Brits Who Made the Modern World_3of3_The Harrier The Black Arrow Rocket
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00:00This is the story of two pioneering Brits, who beat the odds to create the most exciting
00:10aircraft since the Spitfire, the Harrier Jump Jet, a revolutionary aircraft that can take
00:16off and land vertically.
00:18Make no mistake, if you got it wrong, you were probably going to die.
00:25It was an innovative concept in aircraft design, but incredibly, the RAF didn't fancy
00:30it.
00:31Many more people opposed it than were for it.
00:34But when it came to the crunch, the Harrier proved its worth in the Falklands.
00:39The only airplanes we could actually have on the spot to protect our fleet and to help
00:44our troops were Harriers.
00:48This astonishing machine has done what no other aircraft could do.
00:53The Harrier, the world's first vertical take-off fighter.
01:17The Second World War had taught military planners two things.
01:21Firstly, air power was the key to winning any battle.
01:26And secondly, their most exposed assets were their airfields.
01:30As a result, the idea of an aircraft that could take off and land almost anywhere, simply
01:36by going straight up and down, was very appealing.
01:41But in the 1950s, the RAF's attention was focused elsewhere, on creating aircraft that
01:47flew faster than the speed of sound.
01:53Developing a plane that could take off vertically would have to wait for another day, especially
02:01as the engineering problems for a vertical take-off jet looked insurmountable.
02:10The absolute key to any aircraft that takes off straight up is the engine.
02:15Not only did it have to have the power to push up four tons of machine and weapons vertically,
02:21but once you've risen up from the ground, you have to convert to normal flight, whizzing
02:25through the air at over 600 miles an hour, for hours at a time.
02:29In 1956, that seemed an impossible task to many.
02:36The spark which ultimately led to the Harrier jump jet came by chance.
02:41A British engine designer called Gordon Lewis saw a proposal for a vertical take-off jet
02:47by a French aircraft designer called Vebo.
02:51These are Vebo's plans, and he used one single jet engine to power the aircraft forwards.
02:58But this engine also powered four gigantic fans, which could blast the air downwards
03:04for take-off.
03:05These proposals were flawed, but to Gordon they were an inspiration.
03:10My reaction to that initially was, great idea, but there's a much better way of doing it.
03:15As soon as he saw the French plans, Gordon knew he could create a better engine.
03:21One that was far more efficient than anything the French or anyone else was thinking of.
03:28I put together not much more than a freehand sketch, showing how that could be achieved
03:33in a much simpler and more straightforward manner.
03:37What Gordon Lewis came up with was actually a very simple idea.
03:41He proposed to take an ordinary jet engine, which sucks air out of the front, heats it,
03:46and then blasts it out of the back.
03:49Then to add a big fan on the front, like that.
03:53The idea was that this fan would suck in yet more cold air, and blast it out through two
03:58nozzles below the wing.
04:01For take-off, those nozzles would blast the air straight down, pushing the aircraft up
04:06into the sky.
04:08Once you were up, you'd simply angle the nozzles to the rear, and they'd help push you along.
04:14By the spring of 1957, Gordon was ready to start turning his paper sketches for the vertical
04:21take-off jet engine into something real.
04:24But there was just one slight problem.
04:26He needed a plane to put his engine into.
04:30We spent about a year fiddling about with this project, not getting as far as we would
04:37like, and eventually came to the conclusion we could not get very far without working
04:43with an airframe designer.
04:50Gordon's wish was to come true when a letter arrived from the legendary Sidney Cam, chief
04:55designer of Hawker aircraft.
04:58They sent a letter saying, I don't like the way people are going about this vertical take-off
05:03business.
05:04Have you any thoughts on the matter?
05:06If you have, please drop me a line.
05:10We put together a brochure describing the work we had done up to that point, sent it
05:15up to Hawkers.
05:17Gordon's brochure fell into the hands of a young designer at Hawker, Ralph Hooper.
05:22It came to us almost by chance, and was certainly picked up by me quite by chance.
05:29All we could present Hawkers with, and Ralph Hooper, was, I was going to say half-baked,
05:35but perhaps an 80% baked idea.
05:40Everything starts with a scribble.
05:43Ralph's challenge was to take Gordon's idea and give it wings.
05:47Back at Edinburgh, almost.
05:51Gordon and Ralph were the pair of geniuses who made the Harrier possible.
