Sad relics of UK launch capability returned to Blighty while NASA fiddles with Boeing crew As NASA continued to listen for its stricken Mars rover and SpaceX moved closer to a first crewed launch from US soil, rocket fans had plenty to occupy them last week. Black Arrow is back. Well, a bit of it The UK has the dubious distinction of being the only country to have successfully developed, then dumped, the capability …
The only problem is, as the UK is on the west end of a continent, we'd have trouble launching to the east, in case any of our precious British rocket technology fall on and is stolen by those perfidious Europeans.
Instead all British satellites will be launched into a westward, retrograde, orbit!
Britain will proudly face in the opposite direction to all other countries!
British overseas territories and crown dependencies include some equatorial sites with a handy ocean to the east. The second biggest problem would be getting a bunch of frequencies useful for positioning. (The biggest problem is that if frequences fell out of a packet of cornflakes the government is so clueless that they would be buy a promise at a price that sounds reasonable then the price would double every year until cancellation.)
The place that gave me my worst ever hangover... There is a hotel there I stayed in for work that had the most amazing collection of malts. Dozens of them. Me and my manager made the daft mistake of asking the barman his favourite. It's a quiet Sunday night and the next thing we know he's walking over having poured out samplers of nearly all of them and the 3 of us proceed to stay until the wee small hours discussing each in turn...
Totally amazing hospitality but ouch the next morning.
Our reusable launch vehicle has been returned - nothing a bit of spit and polish and stiff upper lip can't get back into space!
As a nerdy aside, the UK stages of the satellite launch vehicles were all 100% successful. Only the final orbital insertion stages built by pesky Europeans caused problems.
> The UK has the dubious distinction of being the only country to have successfully developed, then dumped, the capability to launch satellites
Well, we tossed away the ability to put people on the Moon, so there ya go...
In 40 short years, this country went from landing on the Moon to "This Bag Is Not A Toy"
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