Some beginnings of space activity in UK industry
- Paper number
IAC-08.E4.4.4
- Author
Prof. John Allen, United Kingdom
- Year
2008
- Abstract
Before 1957 there were many individuals working in UK industry who were convinced that spaceflight was to be expected soon. There was W F Hilton of Armstrong Whitworth, Val Cleaver of de Havilland Propellers (later Rolls Royce), Geoffrey Pardoe, also of de Havillands, Michael N Golovine of the Hawker Siddeley Group and John Allen of Avro’s Weapons Research Division. Papers began to appear in professional journals and yet when Sir Harrie Massey chaired the first meeting of the British National Space Committee in 1959 – formed in late 1958 to act as a liaison committee with COSPAR and to co-ordinate the UK’s space science activities – the proportion of ‘scientific’ members dwarfed that of the ‘industrial’. The first big step in accommodating more of the industrial thinking came at the First Commonwealth Spaceflight symposium, organized by the British Interplanetary Society, also in 1959. This paper reviews the situation in 1959 when de Havilland was developing the Blue Streak rocket and Avro was creating large rocket propelled stand off weapons for air launching. It then traces further development at Avro including the Manned Blue Steel project and the Vulcan Orbiter which would have been able to place a 650lb (295 kg) satellite in Low Earth Orbit. When key members of the Avro team moved to the Hawker Siddeley Advanced Projects Group at Kingston in Surrey, design and research continued on hypersonics and was directed towards air-breathing spacecraft launch vehicles. This culminated in collaboration with Junkers in West Germany on the Space Transporter and this in turn to links with McDonnell in the USA and work on the NASA Space Shuttle development programme. This international company link continued with joint development of the Harrier jump-jet, (AV8A&B) and still later the JSF.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
IAC-08.E4.4.4.pdf (🔒 authorized access only).
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