Blue Streak at the Deutsches Museum, Schleissheim, Munich |
|
| Function | Nuclear strike, satellite vehicle |
|---|---|
| Manufacturer | de Havilland Propellers, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics |
| Country of origin | UK |
| Capacity | |
| Payload to LEO |
|
| Launch history | |
| Status | Retired since 1971 |
| Launch sites | Woomera Test Range |
| Maiden flight | 5 June 1964 |
| Last flight | 5 November 1971 |
| Stage | |
| Engines | |
| Thrust | |
| Fuel | |
The Blue Streak missile was a British medium range ballistic missile (MRBM). The Operational Requirement for the missile was issued in 1955 and the design was complete by 1957. The project was intended to ensure that there was a credible replacement for the V Bomber aircraft which would become obsolete by 1965.
The cancellation of Blue Streak as a military weapon was announced in 1960. Partly to avoid political embarrassment from the cancellation, the Government proposed that the rocket be used as the first stage of a satellite launcher. However, the cost was thought to be too great for the UK alone, and European collaboration was sought. This led to the formation of the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO), with Blue Streak used as the first stage. The second stage was provided by the French, and the third stage by the Germans. The test satellite and fairings were provided by the Italians, and the Dutch and Belgians were responsible for telemetry and ground stations. Australia provided the launch site at Woomera. The complete vehicle was known as Europa. It was tested at Woomera test range, Australia, and Kourou in French Guiana. Europa was cancelled in 1972 and ELDO was dissolved.
Contents |
Post-war Britain's nuclear weapons armament was initially based on free-fall bombs delivered by the V bomber force. It soon became clear that if Britain wanted to have a credible threat, a ballistic missile was essential. There was a political need for an independent deterrent, so that Britain could remain a major world power. Britain was unable to purchase American weapons wholesale due to the restrictions of the Atomic Energy Act of 1946.
In April 1954 the Americans proposed a joint development programme for ballistic missiles. The United States would develop an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) of 5,000-nautical-mile (9,300 km) range, while the United Kingdom with United States support would develop a medium-range ballistic missile (MRBM) of 2,000-nautical-mile (3,700 km) range. The proposal was accepted as part of the Wilson-Sandys Agreement of August 1954, which provided for collaboration, exchange of information, and mutual planning of development programmes. The decision to develop was influenced by what could be learnt about missile design and development in the US. Initial requirements for the booster were made by the Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough with input on the rocket engine design from the Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott. British Operational Requirement 1139 demanded a rocket of at least 1500 n.m. and the initially proposed rocket would have just reached that threshold.
De Havilland won the contract to build the missile, which was to be powered by an uprated liquid-fuelled Rocketdyne S3D engine, developed by Rolls-Royce, called RZ2. Two variants of this engine were developed: the first provided a static thrust of 137,000 lb (62,100 kg) and the second (intended for the three stage satellite launch vehicle) 150,000 lb (68,000 kg). The engines were unique at that time in that they could be vectored by seven degrees in flight and could therefore be used to guide the vehicle. This configuration, however, put considerable pressure on the autopilot which had to cope with the problem of a vehicle whose weight was diminishing rapidly and that was steered by large engines whose thrust remained more or less constant. The vibration was also a problem, particularly at engine cut-off, and the later development of the autopilot for the satellite launcher was, in itself, a considerable achievement.
Subcontractors included the Sperry Gyroscope Company who produced the guidance system whilst the warhead itself was designed by the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment at Aldermaston.
Doubts arose as the cost escalated from the first tentative figure of £50m submitted to the Treasury in early 1955, to £300m in late 1959. Its detractors in the civil service claimed that the programme was crawling along when compared with the speed of development in the US and the Soviet Union. Estimates within the Civil Service for completion of the project ranged from a total spend of £550 Million to £1,300 Million, as different ministers were set on either abandoning or continuing the project.
Eventually the project was cancelled in 1960- although debates had been ongoing within government since 1958. Some considered the cancellation of Blue Streak to be not only a blow to British military-industrial efforts, but also to Commonwealth ally Australia, which had its own vested interest in the project.
