The Black Arrow & Britain's Rocket Program 

Britain: We need an engine for something Britain: *Rolls Royce*

This seems to be a reoccurring theme in british history: They achieve a very advantageous position - and then suddenly decide to stop. Kinda tragic.

My grandfather was one of the lead engineers on this for 10+ years and was part of the team that designed the radio communications systems. He went to Woomera numerous times (and recalled the first computer he ever saw there which took up a whole building!) and partook in a lot of the tests at Woomera, Spadeadam and the Isle of Wight for all iterations of the project. He was gutted when the programme was cancelled, stating cheap satellite launch vehicles would be the future of all communications. After the project was cancelled, most of the engineers were headhunted and ended up in the USA. However a lot of the tech from this (or the ELDO part at least) ended up in Ariane. He later went on to work for DRA, SRDE, RRE and TRE and design the Clansman military radio systems that were in use until fairly recently. I still have a lot of his old documentation, including a nice booklet on the Woomera facility and a couple of the Clansman radios he designed.

The Prospero satellite was named intentionally because the Black Arrow was being cancelled - it was deemed fitting to have the satellite be named after the sorcerer who decided to give up their magic.

Put Wallace and Grommet on it! You'll have a lunar capable manned (and dogged) space program in no time.

As a brit, and a rocket enthusiast, I find it physically and emotionally painful to watch this video.

The satellite name, Prospero, was a dig at the cancellation of Black Arrow. It comes from a character in Shakepsear's play "The Tempest" who is a magician who gives up his magic powers.

Alan Bond who founded the air-breathing rocket engine developer Reaction Engines worked on Blue Streak and Black Arrow, so if a Sabre powered orbit capable launch vehicle ever flies, there will be a direct link between Black arrow and that launch vehicle - which is sort of poetic justice. As has been said elsewhere in this thread, the UK has had this habit of abandoning amazing technology just as it's about to be successful... Miles M52, TSR2 and Black Arrow to name a few.

The British Government has a long history of cancelling things just as they come to fruition, leaving other countries to then cash in on the market the UK abandoned :(

You talk about launch failures enough that it would be really cool to have a video on the various launch abort methods. Not the escape methods for crew vehicles, but the self destruct in the event of loss of control. Something going into how it's decided to abort, what signals are passed back and forth, and the actual mechanism for turning a hundred plus tons of fuel, oxidizer, and payload into confetti

The Lipstick Rocket! The rocket designed ahead of its time. The was no small satellites yet, but genius small cheap and simple rocket launcher without complicated cryogenic fuel! It's actually my favorite rocket.

I love how surreal it looks rising on that nearly-invisible (at least with the quality of footage available) column of exhaust. Also, I’m impressed by the courage of the British engineers and ground crew, working with huge tanks of hydrogen peroxide. Which may not require any cryogenics, but is hardly a “storable” oxidizer.

Hopefully space will be returning to the UK, there's a planned spaceport in Cornwall at Newquay airport that's going to host Virgin Orbit's 747

Such a shame this project never reach its full potential

The biggest surprise for me was learning that Scott likes rockets.

Thank you for covering my favorite rocket! I've always wanted to work on a rocket engine based on it using HTP in a closed cycle.

I hope they pull off the Scottish launch site, its probably the only chance I'll get to take my kids to see a real rocket. Lang may yer lum reek, Orbex!

Scott, when you next come back to the UK, you MUST visit the Solway Aviation Museum. There's a section of Blue Streak rocket on display (sadly outside) and various pieces of equipment such as turbopumps on display. I would be delighted to show you!

"So I built a third. That burned down, fell over, and then sank into the swamp. But the fourth one stayed up." -M. Python, The Holy Grail

I get to correct Scott Manley! Only Black Arrow and Black Knight were tested at the Island of Wight (High Down Rocket Test Site). RZ.2 engines (that powered Blue Streak) were tested at Spadeadam, Northern England, where also the Blue Streak was static fired

I saw this in the London science museum. Pretty cool

The engine was also tested at the Rocket Propulsion Establishment at Westcott Bucks. My father worked there from 46 to 74 and I was an apprentice their from 1967 to 1971. I worked their for another 2 years before I left. About 4 years later working for Sperry Gyroscope on the update to Polaris. The old bluestreak test site can still be seen from the Aylesbury to Bicester road, it’s a large black building with what looks like a shed on top. You also spoke of HTP. this was used in rocket pods mounted under the wings on a Lancaster bomber in 1946. I have 3 pictures showing my father fuelling these rocket on the Westcott runway. I believe he designed or helped design the fuelling trolly. His job at the time was in charge of the crew that used to fuel the liquid rockets, he was always coming home with small holes in his trousers where small droplets of HTP had splashed on them. I believe the only site still in use is J site, this was the site that I worked on for 3 or 6 months during my apprenticeship. All good memories from over 50 years ago

"Green Cheese - nuclear anti-ship missile" Seems about right !

