First, a little history:
High test peroxide is a very nasty chemical indeed, 85% H2O2 and 15% H2O. It needs only the least excuse to break down into water (so hot it turns instantly into superheated steam) and nascent oxygen, single oxygen atoms that are ravenous for something to oxidise. If it finds a hydrocarbon, methanol for example, it really goes to town, more water, more CO2 and lots and lots more heat.
If you arrange things so the mixing happens in a rocket nozzle then the steam shoots out the back and you’re off to space. The Me 163 rocket fighter used it as the oxidiser in its 3,000 lbf engine. In manned aircraft the disadvantage of the stuff became very obvious – humans are made of hydrocarbon. Dip your finger into a flask of HT peroxide and you pull it out as a bone. Crash a 163 with any fuel left in it and the pilot was likely to dissolve.
Wernher von Braun, a man who aimed for the stars but often hit London, thought it too dangerous for his V2 vengeance weapon and used the LOX/hydrocarbon mix that eventually sent man to the moon, but the UK was using HT peroxide right into the 60.
When we got the first briefing on our Blue Steel missile – a standoff nuclear bomb delivery vehicle with an HT peroxide and kerosene Stentor rocket – the armourer who gave us the safety lecture put an oily rag on a steel tray and held up a beaker of clear liquid. Two drops onto the rag sent up a flame five feet high with a deep whoomph! and we all stepped back. HTP. After that we took the procedures very seriously indeed.
Which brings me to Mr Johnson and his space program. There have been reports that he is moving us into the space age for the first time. Wrong. (The newspaper reports were probably written by the girlie reporter who wrote about the silver Spitfire’s circumnavigation and described it as a jet, a degree of ignorance that… but I digress.) It is not for the first time. We’ve been in space before.
BLACK ARROW was a UK designed and built rocket that had four launches, one unsuccessful. When the fourth one was being shipped to the Woomera launch site in Australia together with a real satellite rather than the previous dummy loads, the (Conservative) government decided it was all too difficult and opted to buy Usian instead. As a sop to the engineers who had brought the Black Knight/BLACK ARROW programme to fruition they graciously allowed them to poop off the last round. It worked perfectly.
The Prospero satellite, in an orbit so precise it is expected to be circling the Earth until the 23rd century, is still the UK’s only contribution to the greatest growth industry of the 21st. The decision to embrace failure and manage decline was made by the Minister for Aviation Supply and Aerospace (1970-1972), Frederick Corfield, a man with extensive farming experience. May his name live in infamy together with Duncan Sandys and all the incompetents and forelock-tuggers who have conspired to ruin the UK’s aviation industry since WWII. The United Kingdom is the only country to have successfully developed and then abandoned a satellite launch capability.
Reaction Engines Ltd, a tiny aerospace company, has been developing a revolutionary engine which, if successful, will enable the great dream of space flight, single stage to orbit, real Dan Dare stuff. Basically, it’s a jet engine with a cooler on the front that lets it work up to 100,000 ft and Mach 5. After that it closes up and converts itself into a rocket and off it goes into orbit. Because we no longer (OK, not ‘no longer’, “still don’t” would be better) have any understanding of the need to maintain a technological lead over our trade rivals, Reaction Engines was so starved of funds that the technology has already been shared with NASA. Invented in the UK, developed abroad – sound familiar?
Thirty years ago, at the UK’s premier Tornado base, we had a visit from the French Air Force staff college. They were shown round the electronics bay where the ECM pods for the Tornado were serviced, and one of our officers who spoke French overheard two of their engineers. “We’re 20 years behind,” said one in dejected tones.
Not any more, mon ami. And if we ever show signs of rebuilding our vital aerospace and electronics industries you can rely on the UK government to ruin it.
The Prospero satellite originally had another name. It was called Puck, but when the British government decided to turn its back our UK space industry, the BLACK ARROW team decided to rename it after the magician who at the end of Shakespeare’s play renounces all ambition, all influence, all power, casts aside his book of spells and opts to fade away.
Let us pray that our new power, the rough magic which conquest of space would give us, is pursued with more vigour. Our Prime Minister assures us it will be. Do we trust them in this? Johnson, an Oxford classics graduate with extensive journalistic experience? The current Minister of State for Defence Procurement, an Oxford history graduate? Or even the power behind the Johnson throne who has a degree in the history of theatre and extensive experience in backstairs politics?
