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Between Military and Meteorology: The Skylark Sounding Rocket
From: Science Museum
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Matthew Godwin |
EDITOR'S INTRODUCTION |
The Skylark sounding rocket did not grab the world's attention as did the American and Russian space successes of the 1960s and 70s, but it did play an important role in the development of space technology in Britain. Matthew Godwin, researcher in British space history at the Institute of Contemporary British History in London, tells the story of the Skylark programme and examines its place in the history of UK space science and the development of European cooperation in space research. |
 n 4 October 1957 the world was stunned by the news that the Soviet Union had launched the first artificial satellite. This remarkable event occurred during the International Geophysical Year (IGY), a programme of peaceful scientific activities in which countries collaborated to study the earth. Although memories of the IGY are eclipsed by this Soviet achievement, British scientists were also embarking on a programme of space research. |
While Sputnik began to broadcast what millions around the world heard from radio and television news reports as an omnipotent bleep from the heavens, staff of the Weapons Research Establishment at Woomera, Australia, were continuing with a series of launches of the UK's Skylark upper atmosphere research vehicle. First launched in February 1957, a number of Skylark firings coincided with the IGY and therefore constituted part of the British contribution. Skylark was a means of launching experiments into the Earth's upper atmosphere for the purposes of scientific research, known as a sounding rocket. The Skylark programme went on to become the backbone of British space science with launches running from 1957 until as recently as the 1990s. Skylark, alongside the French Centaure, also formed the basis of the European Space Research Organisation's (ESRO) sounding rocket programme between 1964 and 1972. |
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| Preparation of the Skylark Sounding Rocket S68 payload. | |
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This feature charts the development of the Skylark programme up to 1965, and draws particular attention to the transition of the project from the military to the civil arena. |
Genesis
After the Second World War British defence planners believed that any future war would centre on the atomic and V2 bombs. For this and other reasons, the UK began developing its own nuclear weaponry and also sought to acquire its own ballistic missiles. But Britain could not develop such missiles without knowledge of the medium through which they would fly. Running in tandem, therefore, with the initiation in 1955 of the Blue Streak Medium Range Ballistic Missile programme, was the need to carry out research on the characteristics of the upper atmosphere. |
This task fell to a series of test vehicles, the CTV series. The CTV5 Series III was renamed Skylark in 1956. But if test vehicles like these were scientific research tools, they obviously required the skills of scientists. It is perhaps unsurprising then, that in 1953 when the Ministry of Supply (MOS) was made aware that British scientists were interested in rockets for research, the Ministry approached Sir Harrie Massey, the Chairman of the Royal Society Gassiot Committee. This Committee was responsible for orchestrating investigations into the upper atmosphere and Massey was naturally keen to accept the Ministry of Supply's offer of using their rockets. The arrangement led to Skylark being designed and offered to university scientists through the Royal Society in 1954. However, the details of this arrangement are still something of a mystery. |
It is generally regarded that the introduction between the Royal Society and the Ministry came through the US scientific liaison officer Fred Singer. This seems certainly to be true, but the attendant claim that the Royal Society and Ministry were unaware of each other's interest in atmospheric physics until Singer's intervention seems doubtful. The fact that the head of Guided Weapons at the Ministry's Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough was a former student of Massey's, suggests that personal relationships were probably just as important. In addition, the war years were important for forming networks between scientists and for introducing scientists to working directly for the military. Certainly Massey is a good example here. After the war Massey became one of the leading figure of British space activities, but he took many of his wartime colleagues with him into space research. Massey had spent the early war years at the Admiralty Mines establishment in the junior rank of scientific assistant. He made such an impact at the establishment that he received perhaps the most rapid promotion in the Scientific Civil Service as he was promoted in one move to director. At the establishment he built up a group of talented young men from the academic world. At the end of the war Massey moved to University College London taking with him Robert Boyd, who would later become founding Director of the Mullard Space Science Laboratory, one of the most important space science institutions in Britain. |
