BBC iPlayer: Timeshift - British Space Race

[iamwhoiam]

http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b0074qt0/Timeshift_Series_4_British_Space_Race/

[Rerouter]

does not work for australian :/

[Dark Prognosis]

Fly the Union Jack all you want but it doesn't work for us Yanks either.

[Rerouter]

now why would we move to a smaller more cramped land mass

also what year did this doco come ut in there are a few similar ones out on youtube

[amspire]

Here is a documentary of the British Space Race on Youtube:

[gregariz]

You need a fast connection but this works to watch this stuff

http://www.expatshield.com/

[G7PSK]

I have a useless piece of information on this subject. My mothers uncle worked on Blue-streak at Woomera, He died there as well, he went out into the desert on his motorbike hit a rock and fell off,broke his leg and it took three days to find him by which time he was dead.

[bullet308]

The post-war UK aerospace industry had a lot going for it, technology-wise, but was badly compromised both by the economic aftermath of two world wars and by short-sighted and not-particularly-bright political leadership.

The latter-day "space shuttle" attempted by the guys at TopGear seen above worked a good bit better than I thought it would, actually, though it does highlight the non-wisdom of the US in going with such an overly complex approach to manned space flight. As it was, Shuttle was a very inefficient and ultimately rather risky way to spend the last thirty years getting to LEO...

[IanB]

There is actually some interesting stuff going on, for example here:

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/

[bullet308]

Oh, British technology has rebounded nicely in the past thirty years or so. Lots of neat, high-tech niche stuff going on, at least proportional to the UKs size. But, the opportunity to compete with the likes of Boeing ect. with their national industry faded badly over the course of the '50s and '60s. Pitching in with EADS/Airbus and other consortia more recently helps make up for a lot of that.

[IanB]

This is my favorite bit of lost aerospace technology:



It never gets old, no matter how many times I watch it.

[bullet308]

The Rotodyne is a classic example of exactly what I had in mind. I have always loved the relative simplicity of gyrocopters like this. What could you do with this concept combined with modern avionics and composite materials? Great technology that foundered largely as a matter of government industrial policy.

[G7PSK]

It is very surprising that the military did not take up the Rotodyne for troop transport duties, but I suspect that one problem was pilot skill requirements in order to fly it. Also at that time in the US there was a policy of if not made here we do not use it in the military and government so it would not have been purchased in the US rather limiting the market, the not made here policy was so strong that during WW2 when building the A bomb early on it started to look like there was no plane big enough ready to deliver it, so a suggestion was made that a Lancaster might do the job, I was decided high up that if a US made plane could not drop the bomb no plane would. 

[vk6zgo]

The post-war UK aerospace industry had a lot going for it, technology-wise, but was badly compromised both by the economic aftermath of two world wars and by short-sighted and not-particularly-bright political leadership.

The latter-day "space shuttle" attempted by the guys at TopGear seen above worked a good bit better than I thought it would, actually, though it does highlight the non-wisdom of the US in going with such an overly complex approach to manned space flight. As it was, Shuttle was a very inefficient and ultimately rather risky way to spend the last thirty years getting to LEO...

The problem,certainly with the "aero"part of it,was the propensity of British manufacturers to get locked into projects with continually expanding lead times.
A case in point is the Hawker Hunter.
This was a beautiful aeroplane,but by the time it went into service,it had been passed in performance by US made aircraft.
The hopes of orders from Commonwealth countries did not,in the main,eventuate.

Australia were looking at them,but decided to build a  modified version of the NA F86.
CAC in Oz fitted  British Avons  to stretched F86 airframes to produce an aircraft with equal performance to the Hunter,& superior to the original F86.
Canada did something similar,with their Orenda-Sabre.
Hunters did eventually have a long, useful, life,but not as the fast interceptors they were planned to be.

In WW2,the British aviation industry concentrated on producing "war-winners",& plenty of them,so even if your pet project got cancelled,your factory was still kept busy making other designer's aircraft.
Peacetime was a different kettle of fish,as all these factories with vastly increased production capacity were forced into competing for a slice of a fast-diminishing pie.
This,of course,lead to the situation referred to above,as what funds there were,were drained away from the development of new,& indeed existing designs.

The Hunter would certainly had a better career,if it had been available for squadron service in,say,1951!

The same sort of thing happened with the Brit's rocket program.
By the time Blue Streak was almost fully developed,other cheaper options,such as buying ICBMs from the USA had appeared.
Any Space exploration dividend from Blue Streak was only incidental,as it was meant to be a weapon,first & foremost.

[G7PSK]

We are now in the same situation with aircraft carriers in the UK. The MOD keeps altering the specifications and so the completion date gets set back further and further meanwhile the old ones have been decommissioned so if we need one we have to borrow from the french, I can see the answer NON.

[bullet308]

An upside (for us more than for you): all those Harriers you have deemed surplus to your needs are making the US Marine Corps aviatiion community very happy. Turns out they don't have all that many hours on them as compared to their AV-8Bs and the influx of fresh airframes will  keep the Corps in the Harrier business a good while longer.

Bad news, for both of us: the reason this is an issue to begin with is all of the delays in the JFS program.

More bad news, again, more for you than for us (aside from the US Navy): it used to be that it was the VSTOL version, the F-35B, that was the problem child. That's the one originally being developed for the Royal Navy and the USMC. The UK government has now speced the Queen Elizabeth-class carriers as CATOBAR platforms for the US Navys F-35C version.

Now, the B-model is back on track and the C-model is in deep trouble struggling with fundamental design issues. Cant win for losing...