The UK Space Program: Coming 3rd Place in the Cold War
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- Опубліковано 10 кві 2024
- Unlock the hidden chapters of the Cold War! From secret rocket programs to satellite scandals, dive into the untold story of the British Space Program. History, espionage, and ambition collide in this captivating journey.
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We almost put a Robin Reliant in space. 😂
Ah yes the Top Gear glory days, I also loved the rocket mini down a ski jump 😂
If only it’d had a 4th wheel for better stability
Ambitious, but rubbish!
And on _that_ bombshell...
That would be a Reliant Robin.
“ A complete guide on how to come 3rd.”.. Simon delivered that perfectly
Aussie here. I've been to Woomera - there's really nothing out there (I mean nothing), so a missing crashed rocket makes complete sense.
This cannot be true. Surely there is some sprt of creature there that will kill a human with just a stare.
It crashed beyond the environment
Same today, except they have fallen far behind just 3rd place. China, India, New Zealand, and the EU have all achieved space faring capabilities. They UK was hoping to FINALLY get a second successful orbital flight with Virgin Orbit... well it failed and the company went bankrupt after that along with the tens of millions of dollars preparing for it. Still no spaceflight has ever succeeded from UK soil.
Going on 53 years now.
Horizontal launch will start from I think saxavord from this year 2024. Hope the UK achieves that.
India, EU, China okay but New Zealand? They have a private company doing space activities no governmental or national interest seems to be there plus their one company RokcetLab do its operation massively in USA and not New Zealand
@@philosopherfrombed NZ has a government space agency, simply called 'New Zealand Space Agency', set up in 2016. RocketLab's initial start-up was also partially funded by the NZ government. RocketLab operated exclusively in NZ until 2012, after which it also set up in America to take advantage of greater funding and logistics opportunities.
The English Electric Canberra is still flown by NASA as the WB-57. Some British bombers had outstanding high-altitude performance.
Those aircraft that NASA are using are retired Air Force WRB-57 aircraft. The B-57 was a bomber used by the USAF during Vietnam (Gen Yeager flew them), and several of them were modified by extending the wings and adding bigger engines to be the WRB variant. W means weather, and R means reconnaissance.
At this time, there was a weatherman and his instruments in what used to be the bomb bay for high altitude weather data collection and atmospheric sampling. Now the weatherman is taken out and everything is automated.
These aircraft were capable of flying about twice as high as the standard B-57.
@@Linusgump The B-57 was a licenced version of the Canberra
@@Linusgump Those WB-57 are a US version of the Canberra. Some kinda British U-2, I'd say...
@@fridaycaliforniaa236 Bono would be disgusted at the carbon footprint.
Third is a stretch, but sure if it helps you sleep at night.
I often feel sad for the Brits. They had some great ideas for Space programs, most of them were canceled. They had some really good military aircraft designs, they also were canceled. Cold War governments were truly bad for their technical will... (btw, hello from France)
_edit_ : oh, and BTW, I *love* the HOTOL and Skylon projects 🥰
THe UK government in the 50s/60s/70s had a real paranoia about it, refusing to invest in anything that wasn't 101% safe, massively stifled an industry that is now the UKs biggest export (aerospace parts)
The British government has let down British scientists and researchers for many decades now
They also slapped security notices on everything (classified). The history of the Post Office is full of ingenious telephony and computing inventions that literally got buried and lost instead of being developed
It wouldn't have surprised me if they had called one of the projects Black Adder....
I would not surprise me if you were to disappear following your illegal disclosure concerning Project Cunning Plan.
'Third' is optimistic. The French were putting satellites in orbit in the 1960s. China sometime round then too. In the 2020s New Zealand has a more robust space programme than the UK.
On Woomera, it really was the Australian equivalent of Los Alamos, with a population of 5000 at its height. There are some excellent historical documentaries/newsreels on the period on YT, titled:
Posting Woomera (1960)
Rocket Range Australia (1957)
Woomera Plays a vital role in ELDO (1965)
Jack Absalom's: Red Dirt & Rockets (1980s) from 22:20
Oh, Simon, you didn't mention that Australia picked up the cost of the rocket pads, buildings, tracking computers, optical tracking equipment, military personnel, security, accommodation, and transport. Plus the actual cost of building the Woomera township, piping water from 100s of kilometres away. So Great Britain building its early rockets for a bargain basement price was true, as Australia picked up the significant cost of the infrastructure, bar the rocket R&D themselves.
