British Skylark sounding rocket gets a mention on BBC
Discussion
Nice to see some home grown talent on the BBC website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-4194...
Saw one when visiting the space division of BAe at Filton in the 90's. It stood in the stairwell of the offices of the main space building there. A most impressive display for an office staircase.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-4194...
Saw one when visiting the space division of BAe at Filton in the 90's. It stood in the stairwell of the offices of the main space building there. A most impressive display for an office staircase.
The Skylark was a great rocket, had a long history of use and we should quite rightly be proud of it. Much of the upper atmospheric research was made using it. Although I've always preferred the Canadian Black Brant as it looks sexier, what can I say, I'm shallow.... But the two rockets were for very different purposes, the Black Arrow was more like the nuclear weapons program, a sign to the world that we could do it too. Much like what North Korea is up to at the moment.
The Black Arrow project was just a means to an end, it only had a payload capacity of 100kg and once you accounted for the power supply, solar panels, satellite structure, the carrying cradle inside the rocket fuselage, etc, you were left with little room for actual flight hardware like experiments, remember this was before the use of microprocessors, and PCB's, which if used, were often hand made. The fuel, high test peroxide and kerosene had a lower specific impulse than liquid oxygen and kerosene (280 vs 350 respectively), although we were testing out in Woomera on a shoe string budget so HTP could be much more easily stored in the desert Down Under than cryogenic oxidisers. (Specific impulse is a measure of how effective a fuel is when used as a propellent, higher the better). And with so few launches, there wasn't enough research carried out to iron out issues, develop the engines, and generally provide that body of knowledge you need in such a huge program. But like I said, it was a means to an end, it did put the Prospero satellite into orbit, but ideally it would have to have been hugely modified to lift higher payloads, probably to the extent that you start again and design a rocket using what you've learned on the previous project. I think there was actually talk of fitting half a dozen solid fuel boosters to Black Arrow to improve it's performance, ironically these boosters would come from the Skylark...
But apart from picking apart the engineering and scientific reasons why it was never a real competitor to the US launchers at the time, it was probably more to do with a lack of interest in funding which really hampered the project. Plus the Americans were offering the government a discount on the use of their launchers, which I think helped put the nail in the coffin for Black Arrow, which funnily enough was withdrawn as soon as the project was cancelled. Both projects were successes but for different reasons, Skylark was a proven and capable sounding rocket, Black Arrow showed the world we could reach orbit, but we just never had the resources or political will to spend the required budgets to ever see such a huge project through.
The Black Arrow project was just a means to an end, it only had a payload capacity of 100kg and once you accounted for the power supply, solar panels, satellite structure, the carrying cradle inside the rocket fuselage, etc, you were left with little room for actual flight hardware like experiments, remember this was before the use of microprocessors, and PCB's, which if used, were often hand made. The fuel, high test peroxide and kerosene had a lower specific impulse than liquid oxygen and kerosene (280 vs 350 respectively), although we were testing out in Woomera on a shoe string budget so HTP could be much more easily stored in the desert Down Under than cryogenic oxidisers. (Specific impulse is a measure of how effective a fuel is when used as a propellent, higher the better). And with so few launches, there wasn't enough research carried out to iron out issues, develop the engines, and generally provide that body of knowledge you need in such a huge program. But like I said, it was a means to an end, it did put the Prospero satellite into orbit, but ideally it would have to have been hugely modified to lift higher payloads, probably to the extent that you start again and design a rocket using what you've learned on the previous project. I think there was actually talk of fitting half a dozen solid fuel boosters to Black Arrow to improve it's performance, ironically these boosters would come from the Skylark...
But apart from picking apart the engineering and scientific reasons why it was never a real competitor to the US launchers at the time, it was probably more to do with a lack of interest in funding which really hampered the project. Plus the Americans were offering the government a discount on the use of their launchers, which I think helped put the nail in the coffin for Black Arrow, which funnily enough was withdrawn as soon as the project was cancelled. Both projects were successes but for different reasons, Skylark was a proven and capable sounding rocket, Black Arrow showed the world we could reach orbit, but we just never had the resources or political will to spend the required budgets to ever see such a huge project through.
Black Arrow and Black Knight were good for what they did but had limited development potential past LEO. More frustrating was Blue Streak which went on to form the basis of the predicessor to the Ariane family. If you are interested in this stuff Vertical Empire is a good read.
Anyway, I think it's nice to see the Skylark get a mention.
Anyway, I think it's nice to see the Skylark get a mention.
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