The association between military and civil interest groups therefore runs as a central theme through the Skylark programme. Not just in connection to the ultimate aims of the early Skylark project, i.e., the provision of atmospheric data for government weapons scientists, but also for more subtle reasons. Thus, when the arrangement between the Ministry and Royal Society was agreed, the Ministry justified the programme to the Treasury not only on straight military grounds. They also referred to the benefits that working with the Royal Society would entail for the morale of its staff, and reputation of the Scientific Civil Service in general. The Ministry of Supply was therefore anticipating that the publication of scientific work from the Skylark programme would heighten the status of the Ministry and its Farnborough Research Establishment. Certainly the project provided an important opportunity for university scientists to perform in situ experiments on the fringes of space. This was an exciting prospect in the late 1950s and Skylark was to form the foundation for the development of space science in Britain. For the UK to be in a position to embark on such high-profile research was not only important for British science, but also for political prestige, an important consideration given the Cold War context. |
Therefore the Skylark programme was firmly rooted in the military needs of the Ministry of Supply of the 1950s. As such, it was on this military basis alone that the Treasury decided to approve the programme. However, the defence status of the Skylark programme was to gradually alter in favour of civil applications. The first step in this process was the announcement of the UK's first space policy. |
The UK in space
In 1959 the Macmillan Government announced the UK's first space policy and the initiation of an official space research programme. This started as a modest project for satellite experiments with ad hoc administrative and funding arrangements, following recommendations from the government's chief scientific advisor, the Advisory Council for Scientific Policy chaired by Sir Alexander Todd. In 1960 the decision was made to bring the Skylark project under the aegis of this programme, which was overseen by Sir Edward Bullard, chair of the new Space Research Steering Group. Bullard, who had wartime defence connections, as well as being a secret advisor on ballistic missiles to the Ministry of Supply, answered to Lord Hailsham, the new Minister for Science. Despite Hailsham's apparent belief that he had good control over civil science, there were increasing problems during the remaining course of the administration. Particularly problematic was the relationship between the Treasury and the Royal Society. In addition some scientists, notably the cosmologist Fred Hoyle and Richard Van Der Reit Woolley (who was none other than the Astronomer-Royal) were openly critical over what they considered to be the excessive amount of money spent on space research. |
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| Sylark upper atmosphere research vehicle. This contains the telemetry and rocket performance instruments. | |
The Treasury, for one, never appeared to be entirely convinced of the value of space research, especially if there was no direct benefit in defence terms. For this reason the issue of military and civil applications for Skylark became key. Some government papers suggest that scientists and several officials at the Ministry of Supply found that they had to talk up the defence significance of Skylark to ensure continued funding on the defence budget. This was certainly what the Treasury suspected. |
The Treasury's scepticism over space programmes was generally founded on a comparison with the projects being developed by the two post-Second World War superpowers. Treasury officials saw that the UK national programme could never rival the efforts of either the USA or USSR, and believed that anything not on their scale was essentially pointless. A Treasury official, G.R. Bell, wrote that, to him, there was 'a tremendous urge to have a UK space programme on purely prestige grounds ... For all the value we get out of it, we might as well spend this money on seeking gold in the outer Hebrides.' |
The argument that Britain could not rival the US or USSR was the exact reason that a European co-operative programme had been suggested. Such a suggestion had found considerable support, not least in the Foreign Office where UK membership of any European space organisation was being viewed in relation to the Macmillan Government's desire to join the European Economic Community. But another particular aspect of European cooperation was the issue of selling rockets. Any European programme would need rockets to launch experiments and so the possibility of selling them was noted with interest by the Government Steering Group. Certainly some ESRO documents suggest that British delegates were emphasising the merits of Skylark to ESRO, in what looks like a deliberately orchestrated sales pitch. |
It is not surprising, therefore, that when ESRO came into being in 1964, Skylark was purchased by the organisation for its sounding rocket programme. What is not so well known, however, is that the marketability of Skylark had already been tested in 1960 when it was purchased by NASA in a joint-programme with Australia. Under this US-Australian project Skylarks were to be launched from Woomera in southern Australia to investigate ultra-violet radiation. However, it would seem that the motivation behind this programme was political rather than scientific. As such the idea appears to have been that NASA wanted to demonstrate its willingness to cooperate in the peaceful uses of space with free-world countries, in apparent contradistinction to the Soviet Union, which did not offer such opportunities to the Warsaw Pact nations. |