Simon, Blue Steel was not a ballistic missile. It was a stand-off nuclear weapon carried by the Vulcan.
Fascinating.
@@garyclark3843 Brilliant!!!
That was quite fun…but surely there should have been a bit more of a mention of the 1971 Black Arrow launch given it was the only time the UK has put a satellite in orbit on its own, and even that after the programme was cancelled!
Whoo… brand new info for me. Thanks Simon!!
American citizens spend more annually on bullets then the UK does on space... I mean almost 10 billion in 2023 alone...
Americans will go over to the UK lunar base for the good tea
Hell, we did it in the desert.
Not our preferred tee.
This brought back memories- I had to write an essay on the UK’s contribution to space relations back in 2001/2002 at uni - a visit to the newly built National Space Centre in Leicester was well worth the visit 😀
Nothing is worth going to Leices for, i used to live there :S
@@ek8710Yh not really it’s sad unless you’re a fan of history we do have alot of history but other than that there’s nothing here you can’t find anywhere else
@@ek8710 🤣 I was at uni for 4 years there so it was just around the corner and quite cheap to get in - prices now are ridiculous just like any other "attraction" 🙄
@@Umski was at DMU for 3 years! It was very foreign back in 2009 but I hear it's even worse and full of spice heads in the city centre now. The ruins and historic areas were nice, as was the Curve and Athena area we had our flat, just the people were horrible, the amount of homophobia myself and friends experienced from young Asian men was horrible.
The pumping station museum next door to it is also fun... If you're into toilets.
It's still impressive that they achieved as much as they did with so little money (aside from Zircon... Yikes!). OK, it isn't as flashy as the USA or USSR's vast achievements, but given that Britain was financially screwed after the war and well into the decades that followed, it highlights our little island's ingenuity and quiet competence (excluding governments).
On the one hand, yes, that's one way to view it, but another, equally true way to view it is as being emblematic of the UK's slow drift towards mediocrity from its glory as the largest empire the world has ever known.
@@benrockefeller6334 true true, but I'm a glass half full kinda guy.
11:44 it's a cylon suit :D :D :D
by your command old chap
Could you please make a special 2part episode on engine development with part 1 concentrating on general history and part 2 on the unique side of engine development. LOVE YOUR VIDEOS BTW!!!👊
The UK may have been 3rd in the cold war space race, but I don't have a lot of confidence that it'll be 3rd in the current space race, even as part of ESA. Even though Russia seem to be struggling, China and India are making big moves.
We definitely need a full video on project Zircon
+1
Look for Lazerpig's take on this.
Third is the second second first place
60% of the time, it works, every time 👌🏻
Nobody pronounces it E-S-A. Only E-SA, rhymes with NASA (not N-A-S-A).
The beard is becoming epic.
He's planning on doing a comb over.
He's hoping that it will be sent into space as a new form of seat cushioning.
More like this, I need my space!
Everyone knows us British won't get serious about space colonisation till we find Aliens to oppress..... errr I mean civilise 😅
Museum ain't gonna fill itself.
A few new spices and Olympic class athletes wouldn't go amiss
Where did you learn to say this sort of thing?
It’s funny because without the help of that ‘empire’, you probably wouldn’t be here to type your comment in German!
Nah it will be space tea.
When you realize the sun can't ever set on your empire if the sun is part of your empire
So they launched Blue Steel. However, they also launched the earlier, less well known Le Tigre and Ferrari models.
Never made it all the way to Magnum...That was gonna blow us all away!
IT'S ALL THE SAME ROCKET, AM I TAKING CRAZY PILLS?!?!
What became of the HOTOL space plane from the late 80's ? I remember seeing it on the news, anyone else remember it ?
I remember it from various technology magazines back then. It seemed really cool but it was cancelled in the late 80s.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Aerospace_HOTOL
I do like it when Simon goes back to his blighty roots.
@5.20 I am in bits. Tea everywhere.
Fun fact: the Blue Steel rocket could only fly straight and turn right.
Fun fact in 1968 britian was planning on being the first cou try to go to the moon but cancelled. The next year (1969) the 🇺🇸 would do it.