05:57Calmly tackling engineering problems that would have proved impossible for a lesser team.
06:03Well, the laws of nature were fairly clear.
06:06If you have sufficient thrust available and you point it downwards, then the airplane
06:10is going to go up.
06:12The success of the design for this new kind of plane would depend on teasing out the maximum
06:18power from the engine.
06:21The engine is the absolute fundamental to the design of the airplane.
06:26It is just the fight between thrust and weight.
06:29But in every way we could think of, we had to keep the weight of the airframe low.
06:33From then onwards, we worked extremely closely together to make something of it.
06:41With very little backing from the government, the project relied for its success on Gordon
06:46and Ralph's enthusiasm and determination.
06:48In those days, things moved extraordinarily quickly.
06:52It was not very long before we were starting to build an engine, but we had to build it
06:57with bits and pieces we'd already got.
07:00Very much an experimental device.
07:02So frankly, it didn't work very well.
07:06Straight away the project hit a major problem.
07:09Gordon's engine, codenamed Pegasus, couldn't produce enough power to lift Ralph's airplane
07:16It's no use producing an airplane which can only lift a feather.
07:21These proposals, we couldn't make a useful airplane out of them.
07:24The problem was, there wasn't enough thrust from that nozzle there to lift the aircraft
07:29into the air.
07:31After days of wrestling with this crucial problem, it was actually Ralph who came up
07:36with a solution.
07:38Eventually the idea occurs, well, if we can rotate the front nozzles in that way, perhaps
07:42something very similar could be done with the hot nozzles.
07:45And so it starts with a miscable stretch.
07:48Now Ralph Hooper was suggesting a second set of nozzles at the back that could angle down
07:53the hot gases from the jet engine itself.
07:56It was a stroke of genius that effectively doubled the lift from the engine.
08:02But it was an idea from an aircraft designer, not an engine designer.
08:06So the question was, would it work?
08:09First reaction is saying, I can't do that.
08:11We were very happy indeed that all the actual engineering problems with the hot nozzles
08:16were to be solved by Bristol.
08:17We came away tutting about this suggestion.
08:21So they get on the phone to Bristol and say, what about this?
08:24And they say, hum and ha.
08:26But hang on, we see the advantages of it, why shouldn't we do it?
08:30If there's an idea around which will solve a problem, nobody cares where it comes from.
08:34And that was a major contribution which opened the door to future engine development.
08:40With this decision, Ralph Hooper now had an engine which, if it worked, could just
08:46about lift a proper aircraft vertically into the sky.
08:50But that's if there were going to be any aircraft in the future at all.
08:54Because in 1957, Duncan Sands, the Minister of Defence, published a white paper which
09:00sent shockwaves through the aviation world.
09:03It stated that missiles were going to be the key to Britain's air defence from now on and
09:08not manned planes.
09:10At the time, we thought it was an unknown disaster.
09:14But we were all totally appalled and astonished at what we regarded as an act of huge stupidity
09:20and feared for the consequences in terms of our future business.
09:24Luckily, Hawker had a rather visionary chief designer in Sir Sidney Camp.
09:3025 years before, he designed the famous Hurricane, like this one at the Brooklyn's Museum.
09:36As a private venture, when the Air Minister had rejected it.
09:40So now he'd do it again, with Hooper's new vertical take-off jet.
09:48Just as he'd done with the Hurricane, Sir Sidney Camp decided to stuff the government
09:53and pay every penny for the development of the prototype Harrier from Hawker's own funds.
09:58Only if the government liked what they saw when the Harrier finally flew, would Camp
10:02stand a chance of recouping his investment.
10:05It was a huge risk for the company.
10:08With the prototype almost finished, Gordon Lewis was having major problems with his Pegasus
10:13engine.
10:14Ralph's idea of diverting the exhaust gas to give extra lift had created a Pandora's
10:21box of engineering problems.
10:27The ingenious idea of using the hot gases from the back of the engine to help with the
10:32vertical lift was literally shaking the engine apart.
10:37We had these turbine blades falling off.
10:41We were part of the problem, I mean, you could say we'd set the problem to the engine people
10:45to solve.
10:47With almost no money, Gordon had to find a cheap fix.
10:51And find it fast, as the prototype plane was due to have its first test flight in just
10:56weeks.
10:57The answer he came up with was incredibly simple.
11:01Wire lacing.
