Doug Millard discusses the British space programme since the Cold War (2:07 min)

Black Arrow was intended to launch relatively small satellites into low Earth orbits. These satellites would test new components and systems in the true space environment, rather than in simulated conditions on the ground. The objective was to gain real-time spacecraft experience, and so to put the British satellite industry in a good position to compete globally for orders. This aim may have succeeded if the programme had delivered quickly. However, there were delays from the start, which itself had been held back by government hesitancy. As the years slipped by, the valid reasons for continuing with Black Arrow seemed to fade away. Black Arrow would provide Britain with the technological capability of launching its own spacecraft, but the commercial value of being able to do this was increasingly in doubt.

A vehicle in search of a mission?
In 1971, reports of investigations carried out by the government of Edward Heath and the House of Commons Select Committee on Science and Technology criticised Black Arrow. They highlighted weaknesses in Black Arrow's role. British companies, for example, were already tendering successfully to build scientific satellites for the European Space Research Organisation and also for Britain's Skynet defence-satellite programme. The national satellite industry appeared to be coping well, independently of Black Arrow. GEC-Marconi, a leading builder of satellite systems in Britain, stated that the money allocated to Black Arrow would have been better spent directly on developing the satellites themselves and, for their launching, on the purchase of US launch vehicles.

Too few satellites, too many launch vehicles

Astrium

The X4 satellite was designed to test a number of new spacecraft technologies, the most important of which was its means of stabilisation. Whereas X3 had been stabilised by spinning, X4 would use gyroscopes and a Sun sensor to determine its position in space, and nitrogen thrusters to move.

Black Arrow faced another fundamental problem, this time from the very satellites it was designed to launch. The next satellite in the series, X4, would not be ready for launch until 1974, almost three years after the X3 mission. However the minimum production rate of Black Arrow vehicles was one a year; any fewer and the companies involved would lose money. To keep the Black Arrow programme going, the government would have to waste money either by subsidising the companies for maintaining an uneconomic production rate of vehicles or by paying them more to make vehicles for which there were no satellites ready.

Options for the government
With such an impossible choice to make, the government's view was that, if an alternative launch vehicle could be found, then the dilemma could be solved. Two such vehicles were, indeed, available; the US Scout and the French Diamant. Neither performed as well as Black Arrow but both would cost less to buy than it would to carry on with Black Arrow. Also, the success rate of Scout was impressive and, perhaps with an awareness of what was to come, the X4 satellite had been constructed so it could fit inside either a Black Arrow or a Scout vehicle fairing. Eventually, after discussion at the highest levels of the British government, Black Arrow was finally condemned as too expensive. It was axed and the job of launching Britain's next satellite passed to NASA and its Scout launch vehicle.

Born of a tradition
How had this sorry situation been allowed to develop? It is perhaps useful to go back to the birthplace of Black Arrow. Black Arrow had been the brainchild of the Royal Aircraft Establishment. The RAE was a defence-research organisation and carried out work in support of Britain's armed forces. It achieved this by responding to specific, military requirements, and also by being given the resources to anticipate future needs and to actively research new ideas. Both the culture and the remit of the RAE led it to devise and explore scientific and technological concepts that might prove useful in the future, even though the government had not issued notice of any specific requirement. In other words, the RAE had a degree of freedom to pursue its own space research programmes, should they fall within what the RAE itself thought its remit was.

By 1964, Britain had a rocket vehicle, Black Knight, that had outlived its original function. It still worked, but had nothing to do. All of its supporting facilities were intact: manufacturing bases, assembly points, test sites and, of course, the launch site itself. From the redundant Black Knight grew the concept of Black Arrow. This was an entirely sensible adaptation of the vehicle, given the RAE's tradition of invention, which would otherwise have died there and then. Black Arrow was a product of the momentum developed in an organisation as it continued to do what it did best.

Small is beautiful, but...
Black Knight had been a small launch vehicle. Any satellite launch vehicle based on it would also be small, especially when an economy of scale was written into its design brief: 'Black Knight components should be employed wherever possible, with the minimum of development commensurate with satisfactory performance'. Such design restrictions prevented alternative and, arguably, more commercially minded schemes that would have enabled larger satellites to be launched.

Black Arrow was by definition a minimalist project, one whose very concept and design were based on achieving a maximum return on a minimum investment. However, when this approach was continued through to the funding of the development programme itself, it led to an unacceptably low rate of launches. The House of Commons Select Committee, in its observations, implied this was the case. The result was that even the limited objectives of Black Arrow could not be met. Tremendous effort had been expended by all the key players, but too little money was spent to ensure success. As the Select Committee concluded: 'It seems to us a classic case of "penny-wise, pound-foolish".'

Such penny-pinching had dogged the entire Black Arrow programme. Its early history did not bode well. For almost two years, work had only been allowed to proceed in fits and starts, as the government limited support to a series of three-month holding contracts. This uncertainty had hardly helped to establish an effective and confident schedule of development. And then, when Black Arrow's funding had been placed on a firm footing in 1966, it had been at the expense of two development flights. Black Arrow would now have to carry a developmental satellite on just its second launch and the first fully working satellite on its third. This was highly ambitious and left little leeway for those unpredictable trials and tribulations that afflict all major technological programmes. When the R0 and R2 vehicles subsequently failed, the programme's critics unfairly concluded that Black Arrow was an unreliable vehicle. In truth, such failures were to be expected at such an early stage of development, especially in a project that had lost almost a third of its trial time. With a more sympathetic launch schedule, these failures would have been corrected and then almost certainly put into perspective by later success.

As a satellite-launch vehicle, Black Arrow worked. That is not in doubt. It could even be said to have triumphed in the face of considerable adversity. However, given the minimalist nature of its design, which perhaps helped encourage a similarly minimalist level of funding, was it always going to be a space-age technology in search of a role?

R4 comes to the Science Museum
The end was absolute and almost indecent in its haste. Not long after Prospero had been successfully placed into orbit, the buildings and launch site at Woomera's Area 5 were cleared. Within a year almost everything had gone from the one-shot spaceport. R4, the fifth Black Arrow vehicle, its X4 payload booked on a Scout for 1974, was now unwanted. Scrapping it was the only other option, so R4 was offered to the Science Museum in London. Westland Aircraft and Rolls-Royce went to considerable trouble to make it ready for display. Shortly after R4 was acquired, the Museum curator in charge proposed an exciting vertical display of the rocket at the eastern end of the Museum. This could not be done, and so R4 was safely stored in the Museum's reference collection as a unique representative of Cold War scientific, technological and, indeed, political history.

In 1986 R4 was incorporated into the new Exploration of Space gallery as a horizontal floor exhibit. It remained there until 2000 when, with the assistance and advice of two of the original Westland Aircraft team, it was redisplayed as a hanging exhibit. Between R4 and the nearby engineering model of X4 lies Scout, its slender form dividing the gallery in two. As NASA's 'workhorse' rocket, and Black Arrow's great rival, it went on to become one of the most successful small-satellite launch vehicles in the world.