Today uk is not even in space race what a shame 😢
Do you know till this day uk never successful launched a single rocket to space
Considering we was on our arse from ww2 & struggle to keep our head above water we did good but we had to pick between being a space power or a military power as the cold war was just getting started in earnest!!! We have invented & still do create some of the best technologies in the world & are very much leader in that sense even tho ppl love putting our country down (sad ppl) but we just lack the money to make the most of it by ourselves & end up sharing it with allies!!!
Yesss, this should be a priority.
Got here before an hour!
My favorite joke is the one about the two british astronauts that walk into a pub.
The UK does first-rate sci-fi flicks, though!
Not the BBC, though. Their SF output is dreadful.
Dr.Who went Woke! 🏳️🌈🙈
Biggest problem is you cant put a space shuttle together with a couple blokes in a shed.
UK was like: challenge accepted!
Was there a reason that at 2:40 it stated Gemini not Mercury? I mean, the clip included the Gemini capsule, but the US manned spaceflight program started with Mercury...
8:30, did Simon say "Lonosphere" when it should have been "Ionosphere" (with an "i")?
As a video editor, it looked and sounded like the Sputnik, Vanguard, Explorer I, founding of NASA, Mercury program section got cut for time constraints and the edit continued with Gemini.
4:01 Love the Zoolander reference :D
I drive by "Skynet Drive" regularly in the UK. Which is part of a secretive MOD base.
Corsham I assume
@@DarkSitesChannel yeah
@@DarkSitesChannel Nice channel. Subbed
11:44
Thats no Mando, is that Ned Kelly in space?!
Such is the way.
Yes please, a video on the zircon program would be excellent.
They came in 3rd just behind the Zimbabwe space program. It's a lil embarrassing.
lol at misreading the teleprompter. Lonosphere!
13:45 - Agreed
Isle of Wight and Spadeadam, the centres of UK rocketry, before moving to Australia!
The UK may not be the best at space but they are definitely better than plenty of other countries in terms of space
I loved HOTOL 😂❤
You should do one on Australian Research and Space Exploration. Better known as ARSE. 😅😂😂
Cool
It's strange to mention project Gemini at 2:42, that wasn't the first American space program. There was the manned project Mercury before that and before Mercury they had unmanned launches too.
It seems like a lot of people are misunderstanding what time period this video is talking about
Britain's space "journey" should be in 5th place in this type of ranking just behind France and China, not 3rd in Cold War times.
🤣😅😅😆 the third sat to launch on a foreign rocket, lol
You need to look at the Britiah space suit from.the 40s, it had a cape
Just googled it the 1 in the video also had a cape 😅
Real life Helldivers 2? Well got to look good if you are giving pesky bugs a taste of liber-tea!
A robust space program is insanely expensive to build and maintain. The amount of funding and resources needed to keep up with the US and the USSR during the cold war. The UK would become the North Korea of the West if the UK went "all in". Today, the economics of outer space is relatively affordable with respect to the budgets of the Union Jack.
Oh aww 😮, I wasn't aware Britain has a space program 😱.
The eternal #3 in those days... Third to get the atomic bomb, hydrogen bomb and space.
But to be fair. If I remember correctly, they actually started their A-Bomb program before the US, and handed over their research to them, because it was to risky to keep in the country, since they were constantly attacked by the Germans.
Unfortunately for them, once developed, USA didn't want to share, so they had to start over once USA and the Soviet Union already had theirs.
Don't forget, it was British personnel that gave Manhattan Project information to the Soviets (Klaus Fuchs) and Harold R. (Kim) Philby. The U.S. reticence was justified.
Zoolander and the Terminator. I was hooked to see what the second reference was going to be after Simon said there was another Hollywood reference when talking about Blue Steel.
I am pretty sure China is either one, two or three! But, if you want to believe the UK is a Mega Player in Space, go ahead.
UK third? We still can't actually get something in space. IIRC china was third and India fourth.
Not quite. The UK was the third country to launch an orbital satellite with an indigenous launcher. The UK then became the first and only country to scrap its orbital launch capability.
I do not believe Simon meant to imply the UK is currently the third leading space power. Ranking this is very ambiguous, especially since the UK is in ESA, which is itself reasonably high on the list.
@@JohnWilliamNowak Oops I made that comment before watching the full video. really interesting video as I had no idea we where kicking ass and then decided to just give up lol. We did the same with semiconductors I guess we just don't have the budget for our ambitions any more.