11:02We literally made a hole in each blade and passed a wire all the way through.
11:07That stabilised one blade against the other.
11:11It may have been a temporary solution, but it worked.
11:14Yet there was still a big problem.
11:16The plane Ralph Hooper had designed was still heavier than the wider Pegasus engine could
11:22lift.
11:23The plane had to get lighter.
11:24But how?
11:25The equipment was taken out of the aeroplane in order to save every ounce of weight that
11:31could be saved.
11:32We would be lucky just to get it off the ground.
11:35And there we were with this prototype aeroplane, an engine which was only marginally provide
11:42enough power to lift it.
11:44So it was a pretty risky affair.
11:47But as the engineers stripped the last non-essential parts from the plane, and Hooper and Lewis
11:52waited for the big day, no one could have predicted the near disaster that was just
11:57around the corner.
12:01In October 1960, the prototype for the Harrier jump jet, codenamed the P.1127, was poised
12:08ready for take-off.
12:09For four years its creators, engine designer Gordon Lewis and aircraft designer Ralph Hooper,
12:14had persevered to achieve their vision, despite a lack of funding and support.
12:20Many more people opposed it than were for it.
12:24Plus a whole hangar full of engineering problems.
12:27It is just a fight between thrust and weight.
12:30But it was a fight they could well lose, as the plane was so heavy, the engine might
12:34not have the power to raise it off the ground.
12:37But as the engineers did their final checks, disaster was about to strike.
12:44Bill Bedford, one of the few pilots trained to handle the plane, broke his ankle in a
12:49car crash.
12:50I'd probably been out to a party or something like that in the evening and were reasonably
12:55happy.
12:56The driver failed to take a corner and hit a tree.
12:59As a result of that, his leg was encased in plaster up to the knee.
13:06Everything was conspiring to defeat the Harrier prototype's first flight.
13:10But amazingly, Bill Bedford managed to persuade his bosses that he was safe to fly, even if
13:16the plaster on his leg would make the plane dangerously heavy.
13:23With an extra six pounds of plaster in the cockpit, on the 21st of October, 1960, test
13:30pilot Bill Bedford opened the throttles.
13:35Luckily, Gordon's engine provided just enough power to push the plane off the ground.
13:48The very first trials were done with the airplane tethered, so that it didn't leap
13:54away and turn over and so on.
13:57It all looked terribly tentative and unstable.
14:02The engine only produced a little more thrust than the weight of the airplane.
14:09We were thrashing a little engine to get this airplane into the sky.
14:15The whole thing was, I won't say, I will say marginal.
14:19It was far from the nice airplane that the Harrier is today.
14:23The main relief was that the engine lasted just long enough to demonstrate it.
14:28I couldn't wait for him to put it down on the ground again.
14:34The key to turning the P.1127 into a viable plane would be making the engine not only
14:40more powerful, but much more reliable too.
14:43There was a major continuous grinding effort.
14:49A huge amount of work had to be done to make this idea, or little dream if you like, into
14:56an operating reality.
15:00We did feel, in an ever increasing sense, that we were onto something that would really
15:06make a big contribution.
15:12Now it was time for the Harrier prototype to really fly and prove itself, by making
15:17the difficult transition from vertical to horizontal flight.
15:22Not only did that require perfecting the weight-thrust balance, but it required superb piloting skills.
15:29I think the thing that worried pilots the most in those early days was not the hovering,
15:34surprisingly enough.
15:35Certainly not flying on the wings, because we knew how to do that.
15:38It was getting from the hover onto the wings.
15:41Because the airplane really wanted to fly backwards.
15:45Make no mistake, if you got it wrong, you were probably going to die.
15:49Did you say die?
15:51I said die.
15:52Didn't you have an ejection seat?
15:53Yeah, but it's no good when it's done that.
15:58Just five years after it had left the drawing board, the plane that Ralph Hooper and Gordon
16:03Lewis had done so much to make possible, was ready to show off to the top brass at
16:08the 1963 Paris International Air Show.
16:12And this is that very plane.
16:16In front of about 100,000 people, this was the Harrier prototype's moment to shine,
16:22and begin to recoup the millions of pounds Sidney Cam of Hawker had invested in its development.
16:29Oh, it was pretty upsetting, really.
16:32I mean, the fact that it had to be done in public.
16:35The main thing was huge relief that Bill Bedford wasn't hurt.
