Space Race begins in late 1940s... between America and Britain?

[GBW]

At the end of World War II, visionary military officers saw that the future of United States military superiority was scientific research. General Henry “Hap” Arnold and others in the Army Air Forces started a project under contract with the Douglas Aircraft Company. This effort resulted in the first real, and perhaps most influential “Think Tank,” Project RAND (Research ANd Development) made up of top-level scientists and engineers. Although a wide range of subjects were planned to be addressed, the very first research project was to study the possibility and usefulness of a man-made artificial Earth satellite. This first paper was Project RAND Special Memorandum SM-11827, Preliminary Design of an Experimental World-Circling Spaceship,1 which was accomplished in an astonishingly short time and issued May 1946.

Meanwhile, across the Atlantic, the UK's Operation Backfire - their project to launch and evaluate German V2 rockets - convinced engineers at the British Interplanetary Society that this technology could help them realize their dream of building a spaceship. In December 1946, Society member Ralph Smith put forward a detailed proposal for his Megaroc design, an adapted V2 with a strengthened hull, increased fuel and replacing the one ton warhead with a man-carrying capsule that could launch on a parabolic trajectory, giving the spaceman in a high-altitude flying suit a few minutes in space to carry out observations of the Earth, atmosphere and Sun, as well as the chance to spy on Soviet territory. It's been observed that it was a practical design that could have been achieved in 3 to 5 years, with Britain routinely putting people into space by 1951 on a ballistic trajectory. However, Smith's design was rejected a few months later by the Ministry of Supply.

Back in America, in July 1946 the US Army conceived of the idea of a two-stage liquid fueled rocket by placing a WAC Corporal on top a V2, and on June 20, 1947, the Army formally approved a program called Bumper to develop and test such a rocket, able to reach altitudes neither rocket alone could attain. It's been observed that, had it actually sought to, the USA could have been the first to place a satellite in orbit, nearly a decade ahead of the USSR's Sputnik-1.

Even in the Soviet Union, Sergei Korolev sought to launch satellites and crewed spacecraft in orbit, but Stalin was more concerned with building missiles capable of reaching the US to counter the US Air Force's massive advantage in bombers. It was the same story in the US and the UK - funds were instead put towards missiles in the US, while the UK went for aviation and nuclear technology.

What push could there have been before or during World War 2 for the US and Britain to have instead approved Spaceship-1 and the Megaroc rocket instead of rejecting them? And how would this earlier Space Race have proceeded with a first American satellite and British astronauts, and how would this have pushed a still living Stalin to pursue a Soviet space program?

 

[Charles EP M.]

In the backmatter for Ministry in Space, Warren Ellis lamented that Britain had the brains to go into space and the popular desire to go up but what it didn't have was the money. So the biggest problem for a UK-US space race is going to be where heavily-bombed, colonial-war fighting, in-debt Britain is going to find the cash to stay in any such race with the world's mightiest capitalist power. (Who we owe money to as well!)

Maybe you'd need to prevent a Nazi Germany at all or collapse it early so there's no war spending? Though then it's a very different US and UK (and USSR) having a race

 

[GBW]

In the backmatter for Ministry in Space, Warren Ellis lamented that Britain had the brains to go into space and the popular desire to go up but what it didn't have was the money. So the biggest problem for a UK-US space race is going to be where heavily-bombed, colonial-war fighting, in-debt Britain is going to find the cash to stay in any such race with the world's mightiest capitalist power. (Who we owe money to as well!)

Maybe you'd need to prevent a Nazi Germany at all or collapse it early so there's no war spending? Though then it's a very different US and UK (and USSR) having a race

The title is more of the impetus of the initial beginnings of an alternate Space Race, with America and Britain launching the first two milestones in this ATL - the first satellite and first person to the edge of space, if not a full orbit. If there's an alternate impetus that allows the UK to pursue the Megaroc, this Space Race would most likely still be primarily between the West and the USSR. The Soviets, after all, launched their first animals on a rocket in OTL in July 1951 and recovered them alive. If the US launches the first satellite in, say, 1949 and the UK is right on its heels with the Megaroc, the ever paranoid Joseph Stalin would likely not want the West getting ahead of the Soviet Union in space and allow Korolev to pursue a Soviet satellite and launching the first man into orbit - especially if Megaroc launches are allowing the British to launch over Eastern bloc territory to spy on them with no hope of intercepting them. If Megaroc becomes a military/espionage resource, that could be an additional source of funding for the program, in addition to the scientific benefits and the prestige it brings the UK. I don't see the UK being able to keep up to go for a full Moon landing, but they could be an early push to the superpowers to get an earlier Space Race going full throttle.

 

[Methuslah]

Slightly old thread, but there is a potential way for Britain to get the funding - to decide against the development of independent nuclear weapons. That was quite a stretch at the time; if some of the earlier agreements with the US remain in force, then there's more money in the pot for other things. This isn't going to lead to a full-blown space race, but Megaroc would probably have just about worked if it had been tried, though certainly a risky operation. A suborbital flight reaching the technical definition of 'space' would have possibly been on the cards...and the potential timing would have been interesting as well, as there's every chance this happens in '53 - the dawn of the 'New Elizabethan' era.

You could get a British government deciding to make increased investment; certainly the technical talent was present, and some sort of Commonwealth-based program might have happened. The question is just how far Britain can get - odds are fairly decent of getting a satellite into orbit some time in the 50s, but funding is always going to be questionable at best. Though...with no nuclear weapons at home, the V-Bombers don't happen, which frees up quite a bit of money for other projects. (Always assuming that the nuclear weapons project isn't just delayed, rather than dropped altogether, of course, though building the V-bombers was touch-and-go.)

Most likely, Britain ends up in some sort of heavy co-operation with someone. Possibly as a junior partner with the Americans, perhaps more likely in a leading role with France and Germany, perhaps giving the additional funding that needed to really get moving. Maybe in TTL, Concorde is the name of the European Manned Space program...

 

[Simon]

I have actually been kicking around the rough outline for a timeline where Britain launches the first satellite into orbit, albeit during the International Geophysical Year so roughly a decade later than you're talking about.

One of the mid-1930s Air Ministry specifications for a twin-engine bomber included the ability to utilise catapult-assisted take-offs as outlined in this post from the Nut and Rivet thread. Here someone proposes rockets as a parallel alternative, and it being cheap the research programme gets approved. Looking around at what other countries are doing they settle on high-test peroxide, but with some tinkering eventually come up with the idea of a silver mesh catalyst and adding kerosene to create something like the Napier Scorpion. The idea of assisted take-off is discounted after a few years so it never enters into service.

Fast forward a few years and when the War Cabinet are debating early reports of what later turns out to be V-2 and Lindemann rubbishes the idea as unworkable his opponents use the rocket-assisted take-off research to cut him off at the knees. As well as ordering closer scrutiny of German activities Churchill, always keen on gadgets, has a programme started to develop a British version to try and work out some of the possible capabilities. Originally starting out copying the shape of the V-2, along the way the scientists end up deleting the fins in favour of vectored thrust and introducing a detachable warhead. Test firings – it's never used operationally – and comparisons of data collected post-War shows it actually resulting in a superior rocket to the V-2.

In the backmatter for Ministry of Space, Warren Ellis lamented that Britain had the brains to go into space and the popular desire to go up but what it didn't have was the money.

C. N. Hill took the title of his book, A Vertical Empire, about the history of the British rocketry programme from a memo written by a civil servant at the Treasury which included the line 'I suggest we cannot start to build a vertical empire if our colleagues insist on our continuing to provide for the defence of a horizontal one.'