This was an interesting program, full of nostalgia for me, training as an Engineer at that time. However, the program could have ended on a more upbeat note with the Black Arrow program which suceeded in launching the first all British satellite, Prospero, from Woomera in 1971. Black Arrow was designed to sit atop Blue Streak and thus form a launch vehicle capable of putting useful satellites into a sustainable orbit. See http://www.geocities.com/CapeCanaveral/Launchpad/6133/blackarrow.html.
However the myopic bean counters at the Treasury together with spineless politicians cancelled it, and thus ensured that a British satellite launcher industry was firmly strangled at birth. Today we increasingly need such high tech industries to sustain our economy as the East's low labour costs kill off labour intensive basic British manufacturing. So many bits of British inventiveness have fallen victim to the anti industrial culture which finds its roots in the early 19th Century reaction to industrialisation (see Dickens 'Hard Times' etc...).
We really have dinosaurs today, without any question. You just need the right weather conditions, as I see it, to get huge creatures. And in the ocean, of course, we have huge creatures....this is where the plesiosauruses seem to be today, and perhaps also this fire breathing dragon is still down there -- very rare, but occasionally there.
--Rev. Walter Lang Founder, Bible-Science Association
Was tragic. The only launce veichle with a 100% success rate and it was sooo cheap to launch, made the US, Russia and europe look like an expensive joke. Same happened with the TSRII - That was the biggest and most saddeneng loss. What is it about the Brits, we make the best things, then it all gets canned by some bean counter in Whitehall?
