We are used to seeing technology naturally advance at an increasing rate, particularly in the fields of mass communication and raw computer processing power. It is not always this way as an intriguing British project is about to remind us.
On 28th October 1971, Britain, for the first and last time, put a satellite into orbit using a British rocket. The satellite was called Prospero and rocket was called Black Arrow. Prospero is still up there circling the Earth after 40 years. Its mission was to investigate the effects of the space environment. A group of scientists and engineers is now working on a project to re-establish contact with the satellite after all of this time. Communications had been made every year up to 1996 but re-connecting will be quite a challenge.
The attempts to revive Prospero show a typical British curiosity and admiration for our past technical achievements. Conversely, talk of revival is also a symptom of the lack of confidence that governments can acquire and pass to the whole nation. Britain is the only country to have developed its own satellite launch capability and then to have abandoned it without any further development. This was such a contrarian act. Almost always, we see technology advance rather be discarded. YetBritain, andFrance, stand out again in this respect with the withdrawal from supersonic travel without a replacement.
In the case of Concorde, perhaps this was always the wrong project. It never served enough people and used too much fuel for those who it did carry. In a way, it was an example of the “big science” culture that was present in the 1950s and 1960s. Everyone was at it. EvenBelgiummanaged to create a massive structure called the Atomium, with nine huge spheres representing part of an iron crystal magnified 165 billion times.
In Britain, we retain our technological inventiveness but do not always show the necessary procurement, project management and mass production gifts of our competitors. This is especially clear in our military projects where the appallingly disastrous performance of the Ministry of Defence (MoD) is difficult to understate, and surely heads should role.
In the 1950s, Britain developed the Comet, the world’s first jet airliner. Then in the 1980’s there was a project to make that old airframe into an AEW (Airborne Early Warning) aircraft. It was cancelled, it had to be. More recently, in 2010, another project, trying to adapt the same old airframe, was cancelled. It had to be. Who else but the MoD could make the same fundamental mistake twice?
It is a tragedy that British ingenuity and inventiveness are too often compromised by the institutions responsible for driving our national projects. All of this serves to dent our confidence and discourage technological advance because there has to be some belief in our ability to deliver.
Councillor Bob Lanzer, Leader of Crawley Borough Council
5th September 2011