British Rocket Scientists
After the last episode of Space Odyssey last night, there was a great documentary on BBC4 about the British rocket science pioneers in the post-war period. They developed a wonderfully elegant propulsion system powered by hydrogen peroxide. Some shots of these engines firing showed a lovely clean blue flame like a blow-torch, which seems futuristic even today in comparison with conventional rocket engines. It was the usual story of chronic underfunding of brilliant people that we’re very familiar with in this country; because they were so financially constrained, they had to find elegant and innovative ways to side-step technical problems. They developed a wonderful rocket called ‘Puck’ (gloomily renamed to Prospero after funding was pulled just before its maiden flight), which would probably have made a good profit putting satellites into orbit if the project hadn’t been pulled. One contributor to the programme contrasted the hordes of people working at NASA with the small, focused teams working on the British projects, and said that they used to refer to NASA ‘trampling a problem to death’.
However, the old footage did provide some great film of men in badly-fitting duffle coats retiring to rickety-looking sheds before test firing enormous rockets. It reminded me of the films I’ve seen of the early development of the jet engine by Frank Whittle’s group. Their testing area looked exactly like a yard out the back of their building, where the bins are stored. As this enormous jet engine roared and spat flames, they stood around (in badly-fitting duffle coats or brown overalls), smoking pipes (with all that kerosene nearby!), and nodding in a proud but modest way. Technical brilliance on a shoe-string, that’s what it was.
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and some of those old rockets' flames turned into a cylindrical helix of 2 glowing lines. surreal and lovely----- Makes yer proud, dunnit?
by Mr.D. @ 18/11/2004 1:12 pm • Permalink •
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Don't you just admire and love those guy's, non of this health & safety rubbish for them just like the early Everest guys, going out in their tweeds, real men some would say, just got on with it. How times have changed and not all to the better.
by Andy @ 18/11/2004 11:12 pm • Permalink •
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Have you read Francis Spufford's Backroom Boys? It's a collection of essays on various post-war engineering projects, from the attempts to maintain a British space program to Concorde to Elite to the creation of the mobile phone business to the Human Genome Project to Beagle 2. Fascinating stuff, and recounts all too many examples of the "we-may-not-have-money-or-facilities-but-we've-got-some-damned-clever-people" approach you describe. (And yes, that hydrogen peroxide rocket motor does show up in the chapter on the UK's doomed space programme.)
by John @ 19/11/2004 12:11 am • Permalink •
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"Donât you just admire and love those guyâs, non of this health & safety rubbish for them just like the early Everest guys, going out in their tweeds, real men some would say, just got on with it."
Oh yeah! Real men, just like those early-20th-century meat packers in Chicago!
by Aaron @ 19/11/2004 3:12 am • Permalink •
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Saltation: Yes, you saw those on the footage, and they were really beautiful.
Mr. D.: Indeed. And sad.
Andy: Yes. I do sometimes wonder whether all the health and safety legislation we have is all for our own benefit, or whether some of it just serves to reduce law suits.
John: No, I haven't but it sounds like exactly the kind of book I would love. I'll put it on the Christmas list.
Aaron: Or the construction workers who strolled about on girders at the top of unfinished skyscrapers.
by bsag @ 20/11/2004 5:11 pm • Permalink •
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speaking of which, wasn't there some tribe of american indians that moved into USA highrise construction en masse because they weren't fazed by strolling around on girders?
by Saltation @ 22/11/2004 2:12 pm • Permalink •
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Saltation: Yes, I believe it was the Mohawk tribe who worked on most of the New York skyscrapers.
by bsag @ 22/11/2004 8:12 pm • Permalink •
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