16:40It was a good example of Murphy's Law, which states that if something can go wrong, it
16:46will.
16:47And the second part states that it will do so at a place and time to cause the maximum
16:52embarrassment, which it did.
16:54It was ammunition for the doubters.
16:56We remained unconvinced by the entire concept of a vertical take-off plane.
17:01Chief among these were the RAF, who had described the plane as a toy and a crowd pleaser.
17:07By the mid-60s, with a new Labour government in power, aircraft projects were being cancelled
17:13left, right and centre.
17:15Suddenly, the entire project hung in the balance once again.
17:20We sat down one day to discuss what we could do if our two programmes were cancelled.
17:26We, two flight lieutenants.
17:28Tiny little cogs in the wheel.
17:31And we decided that we would take our two aeroplanes, we would fly them down to the
17:36Thames, we'd come to the hover alongside the Houses of Parliament, and that would get
17:40people's attention.
17:41And to demonstrate the accuracy with which we could control these aeroplanes, we intended
17:46to poke out a couple of stained glass windows with the probe, the instrumentation probe
17:50that was fitted on the front of these aeroplanes, and then go and land in the grounds of the
17:54Palace of Westminster.
17:55And we thought that might just make a point.
17:57Well, John Farley didn't need to take any drastic action.
18:01The government were already feeling the political heat from scrapping so many other aircraft
18:06projects.
18:07With the Harrier so close to completion, the Cabinet decided it was a cut too far.
18:13It twisted the arm of a still-reluctant RAF and put in a one-off order for 60 aircraft.
18:18There wasn't much interest in the Harrier.
18:21We were advised that there would be no more Harriers beyond the initial RAF buy.
18:31But there was one country that was far from reluctant.
18:34America was fighting a guerrilla war in Vietnam.
18:38For the U.S. Marines operating deep in the jungle, the idea of a vertical take-off aircraft
18:44that didn't need runways seemed very attractive.
18:47They began to pay a keen interest in the British Harrier.
18:52Unlike the RAF, the U.S. Marine Corps had a requirement.
18:57They hadn't found a solution to it until they encountered the Harrier.
19:03On the 6th of January, 1971, the U.S. Marine Corps received the first of many Harriers
19:09and began a flight training program.
19:11With the U.S. looking to withdraw from Vietnam, it never actually flew there.
19:16But the U.S. became cheerleaders for the unloved plane
19:19and provided a critical injection of much-needed cash.
19:23Well, I think we'd been used to a country where things can't be done
19:27because there's no funds for it.
19:30We'd become used to living in that world,
19:33whereas here we were in the new world where things can be done if you want to do it enough.
19:39And the Marine Corps did.
19:41Within a year, the Marines had ordered 114 aircraft,
19:45almost double the United Kingdom figure.
19:48But they were not the first to use them in action.
19:52In early April, 1982, Margaret Thatcher scrambled all available Harriers
19:58to reclaim a distant British outpost, the Falkland Islands.
20:02I'm not allowed to say how many planes joined the raid,
20:05but I counted them all out, and I counted them all back.
20:09Just ten years after it first entered service,
20:12the Harrier proved its worth in the Falklands War.
20:15The 28 planes that flew to the Falklands,
20:188,000 miles from their home base, were a decisive key to Britain's victory.
20:23It was the only aircraft that we could put in the air
20:26in support of the troops who had to go ashore and do the dirty work.
20:32It was much more capable in combat conditions
20:35than many people had thought it would be.
20:38The only airplanes we could actually have on the spot
20:41to protect ourselves from the enemy
20:44and the only airplanes we could actually have on the spot
20:47to protect our fleet and to help our troops were Harriers.
20:53In all, there have been 828 Harriers built,
20:57serving in the forces of five nations.
21:00Despite being over 40 years old, it's still flying daily
21:04for both the RAF and the US Marines
21:07on operations in Afghanistan and Iraq.
21:12There's no doubt about it that the Harrier is a world-class concept
21:18which has been accepted around the world
21:21as the leading vertical take-off and landing military airplane.
21:27The thing I find I still can't quite get my head round
21:32is the amount of equipment that is carried on that airplane.
21:37And when I think of the struggles we had in the early days
21:41to make it lift off the ground at all,
21:44that's the thing I find remarkable when I see a Harrier now.
21:48It set us a lot of problems which were new to us,
21:52which we wouldn't have had had it been a conventional airplane,
21:56and that was great fun.