All throughout this period from 1959 to 1964, Skylark continued as the main work-horse for the British national programme. These launches were managed by the Royal Society's British National Committee on Space Research, which answered to the Government Steering Group. The Royal Society were therefore responsible for selecting Skylark experiments drawn from the universities of which the largest research groups were at University College London, Imperial College, Leicester and Birmingham. Thus, from its role in the UK through to cooperation with Europe and NASA, it can be seen that Skylark achieved an increasingly central role in civil scientific projects. |
Early 1960s cooperation with the US over satellites had also meant that extra Skylarks were required for testing experiments prior to launch in American satellites. Furthermore the beginning of transferal of Skylark production from Farnborough to the British Aircraft Company in 1963 heralded the development of more sophisticated components. In particular, work began with Elliot Bros on the development of a stabilisation system in order to allow for the effective guidance of Skylark at particular celestial points. This greatly increased the capabilities of Skylark and led to pioneering work in solar physics. |
Reform
After 1964 and with the return to power of a Labour administration dramatic changes occurred within the civil science organisation and in space research. The publication in 1963 of the Trend Report on Civil Science Organisation marked the beginning of some considerable changes in government science administration. Wilson's incoming Labour Government carried forward the Trend Report proposals, as well as taking into account a further review specifically of space policy, which was instituted just prior to the Labour Party's 1964 electoral success. The main result of the Trend Report can be seen in the subsequent introduction of the Science and Technology Act of 1965. This allowed for the creation of a Science Research Council (SRC) into which the functions of the government's Steering Group on Space Research and the Royal Society's British National Committee on Space Research were largely transferred. |
One reading of the changes to the committee structure for space could draw the conclusion that space research had suffered a demotion in its significance. This was despite the fact that the Labour Party and its leader Harold Wilson were strong proponents of the rhetoric of the 'white heat' technology. However, Skylark was generally unaffected by these changes. Wilson had criticised as early as 1960 the fact that there were far too many large military technology projects, and that where possible, projects should be transferred to the civil sector and to industry. This largely set the tone for the Labour administration, but Skylark is interesting here because it had already gone through this process, i.e., transferral to industry, under the Douglas-Home government. The main reason for the transfer had been ascribed to manpower problems at Farnborough, although it is interesting to speculate whether the Conservative government was experimenting with Labour party policies. |
The transfer of responsibility for space research to the Science Research Council heralded a completely different style of management. Gone were the early pioneering days when Skylark payloads and experiments had been planned on the back of an envelope. In addition the Labour administration was generally antagonistic towards space during their period in office. Despite this the Skylark programme managed to persist, arguably because it was inexpensive and marketable. By 1966 the Ministry of Technology was considering ways in which Skylark could dominate in space technology sales internationally, although particularly with regard to Commonwealth countries such as India and Pakistan. As a consequence the rocket had become a commercial entity now firmly implanted in the civil science arena. |
But just how important was Skylark as a scientific tool? In the early days there were technological problems with Skylark. To begin with, its early reliability was questionable, as many of the first flights failed. Furthermore, a particular technical difficulty that emerged was the problem with roll-spin, where the rocket could fail on ascent. Another key problem, one that apparently remained an ongoing characteristic and led to launchings of Skylark from the UK being ruled out, was to do with dispersion. This is where the rocket descended and would potentially scatter components over a wide area. |
Nevertheless, despite these difficulties, it is evident that Skylark facilitated a significant number of key scientific experiments. During the 1960s the utility of Skylark increased dramatically with the completion of the stabilisation system. Skylark was the basis of a career in space science for many scientists, many of whom now occupy leading positions in their discipline. As such, for the UK, Skylark essentially underwrote the foundation of space science as a discipline, and through offering an accessible research tool for ESRO, also contributed to the development of European cooperation in space research. |
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