Was Black Knight Good Value for Money?

Certainly the individual vehicles were cheap enough. A letter from Saunders Roe to the Ministry of Aviation in October 1958 has this to say:

In answer to the enquiry you made concerning the cost of additional Black Knight rounds, I quote below a Memorandum from our Commercial Manager which I hope provides you with the information you wanted:-

The approximate cost of the production of the vehicle is £41,000 as it leaves our factory at East Cowes. This figure includes the Armstrong Siddeley engine at a cost

of £15,000 each but excludes the cost of items of normal Embodiment Loan Equipment.

In addition there is the cost of testing and setting up the vehicle at High Down and later in Australia. As you will appreciate this is a very difficult figure to assess but I would suggest it is about £7,000 per vehicle. It is possible that this would be reduced if series production was underway but it would appear that we shall be constantly modifying each individual Equipment in the next year or two, and £7,000, therefore, would be a fairly safe figure to use.7

To modern eyes, these figures are astonishing. The idea that the Gamma 201 rocket motor cost only £15,000 tells us a great deal about inflation between then and now – but also that Black Knight was not exactly overpriced. This contrasts with a Treasury memo of January 1961, talking about Black Knight.

The memo begins with some general comments, which show some misconceptions: ‘In 1956, we agreed to the expenditure of £5m., for which it was expected to get 12 firings a year… ’ The mistake seems to lie with the Treasury – there was never any suggestion of 12 firings a year. The memo then goes on to say, ‘The first ten firings will work out at a cost of about £%m. each!’ There is a certain note of incredulity in the author’s tone, which makes one wonder what sum of money the Treasury would think reasonable for a programme in which the re-entry heads are shot 500 miles out into space. The total expenditure of the programme to date had been around £6 million, and the Ministry of Aviation were now asking for more funds. The author goes on to say:

On balance I think I recommend approval of this proposal – just. Any doubts I have are stilled by one further consideration which may appear cowardly but is, I believe, realistic: I do not think we have any hope at the present moment of killing the Black Knight series of experiments: and even if we had, to persuade Ministers to do so now would ruin our chances of killing the Blue Streak launcher project, for we could not hope to persuade Ministers to face the political odium of two further cancellations close together. Black Knight, although pretty expensive (and I would expect the C.&A. G.* at some time to get on to it) is at least working successfully. It has had a good press. It provides a useful vehicle for a certain amount of incidental upper atmosphere research of the kind Universities can share in. Its cancellation would be very strongly opposed in the Ministry, would draw a great deal of adverse criticism in public-after all, we have now got over the most expensive early stages – and would only save less than £1m. a year. Far better, I think, to keep our sights on the larger fish, Blue Streak, than to spoil Ministerial appetites with this smaller fry.8 [*C.&A. G.: Comptroller and Auditor General – part of the National Audit Office]

The author is proposing that the Treasury should let the Black Knight programme carry on simply because it gives it a greater chance to cancel Blue

Streak. For cynicism and superciliousness (‘a certain amount of incidental upper atmosphere research… ’) this is difficult to beat.

The author noted that since the next series of flights were to be done in co-operation with the Americans, it would be difficult to reduce the programme further. After all, ‘Given that we indulge in this hobby at all, co-operation with the US is surely sensible and desirable’9.

One of the functions of the Treasury is to keep a close eye on government expenditure: it does help if they get their facts right, and are rather more careful when it comes to making comment on technical matters which are somewhat beyond their grasp. [15]