There's a 'lipstick' rocket on static display at Woomera, South Australia.

Metric and Imperial in the same rocket? It's miracle it didn't crash on Mars! :-)

Fun fact: you can easily walk around and look at the concrete mounts and flame trenches built to test the engines - shown at 08:34 - on the Isle of the Wight. They’re on the side of a cliff overlooking the sea, just along from the Needles rocks.

Scotland: we're launching rockets now!! Scott Manley: I'm moving to Scotland!!!!

What a great video. I am proud to have been involved in the Black Arrow Programme as a junior systems engineer. I had a fantastic time in learning real time programming and hardware supporting the satellite up to and including launch. Gutted when it was cancelled after the successful deployment of the satellite. .

Glad to hear Woomera mentioned even if only briefly. For a while in the 60s it was one of the busiest rocket launch sites in the world (which resulted in several science fiction novels of the time having a future Woomera Spaceport). Incidentally Woomera is a local word for spear-throwing-stick i.e. device used to boost the spear to go further, which is why it was chosen. Australia too had its moments of walking away from space technology. When the European Space Agency was being formed Australia was the only non-European country invited to be a part with the contribution of its Woomera launch range but it turned the offer down. The information about the Peroxide fuel was fascinating.

Fantastic oration today and the storytelling was also great. Thanks for the info!

Love getting into the geeky technical side with your videos. Thanks!

Scott: Explains how the first stage used metric units and the second and third stages used imperial Me: Hello, Dr. Snidely, fancy meeting you here!

It has just hit me: I'd kill for Scott Manley and Amy Shira Teitel (vintage space) collaboration on old space programs, people behind them and hardware

I was hoping you would mention the fun fact regarding the name Prospero. Prospero is a character in The Tempest by Shakespeare who vows to abandon his magic powers once he achieves his goals. Which is quite fitting! Great Video though!

5:11 So, the British made a steam powered rocket?

Thanks Scott. Hugely informative, as always. Smiles

Love the channel, Scott!

My grandfather designed a part for Blue Streak/Black Arrow. I think he said it was a clockwork timer to run the stage separator. I still have the prototype. A neat little thing with a double-vane escapement like a nautical clock.

Good to see you summarise this, I have seen what’s left of Blue streak at Spadeadam, so much potential, they had the engineers and the infrastructure, as well as success. The project should have continued.

Thanks Scott my farther worked on the guidance systems for BlueSteel and BlueStreak but left the project and immigrated to Australia to work on the Apollo program.

Scott me and my daughter enjoy your video this now our new Sunday tradition you inspire many including me, my daughter. thanks

Dear Mr.Manley sir, I would like to take this opportunity to thank you for all your old Eve videos, I recently started playing Eve after watching 30,000 virtual space ship and am really enjoying it. I am not a fighter jockey and find the slow plodding grind of a miner very relaxing. In my first 20 days, I have started my spreadsheets and made almost 20 mils Isk. Not a huge amount, but for an old git like me (60+) its good plus I can listen to some of your older works.

Nice to read all the memories. I left Manchester University in 1959 with a degree in Physics, and went to work with De Havilland in Stevenage on Blue Streak. I worked in what was called the "Sponsors Group", and "my" rocket was D6. I got to go up to Spadeadam Waste a few times. If I remember correctly (a long time ago now) I was scheduled to go to Australia with F3 - but we all know what happened then. I was given a job at the back end of Hatfield Airfield working on Red Top, a heat seeking air-air missile which was quite interesting. The future of the British aerospace industry was looking dodgier by the day, and I bemoaning this in the pub one night, when some other engineer asked me if I wanted to something "completely different". I said OK, and within 6months was on a seismic crew in Burma.

Me expecting @DJSnM's next video to be about the new rover. Him: HERE YOU GO. BRITAIN ROCKET

I was despairing of ever be able to see a doc on Britain's rocketry !

The old Black Knight rocket test stands and control room bunkers are still there on the Isle of Wight, up on the downs near the Needles. Been up there a few times, interesting place when you think back to the history.