Damned if I do.
Thank you Julian for an interesting article. I thought my opinion of politicians could not get any lower but it just has.
All these amazing things nixed at the last minute – The data on the US election corruption refused mention on Main Stream Media but readily available on Social Media (see Epoch Times in particular) despite suppression by Zuckerberg and Dorsey makes you realise what similar forces were at work to manipulate or indoctrinate our leaders and establishment to hold back and destroy such progress.
as an apprentice I worked at GEC Browns Lane ( Both) on Black knight , Blue Streek and a couple of others with names I can longer remember like Top Hat or Red something.. Also I remember being involved in some way in the selling of some stuff to Westinghouse For whome i Worked for a little while. And I always understood the Americans bought TSR2 in total. All the engineers who has put everything, and big innovation into it were furious
“As a sop to the engineers who had brought the Black Knight/BLACK ARROW programme to fruition they graciously allowed them to poop off the last round. It worked perfectly”.
I watched a documentary a few years ago ( I cannot remember the name) and throughout it were scenes of some ordinary Grandad types sitting in a restaurant and from a distance it could be imagined they were discussing gardening, etc.
They were in fact some of the engineers and scientists reminiscing about their experiences at Woomera. They told it slightly differently, in that they carefully perused all official communications and found that there weren’t any direct orders to stand down so they kept going and pressed the button.
I believe them, and if there was a sop it was a face saving exercise on the part of the politicians.
I seem to remember a project called TSR2. I understand that the aircraft exceeded its expectations and would have performed well, if the government had not scrapped it, and in an act of industrial vandalism as yet unequalled, ordered the destruction of all the plans, jigs etc so that the project could not be revived in the future.
That was bloody Healey and Wilson, fellow travellers. It would have been a valid weapon until the mid eighties at least and saved us a hell of a lot of money. I sat in one at Boscombe Down in 1965(?). The ejection seat was luxurious, like a leather armchair.
The Buccaneers, very much a last choice, ended up doing jobs beyond its nominal capabilities — I was told that we were outperforming the F111s in certain respects. Mach .88 at 100ft across the Nevada desert with the dust blowing up from the desert floor — imagine a transonic roadrunner. Meep meep! Kudos to the F11 though, on those exercises they plotted a straight line to the target, wound up to Mach 1 plus and just went for it. Unstoppable.
Remember Yeager’s Bell X1? The MIles M52 plans were traded to the US in exchange for something that they didn’t deliver on. They built it, flew it and claimed the Mach 1 crown.
JF
IIRC the X1 could not get through Mach 1 because of the control reversal problem near that speed making the plane unstable, due to the conventional tailplane/elelevator design.
Miles had already solved the problem with their all-flying tailplane and this is what was really “traded” away for nothing.
Again I believe the Miles plane exceeded Mach1 a matter of a few weeks or months after Yeager but no one really remembers second place.
Another example of Tories selling us out to foreign interests, good practice for entry into the Common Market and all that has ensued since?
I think it was in north hampshire with a name like Harlow. I have no idea how I got there
All these short posts link up after a while. Sea slug was another. Always Guidance systems at impossible Machs. with peculiar treatments. The old engineers were incredible and brilliantly unorthodox. But under the thumb of the Civil Service( 9’30 to 3’30 and 8 weeks annual holidays..and uselessly obstructing..
By then of course I had already signed two or three Official secrets act forms and my parents had already been visited by “Police” checking up.during my army 2 year army career in electronics. I eventually found my stepfathers records His job at the airport was jokingly referred to as hosing off the blood to get the planes ready for the next night. So he got used to sseing them off. and Mum wasa head mistress by then soy they didn’t learn much there then.After that I went to GEC and worked on some Groundbreaking electronic and other work, Then for Hilger and Watts THE LEADER in virtually every Scientific Instrument made in the world.As a ‘youngster’ i was sometimes given the job ( Never mind ). But my instructions were ” Tell them everything we have no secrets from anyone now.! Virtually every hospital in the world has machines oneof theses spectrum analysing machines + a metal box tho hide how it works and sonetimes a hopeful computer stuck on.
I had an odd war and youth… It’slike old sailors yarns. But thats another story.. Not possible any more.
I do remember being flown somewhere in a tiny clapped out plane to watch a missile launch which in fact didn’t quite go according to plan and went somewhere unscheduled. and led to some running about. Quite funny really.