Space and the Future Of The European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO)

[Handwritten on the top of the document: ‘This is one of the background of briefs prepared for new ministers in October 1964. ’]

Recommendation.

Some big decisions will be needed very soon about UK space policy. There is to be a meeting of the ELDO Council around the end of the year (it was fixed for mid-December but is now likely to be deferred), at which the UK will be expected to show its hand. All this will be submitted to the Cabinet in due course. In the meantime there is an urgent need to put into cold storage a project authorised at the beginning of September by the last government-namely the development of a small satellite launcher based on Black Knight.

The four aspects of space.

2. The problems of UK space policy fall under four heads:

(i) The scientific space research programme.

(ii) UK participation in European efforts on launchers and communications satellites.

(iii) Military space.

(iv) The so-called “national programme”

To take each of these in turn:

The scientific research programme.

3. This is the programme of scientific investigation into what happens in space: expenditure on it is financed from the so-called “space research budget”, the level of which is now £3*4 m a year and is expected to rise to £6m towards the end of the decade. The biggest single item in this is the UK contribution to the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) and the development of the UK 3 space research satellite (to be put up by an American launcher). The Treasury is not at this time pressing for the termination of this programme, taken as a whole, or our withdrawal from ESRO.

The European effort on launchers and communications satellites.

4. The UK is a member of ELDO (along with France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium and Austria). The ELDO launcher to be developed in accordance with the Lancaster House agreement of 1961 will consist of a UK first stage (the old Blue Streak), a French second stage and a German third stage. The whole launcher was originally estimated to cost £70m. It is now estimated at least £90 m. (of which the UK pay about 40 per cent) and will almost certainly rise further. For all this money (now around £6m a year on the Ministry of Aviation vote) we will get a launcher which is likely to have little, if any, practical use. What has gone wrong, we understand, is that the engineering of the launcher has not been up to the standard of the original design (which was largely cribbed from the US anyway). This means that the ELDO launcher when it is ready to be fired (probably in 1967/68) will not be powerful enough to put a satellite of any size in to a high orbit. Since communication satellites tend to be big and to operate most satisfactorily in high orbits, the launcher as developed under the initial ELDO programme ELDO-A) will not be able to be used to put communications satellites into orbit. (Whether ELDO-A could have any other, not communications, uses is quite uncertain.)

5. A proposal has therefore now been canvassed (it will be put before the meeting of the ELDO council around the end of the year) to develop an apogee motor (a device to give a satellite an extra “kick” into orbit) so as to enable the launcher to put communications satellites into high orbit. The cost of this is estimated at up to £20m (our share, say, £7m). Beyond this the clouds of very much larger projects are already looming. The first such project would be the development of the so-called ELDO-B launcher; this would involve the introduction of liquid hydrogen propellant for the upper stages of the launcher, and development might start around the end of 1965. The cost of this might be of the order of £50-100m. (UK share say around £20-40m.). This could be followed – towards the end of the decade – by ELDO-C, which would be a completely new launcher using liquid hydrogen as a propellant and the cost of which can only be guessed at now (£100-200m.).

6. There is also the prospect of a collaborative European effort on developing and constructing communications satellites to be sold to the world communications organisation – if that organisation will buy them – and the question of whether the UK should participate in this programme will arise.

7. By the beginning of the 1970s, we could be spending up to £30-40m. a year on all these “European” activities, and on the associated “national programme” referred to below. We should have established a big new growing point, both the public expenditure and for the use of fallible human resources (scientists and technologists).

8. The Treasury view is: –

(i) This is not expenditure which we are likely to be able to afford or which has any prospect of bringing us a commensurate economic return.

(ii) We should therefore contract out of all these activities; if Europeans wished to go ahead wasting money on space, that is their affair.

(iii) The crucial decision in our view is on the apogee motor; if we go on with this – the first addition to the initial ELDO programme – we shall find that our room for manoeuvre at later stages will be drastically reduced. At every stage it will be argued-as it was argued when was first set up – that, although large sums and money had been admittedly spent to no purpose in the past, all will be well if we will only spend some more. What is needed in the Treasury view is the decision to go no further in the construction of launchers and communications satellites. But there are political, and perhaps also defence, implications which Ministers have to consider in due course.

Military space.

9. There are some big unresolved questions here. The military are hankering after a defence satellite communications system. The Treasury believe that this is likely to be a great deal more expensive than can be afforded out of a tolerable defence budget, and that, if we were in fact to maintain our military posture east of Suez at all, the military will have to do make do with some relatively inexpensive improvements to the existing means of communication with Singapore etc. But the issues here have not yet been fully explored. At the moment the military are contemplating two possible alternative lines of approach – one to go in with the US on the joint defence satellite communications system which the Americans are likely to set up; and the other to construct some limited defence satellite communication capability of our own. The former course would not be cheap, but the latter would almost certainly be fearfully expensive.

The so-called “national space programme”.

10. Apart from some effort within Ministry of Aviation establishments, and a limited amount of research by industry (at government expense) into the basic technology of building satellites, the principal commitment of the UK “national civil space programme” is the development [handwritten: ‘at an estimated cost of £10m.’] of the small satellite launcher based on the military research rocket Black Knight. The decision to go ahead with this development was taken at the beginning of September by the late government. It was justified [handwritten: ‘by the protagonists’] on the grounds that, if Britain is to go in with Europe in collaborative launcher and satellite development programmes, it was necessary for Britain to have her own “research tool” which would provide her with the necessary technological know-how and an opportunity to test in flight bits of the communications satellites which she will be contributing to the European programme. But no decision has yet been taken on whether the UK should in fact participate in any further European launcher or communications satellite programmes – as stated above, the Treasury would be opposed since to such participation. Until the decisions on this have been taken, it is in the Treasury’s view wholly premature to embark on the development of the United Kingdom small satellite launcher. We recommend therefore that until Ministers have had the opportunity to consider collectively the future course of UK space policy, no work should proceed on a small satellite launcher, and that the project should be regarded as in abeyance. If the Chancellor agrees, we will submit a draft minute for him to send to those of his colleagues who are concerned with these matters.

(F. A. Barrett) 19th October 1964

[From TNA: PRO T 225/2765. Ministry of Aviation space programme: future policy.]

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