#WW2 V2 ROCKET FULL#
#WW2 V2 ROCKET SERIES#
#WW2 V2 ROCKET FREE#

#WW2 V2 ROCKET SERIES#

This story is a part of BBC Britain – a new series focused on exploring this extraordinary island, one story at a time. “We need inspirational politicians who understand the true value of investing in these things – we have shown we can do it and we can do it again.”įollow BBC Future on Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and LinkedIn. “The spirit of Megaroc lives on,” says Baker. Other small firms, such as UK company Reaction Engines, are developing innovative propulsion systems to power the reusable spacecraft of the future. This would be just another might-have-been story consigned to the bulging shelves of the British Interplanetary Society archives were it not for the parallels with today’s new era of private rocketry, personal satellites and innovative spaceplanes.īuilding brand new reusable spacecraft on a limited budget is exactly what companies such as Virgin Galactic and Xcor are trying to do today. “In 1946 and ’47, the country was in no condition.” “The proposal caught the country in the worst of all possible times,” agrees Baker.

#WW2 V2 ROCKET FREE#

“Britain had spent all its money on saving the free world,” says Becklake. Smith abandoned the project, moving on to design spaceplanes and giant orbiting space stations.ĭespite its head start with Operation Backfire, Britain decided to abandon V2 tech and focus its limited research resources instead on aviation and nuclear technology. Smith submitted his spacecraft design to the British government’s Ministry of Supply in December 1946 but a few months later it was rejected. “By 1951 Britain could have been routinely putting people into space on a ballistic trajectory,” he says. “All the technology existed and it could have been achieved within three to five years.”īaker, who was trained on V2 technology in the States and has spent most of his career as a Nasa engineer working on the Space Shuttle programme, says Megaroc was 10 years ahead of its time. “The design was totally practical,” says space historian and editor of Spaceflight magazine David Baker, who has studied the Megaroc designs. Instead, the spaceman (and only a man was considered) would have been launched on a parabolic trajectory some 300,000 metres above the Earth. The rocket would not have been powerful enough to carry a person into orbit.

Smith’s Megaroc design involved enlarging and strengthening the V2’s hull, increasing the amount of fuel and replacing the one-tonne warhead with a man-carrying capsule. In 1946, society member, designer and artist Ralph Smith put forward a detailed proposal to adapt the V2 missile into a “man-carrying rocket.”

#WW2 V2 ROCKET FULL#

“It was packed full of high technology.”Įngineers at the British Interplanetary Society in London decided this technology could help them realise their dream of building a spaceship, a dream that had been considered fanciful only five years earlier. “The rocket was out of this world, literally,” says Becklake who later helped restore a V2 for museum display. The experiment proved successful, with the missiles reportedly descending within three miles of their targets – more accurately than the Germans managed during the war.Įngineers overseeing the tests realized that von Braun had solved fundamental problems in rocketry: he had designed a sizeable engine, an advanced pump to get fuel in fast enough and a sophisticated guidance system. Known as Operation Backfire, the British program involved firing V2 rockets from the Netherlands to the edge of space before they splashed down in the North Sea.

Ww2 v2 rocket