The missiles used liquid oxygen and kerosene propellants. Whilst the vehicle could be left fully laden with 20+ tonnes of kerosene, the 60 tonnes of liquid oxygen had to be loaded immediately before launch or icing became a problem. Due to this, fuelling the rocket took 4.5 minutes, which would have made it useless as a rapid response to an attack. The missile was vulnerable to a pre-emptive attack, launched without warning or in the absence of any heightening of tension sufficient to warrant readying the missile, if such a circumstance were ever likely. To negate this problem DeHavilland created a stand-by feature. A missile could be held at 30 seconds' notice to launch for ten hours. As the missiles were to be deployed in pairs and it took ten hours for one missile to be prepared for stand-by, one of the two missiles could always be ready for rapid launch.
To protect the missiles against a pre-emptive strike while being fuelled, the idea of siting the missiles in underground silos was developed. These would have been designed to withstand a one megaton blast at a distance of half a mile (800 m) and were a British innovation, subsequently exported to the US. However, finding sites for these silos proved extremely difficult and RAF Spadeadam in Cumbria was the only site where construction was undertaken. This was also the site where the RZ2 rocket engines and also the complete Blue Streak missile were tested. The best sites for silo construction were the more stable rock strata in parts of southern England, but the construction of many underground silos in the countryside carried enormous economic, social, and political cost.
As no site in Britain provided enough space for test flights, a test site was established at Woomera, South Australia. Whitehall opposition to the project grew, and it was eventually cancelled on the ostensible grounds that it would be too vulnerable to a first-strike attack. Admiral of the Fleet Lord Mountbatten of Burma had spent considerable effort arguing that the project should be cancelled at once in favour of his Navy being armed with nuclear weapons, capable of pre-emptive strike.
The British government transferred its hopes to the Anglo-American Skybolt missile, before the project's cancellation by the USA as its ICBM program reached maturity. The British instead purchased the Polaris system from the Americans, carried in British-built submarines.
After the cancellation as a military project, there was reluctance to cancel the project because of the huge cost incurred. Blue Streak would have become the first stage of a projected all British satellite launcher known as "Black Prince": the second stage was derived from the Black Knight test vehicle, and the orbital injection stage was a small hydrogen peroxide/kerosene motor. This launcher never progressed beyond the design stage.
This also proved too expensive, and the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) was set up. This used Blue Streak as the first stage, with French and German second and third stages. The Blue Streak first stage was successfully tested three times at the Woomera test range in Australia as part of the ELDO programme.
Although a total of eight launches were made of the multi-stage vehicle, the French and German components proved unreliable leading to the project's final cancellation, and the end of Blue Streak. The final launch was made at the French site of Kourou in French Guiana.
The full launch history of Blue Streak is as follows, (Taken from the "Europa SLV Historiograph", produced by HSD Ltd):
| Flight No. | Second stage (Corali) | Third stage (Astris) | Payload | Launch date | Mission notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| F1 | n/a | n/a | n/a | 5 June 1964 | uncontrollable oscillations during final phase of burn due to fuel sloshing in tanks |
| F2 | n/a | n/a | n/a | 21 October 1964 | Successful flight |
| F3 | n/a | n/a | n/a | 23 March 1965 | Successful flight |
| F4 | untested | untested | untested | 24 May 1966 | Successful flight |
| F5 | untested | untested | untested | 15 November 1966 | Successful flight |
| F6.1 | failed | untested | untested | 4 June 1967 | 2nd stage failed to ignite |
| F6.2 | failed | failed | failed | 6 December 1967 | 2nd stage failed to separate |
| F7 | successful | failed | failed | 29 November 1968 | 3rd stage failure after separation |
| F8 | successful | failed | failed | 3 July 1969 | 3rd stage failure after separation |
| F9 | successful | successful | failed | 24 June 1970 | Fairing failed to separate |
| F11 | successful | successful | failed | 5 November 1971 | Guidance system failed |
| F12 | untested | untested | untested | n/a | Delivered to French Guiana |
| F13 | untested | untested | untested | n/a | Delivered to National Museum of Flight, near Edinburgh |
| F14 | untested | untested | untested | n/a | Delivered to Deutsches Museum, Munich |
| F15 | untested | untested | untested | n/a | Delivered to Euro Space Center, Redu, Belgium |
| F16 | untested | untested | untested | n/a | On display at NSC Leicester, on loan from Liverpool Museums |
| F17 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | Parts only completed |
| F18 | n/a | n/a | n/a | n/a | Parts only completed |
A range of proposals was made between 1957 and 1972 for a carrier rocket based on Blue Streak.,[1] however, none of these were ever built in full and today only exist in design. The Blue Streak was eventually tested as the first stage of the Europa rocket, designed by the European Launcher Development Organisation,[2] although this too ended in failure due to lack of funds, despite the fact that Blue Streak itself worked almost perfectly.[3] Most, although not all, designs were based on using Blue Streak as a first stage, and a usually modified Black Knight as a second stage.