21:59When we think of rockets, we think of America and Russia
22:03and their great space race.
22:05But this is the almost forgotten story
22:08of Britain's very own rocket program.
22:10It wasn't something that we'd got from the Americans,
22:13it was something that we'd done ourselves.
22:15Britain's rocket men were unsung space pioneers
22:18at the cutting edge of technology.
22:20You're generating much more power than you could ever imagine.
22:24Any error could spell disaster.
22:27It was the biggest and the most epic explosion
22:30that's ever occurred at the range head.
22:32We tracked down the small British team
22:35who overcame daunting odds to realise their dream
22:38and put Britain into space.
22:42In the 1950s, the world was waking up
22:45to the possibility of space exploration.
22:48It was the first time in history
22:51the world was waking up to the possibility of space travel.
22:55The Second World War had triggered all kinds of new technology,
22:59including some very big military rockets.
23:02Britain's scientists and engineers were front-runners
23:05in dreaming up schemes that would adapt this new rocket technology
23:09to blast mankind towards the stars.
23:15It wasn't just a technical challenge,
23:17it was what the future of the human race would be.
23:23There were thoughts that our view of the whole universe
23:26might change as a consequence.
23:30Many of these visionary ideas
23:32came from members of the British Interplanetary Society.
23:39The Interplanetary Society used to meet here
23:42at the Mason's Arms pub in London's Mayfair.
23:45These were no childish dreamers,
23:47but some of the best scientific brains in Britain.
23:50As early as 1938, they'd even sketched out detailed plans
23:55to put a British man on the moon.
23:58John Scott Scott was one such enthusiastic scientist
24:02who thought it was only natural that Britain should play its part
24:06in the international race into space.
24:11There was a general feeling, looking around the world,
24:14and particularly at the Americans and the Russians,
24:16we had every bit as good a chance as the others,
24:19provided we could get some backing to do it.
24:22Unfortunately, the British government
24:24didn't share the scientists' enthusiasm for space travel.
24:27Well, the government didn't have scientists and engineers in it,
24:31it didn't understand it had other problems.
24:33So when proposals were made to the government,
24:36they tended to met with a very lukewarm attitude.
24:40All ministers cared about was using space rockets for military use.
24:46The 50s marked the start of a Cold War between Russia and the West.
24:50Britain's politicians asked the companies
24:53that had helped with World War II to develop nuclear missiles
24:57which could drop warheads on Moscow.
25:02But as the Americans had discovered, rocket science wasn't easy.
25:07Their early attempts often ended in disaster.
25:14Even their most successful rocket of the era, the Redstone,
25:18failed on 47 of its 100 launch attempts.
25:24In 1955, Britain began to build its first space rockets.
25:29The site the rocket men chose to test their new machines
25:33was a peaceful clifftop on the Isle of Wight.
25:36They built a state-of-the-art test facility overlooking the Needles.
25:42Electromechanics enthusiast Derek Mack was one of the team
25:46hired to design, build and launch Britain's first space rockets.
25:50He found himself working right at the cutting edge.
25:53Technologies were fairly basic.
25:55The transistor had only just come on the scene.
25:58Digital systems were a pipe dream in the future.
26:01So we were at a pioneering stage of this sort of work.
26:06Whilst the Americans and Russians had built rockets
26:09driven by a mixture of liquid oxygen and hydrogen,
26:12our pioneering British rocket men decided to take a chance
26:16on a very different fuel system,
26:18with a chemical that can be found in any hairdressing salon.
26:22The scientists had been fascinated by this stuff, hydrogen peroxide,
26:27the source of the platinum blonde.
26:29It looks like water.
26:31In fact, it almost is H2O, except it has an extra O.
26:36It's H2O2.
26:38And believe me, that extra oxygen atom makes this into a super fuel.
26:45The hairdressers' version is only 15% pure.
26:49The rocket men's was concentrated to 85%.
26:53Far more powerful stuff.
26:55Watch what happens when the hydrogen peroxide reacts with this catalyst.
27:01Ooh-hoo-hoo-hoo! Look at that!
27:04It explodes into superheated steam.
27:09It has wonderful properties.
27:11In fact, it's almost an engineer's dream.
27:16By adding kerosene to the superheated steam and oxygen,
27:20our rocket men believed they had found the cheapest
27:23and simplest possible method to blast Britain's first rocket into space.