Blue Streak, hilarious *Martin Lawrence movie, more Hollywood connections, follow the money, thanks for the correction
Martin Lawrence friend also black knight also Martin Lawrence
3rd? Can't even see that..
Greetings and Salutations from Temple, Texas, USA! Howz y'all?
The British Interplanetary Society, goddamn it leave to the Brits to name things in such a cool way.
Simon what is a "Lonosphonere"?
Blue Streak, Black Knight… Martin Lawrence movies
Black Arrow was a low cost project using off the shelf technology to combine the guidance system dèveloped for the Blue Streak with hydrogen dioxide fuelled motors developed for rocket boosted jet fighters and bombers. Officially the project was to provide a rocket to put scientific satellites into orbit, but in reality it was done as a technology demonstration to show the US that the UK's message that if the US did not honour its commitment to sell Britain Polaris missiles ( a deal so good many in Britain questioned if the Americans genuinely meant to honour it), Britain would develop its own Submarine launched missile system, was backed up by ability. This was why it used hydrogen dioxide as a fuel source, as that is stable enough to be stored for many years in a missile (although no where near as stable as the Polaris's solid fuel). This is why the project was cancelled at the start of the 70s as the UK Polaris program was fully up running.
Hydrogen peroxide?
Sad how far the UK has fallen.
The U.S. space program began with the Mercury Project not the Gemini.
The US space program began with the V-2
@@DoktorBayerischeMotorenWerke Actually it began with Robert H Goddard.
@@harrymaciolek9629 Actually it started with Hermann Oberth and Fritz von Opel.
@@DoktorBayerischeMotorenWerke Robert H. Goddard was doing significant work before either of them.
@@JohnWilliamNowak That is completely false and unsubstantiated.
Do a megaprojects on the Bmx bike... Or the bike in general. Idk 😶
I don't think they'd qualify.
A better one would be the invention of electric vehicles in the early 1900
@@everypitchcounts4875 Nor would that.
They didn't have a direct rivalry forcing them to advance like the US and USSR. They couldn't allow themselves to lose so all advancements in space were successfully used in politics.
To be fair to Australia, its that massive that a nuklier bomb has gone off before in the middle of the desert and it rocked sizmoniters but none really noticed, or found it for years and years. Its the only time a none governmental nuclear weapon has been exploded as far as I know.
From (bill bryson's book a sunburned country)
Blue Steel was not a ballistic missile it was a supersonic cruise missile used as a stand off weapon from Victor B2 and Vulcan B2 bombers.
We are number three: we try harder!
Fun fact: Brown Streak was the name of the passenger train in Grand Theft Auto San Andreas.
Too busy sipping our tea.😅
What a shame we only got a Bronze medal!
I imagined that nowadays, U.K. will be in the last place.
What about the MUSTARD and HOTOL Spacecraft
I guess the Royal family and all their buildings needed all that money and skip rockets.
Who taught you to say this sort of thing?
Thanks
Considering the meager financial resources these outfits had to work with, I'd say they came our looking pretty good.
So where is the UK now on the list ?? Sure isnt third ....lol
UK is actually huge in space it just doesn't do independent launches but is one of the main contributors towards ESA. When it comes to private sector it makes payloads like satellites, rovers, scientific instrumentation, propulsion technology & space born communication services. It's a sector that turns over an impressive 65Bn a year.
They could have done a lot better buying a box of fireworks lol.
This looks good.
Oh Lord. Space Tommy's.
7.21 the Concorde program is most definitely NOT Concord Aerospace! The spelling should have been a dead giveaway!
They are not even in the top 5 atm.
Did he say "The Skynet Program"!?😳
you missed a perfect chance to comment on the "rocket" built on Top Gear
Lazerpig already did Zircon
I'm disappointed that there weren't rockets named Le Tigre and Magnum 😂
0:52 an early start
4:24 false starts & crash landings
8:04 the satellite programs
11:27 the satellite programs
Don't you dare muscle in on IgnitionFM's patch!
Black Arrow was engineering witchcraft… a shame they didn’t keep going with it.
England has never code named a program or a spacecraft 'Dead Parrot', and l think this is a tragedy.
I am pretty certain Canada was the 3rd country in space with the satellite Alouette 1
No one cares about Canaduh
It was the fourth, but it was close - the UK only beat it by a couple of months.
What do you mean what went wrong? It's the UK? Everything goes wrong.