R.V.Jones, what a marvellous man to listen to. The Secret War (BBC) together with Connections is still one of my favourite documentaries.

I just heard about the "mini moon" temporarily orbiting earth, and was thinking about the possibility of a future mission to capture one of these small objects in a stable orbit. Would it ever be reasonable to attempt to bring a small object in a temporary orbit into a stable one? To study, or as a proof of concept for mining or collision avoidance?

7:11 1965 All-England limbo champion.

Some Blue Streak engines and memorabilia are displayed at the Solway Aviation Museum at Carlisle Airport nine miles east of Carlisle. Spadeadam is only a few miles away where they tested the rockets. Outside they have an Avro Vulcan and several other great aircraft including a Lightening, Canberra, Hawker Hunter, Venom, Phantom, the museum is well worth a visit. The whole thing is run by enthusiastic volunteers from an aviation background. It should be said that Blue Streak never failed, ever, not once.

finally, good info in this is so hard to find

I think my favourite rainbow code is the Blackburn ARNA project, which stood for A Royal Navy Aircraft. It took approximately two seconds for that to become “black banana”

12 months ago I was standing next a black arrow on display at the Woomera rocket park. Im looking forward to visiting that place again real soon.

A lot of the infrastructure that was built for these tests still exists out in the bush of the Woomera rocket range, still the largest test range in the free world. Indeed, some of the buildings seen in this video are still in use today at the Edinburgh site in South Australia. The entire defence industry that exists in Australia today owes itself to British investment and experimentation here in the 50’s and 60’s.

Blue Streak static firings were at Spadeadam in Cumbira, not on the Isle of Wright (which was the SARO Black Knight / Black Arrow) though early static test firings of the Blue Streak were done at Manor Road on the edge of the airfield at Hatfield in Hertfordshire. I saw the last two being built in the Factory at Stevenage when I was a kid as my Grandfather worked on the project. I later worked at Spadeadam on Russian SAM systems where we used the old firing blockhouses as equipment stores.

Last year i visited the test site on the Isle of Wight and there's a small museum which tells the story of those British rockets.

When 1970 is 50 years ago. Damn.

We still launch experimental rockets in Scotland (in the outer Hebrides where I was brought up) a company called Quinetiq develop and test rockets I've seen many go up a long way! There was talk of a spaceport out there but it was decided it would be built somewhere on the mainland.

I saw the "lipstick rocket" in the science museum in London. I was geeking out about it and my not-rocket-loving friend almost left because I behaved like a little child on Christmas 😅

Thanks for the video Scott. Currently I'm working in mining maintenance and on a site south of Coober Pedy in the Woomera prohibited zone. I often wonder what other cool things launched into the sky around here. (Obviously also had nuclear tests as well)

The Rocket program failing is a great metaphor for the UKs industrial and political capacity the last 100 years

For Scott Manley. I note your excellent video of the black arrow and blue streak British space programs, in which testing was performed at Woomera in Australia. In the early 1960's as a young chemical engineer with the Australian DOD explosives branch, I was working on making extruded cordite for solid rocket motors for this program. Also though, and what was not mentioned in your video, we sent large tanker truck quantities of (soda carb stabilised) nitro- glycerin liquid to Woomera. I understood this to be a monofuel liquid rocket propellant for the blue streak rocket. I note that only high test peroxide and kerosene was mentioned, so I wonder what happened to all the nitroglycerine?

Thanks Scott...!

I think one of those rocks is on display at woomera on the out sides of town. It’s by no a large rocket. It’s very popular with visitors. If you search for woomera rocket display you can see it.

I would love to see a Scots launch vehicle, resplendent in its Black Watch tartan roll pattern, soaring above the Highlands.

Well another problem was that they flew on the left side of the sky.

Enjoy your channel. Had a couple of questions, wasn't sure where to put them, so here they are with a bit of pre-amble. Recently I watched the extended interview of Destin Sandlin with Tory Bruno at ULA. After watching this and seeing this recent promo video from Blue Origin a picture is emerging of how these companies are designing and building the pressure vessels that make up the bulk of structure of their rockets, thick aluminium sheets, CNC milled to reduce weight while at the same time retain strength, rolled into barrels that are friction stir welded together. The SmarterEveryDay video also includes content on how liquids and gases behave during launch and in zero G and Tory even mentioned “sloshogists” who help to model this and feed into the design of baffles that are added inside tanks to ensure engines are fed an uninterrupted supply of propellants. In contrast SpaceX is building its tanks from thin flat sheets of stainless steel which are directly rolled into barrels and arc welded together. Also to my knowledge internal baffles have not been mentioned certainly nothing in the order of requiring "sloshologists". Does the extra strength of steel means that milling is not required and can the same be said for arc welding over friction stir welding? Also do the SpaceX tanks contain complex internal baffling that we don’t know about? If not, why? Assuming steel does simplify the build process significantly while providing better structural strength at cryogenic and high re-entry temperatures why wouldn’t other rocket companies looking to reuse their hardware, be pivoting in this direction?

