Why is the UK against manned space travel?

[aceplace57]

You ever try to make a cuppa tea in zero gravity?

Why would any self respecting Englishman venture into a place without Earl Grey or Twinings ?

[JRDelirious]

@CalMeacham

Not to mention Arthur C. Clarke and squadrons of british science fiction authors who wrote about sending people – often from the UK – up into space.

Heck, Clarke (communications satellites) and a whole bunch of Brits coming up with ideas, inventions and proposals about actual things to be done in space. As late as the 80s they were working on HOTOL single-stage-to-orbit technology.

BUT, the Empire having gone-out-of-business, the UK could not afford taking all this to fruition. Seems like at some point Official Britain just turned to the *“MSF is a bloody waste of money” *camp.

[Damfino]

@CalMeacham

The greeting program aboard the Space Station is pretty clearly British-oriented (An American program would never ask for your “Christian name”) , and IIRC the option is given for American English for the interaction, which suggests the presence of other types of English. There are numerous references to international treaties and space groups. This could be only the Russians, I suppose, but the scale always suggested something more cosmopolitan to me.

Thanks, Cal. I’ll have to watch out for these next time I see it.

[Beastly_Rotter]

@CalMeacham

The weird thing is that in the movies, the British were pretty pro-space. Professor Bernard Quatermass was developing space flight systems, after all, and was responsible for sending up a UK rocket with a UK crew in the first Quatermass film, and was putting together a plan for a base on the moon in the second one. There were UK astronauts in the film The First Men in the Moon, Kubrick’s 2001 pretty clearly had a British presence in space. And there were all those television shows that essentially assumed the UK would be out there as well. Not to mention Arthur C. Clarke and squadrons of british science fiction authors who wrote about sending people – often from the UK – up into space. Heck, even James Bond got there in the admittedly awful Moonraker.

You’re forgetting Dan Dare, who was huge. Almost made it to the screen a couple of times in the 80s, until they figured out that there wasn’t enough money to do it properly.