' who
gave up his magical powers. A typically understated British repost to the
government of the day. Black Arrow took off for the last time
on October 28th 1971 and made it into orbit with a textbook launch. As Prospero
has released the solid fuel third stage bumped and damaged one of the four
communication antenna, however the satellite functioned as
intended and remained in radio contact with a British tracking station in
Lashem, Hampshire for 25 years until 1996 when its mission was officially
concluded. 'R4' the final Black Arrow and backup for the 'R3' was never flown it
and a spare Prospero satellite are now preserved at the Science Museum in
London. The X4 'Miranda' satellite which was due to be launched on the R4 was put into orbit
by an American Scout D-1 rocket in March 1974 from the Vandenberg Air Force Base
in California, The black arrow was ahead of its time, if
the government had decided to continue much like the French did it would have
been well placed for the launch of the later smaller satellites as the
communications industry grew and would have kept Britain in the space race.
Since 2000 the government has looked at resurrecting the program but too many of
the original personnel with the expertise have died and the facilities
dismantled, whether anything in the near future will arise remains to be seen.
Ultimately Black Arrow was one of the most economical launch systems ever
developed. Because the system used the technology developed for the earlier
Black Knight, the total cost of the black arrow program including research and
operations was just £10 million equivalent to around £65 million
today, just a little more than NASA pays for one seat on the Russian Soyuz to the
ISS. And as for Prospero it's expected to orbit until around 2070 when it will
fall back to earth to end its 100 year journey.
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