They also tested the Blue Streak engines at Spadeadam, I watched and heard some of them from several miles away when I was a boy in the early 60s.

Ansty, Coventry, is where those Gammas were designed, tested and built. I've just done a history of the site and displayed it in my pub =D

A really interesting vid! I new there were British rockets but have never seen any footage, and I didn't even realise it would be possible to launch a rocket that far from the equator! Thanks Scott! :-)

Thanks for sharing 👍😀 Interesting rocket

I’ve seen the one in the science museum in London, it’s quite impressive. I also went to the High down test stand on the isle of white. There’s not much of it left sadly, guess I got to go to woomera now?

Oh wow, this is a great video! Thank you for making it. What a fascinating thing. It's like a secret history. The British had their own rocket program that made its own unique design choices (that have never been replicated since), and it sounds like things were going pretty well. Then they just... decided to stop.

The "Wight Aviation Museum" on the Isle of Wight have been making a full scale replica of the Black Arrow rocket, and are trying to get their facility sorted to display it. A project well worth donating to. Check out their website.

Thanks for covering this :D - the wreckage is just up the road from me (well just moved there recently)

Shout out to the Isle Of Wight!!!!! The test site is open to the public!

More power Scotty !

Both Plesetsk and Kapustin Yar are in Europe...

There's a replica on the Isle of Wight at Sandown Airport. It's on its side right now, but we're planning to stand it up this year.

Jeez at the beginning when you said fifty years ago I anticipated a date in the 1950s! What bloody year am I in? Must be getting old.

GETTING EASIER NOW! A LOT OF THE SCIENCES HAVE BEEN FIGURED OUT ALREADY! WE MUST NEVER STOP LEARNING AND GROWING!

You broke 1000000 subscribers, well done!

I wonder if the specific impulse of kerosene/HTP could be increased by emulsifying some aluminum or magnesium powder in with the kerosene. The idea being that those metals can use some of the water produced by the peroxide as an oxidizer for a higher energy density. And since the result of M+H2O --> MO +H2, the molecular lightness of hydrogen in the exhaust might help with specific impulse as well.

I'd love to be an engineer on uk rockets. I'm just an engineer on claped out old (not vintage) light aircraft. I guess it could be worse!

According to UK Space Scientist Maggie Aderin-Pocock (1), the UK had money either to continue Black Arrow... or to build Concorde. (1) BBC Radio 4 "The Museum of Curiosity" Season 6, Episode 6 - well worth a listen all round, all three guests bring great stuff!

Did a Presentation in English Class on this, amazing Stuff!!!

I would really love to see the uk more involved in space research

KSP on my left screen, Scott Manley on the right Just how I like it

Woomera is a remote town founded in South Australia, to launch rockets, and the name woomera is the Dharug word, from Eora (that you've probably heard called Sydney)for a lever used to throw spears further and more powerfully.

My grandfather worked on the Blue Streak! Never realised that it was a space rocket!

Nice video

So much of this footage reminded me of thunderbirds.

i remember hearing about this but didn't realise it ran into the 70's

I just read up on these! what are the chances?

4:16 Am I seeing things correctly in that the nozzles are all canted off in weird directions? Is this a design feature or are these on some sort of gimbal I'm not seeing?

Huh. I wonder if the low exhaust temperatures, simplicity of not needing cryogenics, and much easier closed cycle pump system would make Peroxide + Kerosene a good choice for a cheap first stage recoverable booster. Specific impulse is less important for the 1st stage compared to cost and re-usability. OTOH, I suspect that the amount of power generated by the peroxide decomposition might not be able to keep up with the high chamber pressures of a modern heavy lifter.

Interesting. I must say, I prefer your space-vids above that of the "everyday astronaut's" and others that dwell in the same domain.

Could You make a video about longest lifespan of satelites?

Love it.

There's a KSP mod that has most if not all of these rockets in the game. They're actually pretty damn good too, especially in early career.