In 1957 a carrier rocket based on a combination of Blue Streak and Black Knight was proposed by Desmond King Hele and Doreen Gilmour of the Royal Aircraft Establishment. This was at a time before either rocket had even been tested.[1] Payloads were estimated to be around 1,034 kg (2,280 lb) to a 370 km (200 nmi) orbit and 960 kg (2,117 lb) to a 740 km (400 nmi) orbit. However, the design was considered to be inefficient and difficult because of the large differences in the diameters of the 3 metre (10 ft) wide Blue Streak and the metre-wide (3 ft) Black Knight. Fitting satellites into a three foot payload fairing could also have been a challenge.[4] Nevertheless, these difficulties were also encountered with successful American rockets including the Thor and Atlas.[5]
In 1972, HSD (Hawker Siddeley Dynamics) produced a brochure for a design using Blue Streak as the first stage of a two-stage to orbit rocket, with an American Centaur upper stage. The Centaur second stage would have either been built in the UK under licence or imported directly from the USA. Both the Centaur and Blue Streak had proved to be very reliable up to this point, and since they were both already designed development costs would have been low. Furthermore, it had a payload of 870–920 kg to a geosynchronous orbit with, and 650–700 kg without the use of additional booster rockets.[6]
In 1959 de Havilland suggested solving the problem of the Blue Streak/Black Knight geometry by compressing the 10 by 1 metre (30 by 3 foot) Black Knight into a 10-foot-diameter (3.0 m) sphere. Although this seemed logical, the development costs proved to be too high for the limited budget of the programme.[5]
In 1959, a year before the cancellation of the Blue Streak as a missile, the government requested that the RAE and Saunders Roe design a carrier rocket based on Blue Streak and Black Knight. This design used Blue Streak as a first stage and a 54 inch (137 centimetre) second stage based on the Black Knight.[7] Several different third stages would be available, depending on the required payload and orbit. Examples of orbits suggested by Saunders Roe and the RAE were a 556 km (300 nmi) orbit for 'experiments in stellar UV spectroscopy', a 556-1,296 km (300-700 nmi (1,300 km)i) orbit for 'enabling investigations of the Earth's radiation belts,' and a 556-185,200 km (300-100,000 nmi (190,000 km)i) orbit for a 'Space probe.'[8]
There were some problems with the design, however. The relative power of the rocket reduced with altitude.[9] The solution requested by the government and provided by Saunders Roe was to use a high-energy cryogenic upper stage which would increase the payload to 408 kg (900 lb) to a 9,260 km (5,0 nmi (0 km)i) orbit, and 272 kg (600 lb) to a 16,670 km (9,0 nmi (0 km)i) orbit. The cost of developing the upper stage stage was estimated to be £5-7 million.[10]
It was planned that Black Prince would be a Commonwealth project. However, since the government of John Diefenbaker in Canada was already spending more money than publicly acknowledged on Alouette and Australia was not interested in the project, these two countries were unwilling to contribute. South Africa was no longer a member of the Commonwealth. New Zealand was only likely to make "modest" contributions.[11]
France, however, showed an interest, although they were suspected of trying to gain technical information for their own missile programmes.[9] Despite this, Saunders Roe continued to design new configurations even after the formal cancellation of the Black Prince programme.[10]
Following the cancellation of the Blue Streak project some of the remaining rockets were preserved at:
A section of the propulsion bay, engines and equipment can be found at the Solway Aviation Museum, Carlisle Lake District Airport. Only a few miles from the Spadeadam testing site, the museum carries many exhibits, photographs and models of the Blue Streak programme having inherited the original Spadeadam collection that used to be displayed on site.
An RZ2 engine is on display at Armagh Planetarium, Northern Ireland and The Euro Space Center in Redu, Belgium.
Footage from the Blue Streak launch was briefly incorporated into The Prisoner's final episode, "Fall Out". A part of the Blue Streak rocket launched on 5 June 1964 from Woomera, Australia, found 50 km SE of Giles in 1980 is on display at Giles Weather Station. Another piece was located in 2006 but its exact location has been kept secret by the finders. The titanium structure of a German third stage was, for some time, sited on the edge of a gravel pit in Gloucestershire.
|
|||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||