[AR] Black Arrow (was Re: Hypothetical Lox cooling)
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Thu, 22 Oct 2020 00:43:39 -0400 (EDT)
On Wed, 21 Oct 2020, roxanna Mason wrote:
I wonder if any of these issues caused them to abandon what was a fairly
successful launch vehicle.
No, Black Arrow was a technical success, after the inevitable debugging.
Its demise was mostly because the decision to build it hadn't been
informed by any real thought about why it was needed and what role it
would play. Britain had hardly any *payloads* for it to carry, and the
idea of trying to compete with Scout for third-party business would then
have been pretty far-fetched (there wasn't much such business, and Scout
had a steady stream of US-government business and didn't have to show a
profit in any case).
Henry
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