I have a friend (a retired British engineer) who told me that the British MOD spent a pile of money in the early 1950’s in an attempt to put a man in space.
Quite apart from the massive expense this would involve (probably beyond the financial capabilty of GB in the 1960’s)-what advantage would there be for this effort?
This guy told me that the British Gov. spent millions on a missile launching base (in Woomwera, Australia), in the late 50’s, and that British aerospace firms (like DeHavviland) were given design contracts to build a manned spaceship, sort of like the US Project Gemini capsule.
Any truth to this? Wetre the Brits planning a manned spavce program?
Launching a satellite into space per Sputnik may well have been on the drawing board, but IIRC didn’t it take GB at least a decade to recover from WWII. While the British may have been discussing it and possibly even “think tanking” it as a project I just don’t see them spending a lot of pounds on this in the early 50’s when there were a lot more pressing needs (like getting people fed and clothed) in the immediate post-war era.
I haven’t got a great deal of time just now but in case on one else comes along, the search term you want (for Google, etc) is probably ‘Blue Streak’
A cursory search of www.astronautix.com reveals nothing, but that doesn’t mean much.
I consider such a thing to be quite plausible, for one very good reason. In the early 1950s, one Soviet objective was to create an ICBM/IRBM capable of tossing a 5500 Kg warhead package 5500 kilometers–in other words, straight at London from deep inside the USSR. I would be very surprised indeed if the UK relied solely upon the Yankees to provide a response.
“Manned” spaceflight R&D does some wonderful things. It requires you to design a completely reliable launch system, which gives it “credibility;” it demands the ability to send a very large, very heavy package a long distance and safely bring it back to earth with high precision. Coincidentally, nuke-tipped ICBMs require the same things. So development of one tended to pull double-duty for the other, and that made “manned” designs an attractive way to fund military designs, and vice-versa.