clements@vax.oxford.ac.uk (06/18/91)
In article <31516@hydra.gatech.EDU>, ccoprmd@prism.gatech.EDU (Matthew DeLuca) writes: > > > And the Soviet Union. China and Japan are also working on manned > space programs. Great Britain is considering launching manned vehicles > from the back of a Soviet transport craft. But hey, they're all just > copying the U.S., so we can dismiss their efforts as pork-barreling > and groupiness, too. > -- > Matthew DeLuca No No No!!!! Great Britain *DOES NOT* have a space program. We have a sad rump of scientists and engineers interested in space and astronomy who come up with good, workable ideas, only to have them cruelly slaughtered by the idiotic shot-termism of our government. This is not just party politics since the labour party presided over the demise of the independent British launcher Black Prince etc. The scheme for the HOTOL derived launcher using the Soviet transport plane is purely due to the visionaries in British Aerospace, a private company, and is almost certain never to get any money from any government agency in the UK. When the Space Science Board of the SERC can't even fund small research programmes (they haven't awarded a research grant for *a whole YEAR now*) there's no way HOTOL or anything like it will be funded. HOTOL and its derivatives really do need private investment to get them going. In the US this might happen (cf Pegasus) but there's lesss than zero chance here, and the French and Germans would stop any ESA money going that way. Sorry, but the UK science/space/astronomy community is *very* badly off!! Dave I'll do the .sig later.