27:27We were generating much more power per unit volume
27:30than almost anything else on the planet.
27:32In 1958, after three years of development,
27:36the Brits headed to the vast open spaces of Australia
27:40to see if their innovative rocket would work.
27:43Britain's first space rocket had its cables released
27:46and was all set for the take-off.
27:48To the team's delight, their military test was a huge success
27:52and many more perfect launches followed.
27:55We had a vehicle that worked.
27:57It was simple. It was cheap.
27:59It wasn't something that we'd got from the Americans.
28:02It was something that we'd done ourselves.
28:04Ultimately, 22 Black Knights tested here,
28:07blasted off successfully from Moomera,
28:10with only three failures,
28:12making it one of the most successful rockets of all time.
28:17But despite this early triumph,
28:19the government abandoned their plans for a military rocket.
28:23The politicians decided to buy new American missile technology instead,
28:28and the British program was axed.
28:32It was devastating news.
28:34With no more money from the defense budget,
28:37it looked as if British rocket building was over.
28:40But the engineers and scientists were determined
28:43to keep their dream of space alive.
28:46They had to come up with a plan.
28:48It fired us up to look for alternative applications
28:52and peaceful uses.
28:54The rocket men hadn't forgotten the non-military space proposals
28:58of the British Interplanetary Society,
29:01and one of its most significant ideas
29:03had been dreamt up by a very famous member,
29:06the science fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke.
29:08In a 1945 edition of the magazine Wireless World,
29:12Clarke had suggested the development of satellites
29:16stationed high in space
29:18to revolutionize international communications.
29:21The Americans and Russians saw that
29:23Clarke's geostationary, hovering satellite idea
29:26could transform everything
29:28from telephone calls to television and navigation.
29:31They'd already begun to use their rockets as satellite launchers,
29:34but our heroes didn't see why this British idea
29:37should be left to the foreign superpowers.
29:39We were proud to be British,
29:41and we wanted the government
29:43to produce a British satellite launching vehicle
29:46with a British-made satellite
29:48with the British-made experiments in it.
29:52Out came the slide rules and the draftsman's pens,
29:55and proposals for a British satellite launching rocket
29:58began to take shape.
30:00It was a last-ditch attempt to save their rocket program,
30:04but the government wasn't keen.
30:06Suddenly, one of the ministers openly criticized
30:09all the proposals that were being made
30:11and said that they could see no case for a commercial,
30:14i.e., non-military space system of any sort.
30:18I don't think the Chancellor of Exchequer thought about it at all.
30:22If he did, for five seconds, it was,
30:25sounds like a good idea, don't spend any money on it.
30:28But the team weren't asking for much money.
30:31They already had their simple and hugely successful
30:34hydrogen peroxide-driven space rocket.
30:37They claimed they could adapt it for next to nothing.
30:42They proposed to create a small space rocket,
30:4613 metres high and built in three disposable sections.
30:50The first stage would launch over 18 tonnes of rocket and fuel
30:55up to around 35 miles.
30:57Then the second stage would blast into action,
31:00roaring up to 365 miles.
31:03Finally, a small solid-fuel motor would take over
31:07to propel the rocket's precious cargo,
31:10a satellite about as heavy as me,
31:12the last 20 miles into its permanent orbit above the Earth.
31:16And they called their cut-price satellite launcher Black Arrow.
31:21In space terms, it was a trivial amount of money.
31:25The Black Arrow was really a way of getting
31:29into the satellite business on the cheap.
31:32And it worked.
31:34Enough small change was found to get things going
31:37and the British space rocket programme was back in business
31:40with a tough new mission,
31:42to blast a satellite into orbit on a British rocket.
31:46Satellite launching represents the ultimate challenge.
31:49And so there was great enthusiasm from every quarter.
31:52Everybody could get up and get going and get on with the job now.
31:56But building this space rocket on the cheap was fraught with danger.
32:02The Americans already knew that failing to get things right
32:06had explosive consequences.
32:08But their billion-dollar programmes could survive disasters.
32:13Britain's rocket men had a shoestring budget.
32:16If they suffered a similar catastrophe,
32:19it could kill their programme altogether.
32:24By 1969, the Americans and Russians
32:28had spent billions of dollars on their space rockets.
32:31The Apollo astronauts were about to make their first trip to the Moon.
32:39British hopes were pinned on Black Arrow,
32:42the low-budget satellite launching rocket
32:45which was preparing for its very first test launch
32:48at Woomera in the Australian desert.
32:55On 28 June 1969,
32:58Derek Mack and his colleagues took their seats in the control room.
33:02This launch would be the first of just three planned test flights
33:06before Black Arrow would perform Britain's first satellite launch.
33:13The preparation had been a long, drawn-out process,
33:16and so the launch was the culmination of all this effort.
33:20Here we were at last now for the first try to launch it.
33:23The last-minute checks were complete.
33:25The countdown for this crucial first test launch was underway.
33:29We're at item 255700, Bill.
33:32I think like a live stage show, I should imagine,
33:35where it had to be right on the night.
33:40At 8.28 a.m., everyone in the control room held their breath.
33:48Launch initiated.
33:53Everything's in slow motion.
33:55You just see it hang there and slowly lift away,
33:58and these great shock diamonds are coming out of the jets,
34:02which is characteristic of that type of engine,
34:05and it slowly climbs away.
34:10But seconds later, as he watched the data being beamed back from the rocket,
34:15Derek Mack realised that something had gone terribly wrong.
34:19The carcass of the rocket was actually rolling backwards and forwards
34:22about its longitudinal axis.
34:24Instead of the eight diamonds coming down together,
34:26you could see flickering going on on one side.
34:30And you thought, jeeps, you know, what's happening out there?
34:33Some of the launch crew ran outside
34:36to get a better view of the unfolding drama,
34:38and what they saw horrified them.
34:41Black Arrow was no longer climbing.
34:44It started to tumble, and the engines had stopped burning,
34:48and so I immediately thought, jeepers, you know,
34:51we want to get back in the equipment centre because she's coming down.
34:54The rocket had turned upside down,
34:57and almost 16 tons of highly explosive rocket fuel
35:01was heading straight back at them.
35:03We nearly got trampled on, so we're going back into the equipment centre.
35:06And then we slammed the door shut.
35:09To prevent an inferno on the launch pad,
35:12the range safety officer took a critical decision.
35:20The whole ground lit up.
35:22It was the biggest and the most epic explosion
35:24that's ever occurred at the range head.
35:30When we went outside, there was all this sort of bits of debris
35:34floating around and coming down,
35:36and all the telegraph wires were festooned
35:38with what you could liken to Christmas decorations,
35:41in the sense there were fine filaments glistening,
35:45and essentially it was just molten and streamed aluminium,
35:49which was streamed out in long, thin veins,
35:52where it had all melted up there and got blown apart
35:55in a fairly high-velocity explosion.
35:57The cause of this enormous disaster
36:00was the failure of a single control circuit
36:03that made the rocket swing wildly out of control.
36:06One tiny copper wire had destroyed years of hard work.
36:11I'd lived with this piece of hardware for a long, long time.
36:15I knew virtually every part of it personally.
36:19And to see it sort of totally destroyed in such a big way
36:25was a terrible blow.
36:27Obviously there was a sense of complete disappointment and devastation,
36:31which they had to wash away with countless amounts of beer
36:34for several days until they felt better.
36:37It was the worst possible start.
36:40The failure of Black Arrow's first test launch
36:43was a miserable experience for the team,
36:46but far worse, it threatened to undermine the credibility
36:49of their entire satellite-launching project.
36:52It wasn't a disaster in a technical sense,
36:54it was a disaster in a political sense.
36:57It was potentially a killer.
36:59The whole programme could die because it hadn't worked as advertised.
37:04This very public failure was just the excuse civil servants
37:08here at the Treasury in London needed to get their knives out.
37:12Cuts had to be made, they said,
37:14and there were excesses on the balance sheet,
37:17like this hopeless satellite launcher that the country simply couldn't afford.
37:22Black Arrow and the future of the British space programme
37:25hung in the balance as never before.
37:28Eight months after that calamitous first test,
37:31the team launched a second test rocket successfully.
37:35But then in September 1970, disaster struck once again.
37:39The third and final test rocket failed to reach the right altitude,
37:43and instead of putting its dummy satellite into orbit,
37:46it hurled it into the sea.
37:48This time, the Treasury knives were sharpened and ready for action.
37:53A full inquiry was ordered into why they'd all gone so terribly wrong.
37:57And when the cause was identified as a faulty valve
38:00starving the engines of fuel, there were calls for a total redesign.
38:05It was just the ammunition the Treasury needed
38:08to demand the programme was shut down.
38:11There was nobody with any power that was supporting us
38:15in either government or in the civil service
38:18or even in the aircraft industry.
38:20Nowhere was there a high-level champion
38:23who saw this as important for the UK,
38:29important for its technology
38:31and important for waving the flag
38:34and showing that we were capable of doing it.
38:38But Black Arrow's test programme was now complete,
38:41and the team believed they'd solved their technical problems.
38:45In July 1971, Black Arrow was ready to carry out its ultimate mission,
38:50the UK's first ever satellite launch.
38:53But then the unthinkable finally happened.
38:57On the 29th of July, just as the final Black Arrow
39:02was already on its way to the launch pad in Australia,
39:05Britain's Minister for Aerospace, Frederick Caulfield,
39:08got to his feet in the House of Commons
39:11and made the announcement the rocket men had been dreading.
39:14It was all over.
39:16The Black Arrow was cancelled.
39:21That might have been the end of Britain's journey into space,
39:24but our rocket men weren't giving up.
39:27The final Black Arrow had safely arrived in the Australian desert,
39:31along with the satellite it was built to launch, called Prospero.
39:35And there was just enough money left over to light the blue touch paper.
39:40They had a beast out in Woomera ready to go.
39:44The thing was cancelled and they said,
39:46we didn't hear that, we're going to fire the damn thing.
39:49Everyone took their old places in the control room
39:52for Black Arrow's final countdown.
39:55The team was still hoping that the politicians' minds could be changed.
40:00This launch mattered to me
40:03because it had been cancelled, this programme,
40:08and the one way to really show them what we could do and were capable of
40:13was to have a successful launch and place a satellite into orbit,
40:17and we were dead intent on doing that.
40:21At 1.39pm on Thursday 28th October 1971,
40:27Black Arrow faced its ultimate challenge.
40:31She was lifting slowly away.
40:34I looked back at the telemetry system and everything seemed to work perfectly.
40:38It all flew away straight and serenely.
40:41It was just copybook.
40:45Technical data coming back from the rocket
40:48told them that each stage had worked perfectly,
40:51but it couldn't tell them whether the satellite had been successfully deployed.
40:55All the men could do was wait.
40:58We knew there was a third stage firing.
41:01Was it pointing in the right direction?
41:03Had it spun up? All the rest of it we didn't know.
41:06Across the world, listening stations were tuned in,
41:10hoping to pick up a signal from the new British satellite.
41:1439 minutes later, the bleeps were picked up in Fairbanks, Alaska.
41:19Prospero was in orbit.
41:22Black Arrow had successfully performed Britain's first ever satellite launch.
41:34There was just a great carnival going on.
41:38And everybody had sick heads the next morning.
41:42But of course, realisation started to settle in.
41:46That was the end of it.
41:50Despite the best efforts of the politicians,
41:53it was a tremendous achievement.
41:55Look at this. Look at the accuracy with which we could do something.
42:00Why on earth are they sending all of us to the tip?
42:04Why can't they use our experience?
42:08Why can't they use us?
42:11Having demonstrated orbit and kept faith, if you wish,
42:15we could not at all understand how it came to be cancelled.
42:19Nobody's ever explained that one satisfactorily.
42:24I suppose there was a lurk in the back of your mind
42:28that maybe somebody would have the willpower to come out and say,
42:32well, look, give them another chance.
42:35But it never happened, of course, did it?
42:39The politicians never did change their minds.
42:43Instead of our backroom heroes getting a pat on the back and a fat cheque,
42:47the man from the ministry came down to the test site here on the Isle of Wight,
42:52locked the gates and shut off once and for all
42:56any British dream of rocketing into space.
43:01Because we got out of the business,
43:04the French took leadership within the space business within Europe.
43:08We might have had still a European programme,
43:12but it would have been a British-led European programme,
43:15not a French-led European programme.
43:18But to this day, every hundred minutes,
43:21385 miles above our heads,
43:24a very special mission is underway.
43:27385 miles above our heads,
43:30a very special satellite still flashes across the sky.
43:34Prospero's days of active service may be over,
43:38but it remains as a lasting testament to the determination
43:42of those who dreamed of putting Britain into space.
43:57Transcription by ESO. Translation by —