DOUG MILLARD: It all started in 1957. The Soviet Union launched

the first artificial satellite called Sputnik. Within 12 years,

Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking on the moon. But

there were other things going on at the time which we don't hear

so much about.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The Cold War isn't just a time of fear and

uncertainty. It's also an era of ambition, ingenuity and

determination. Britain is stepping into a high stakes race

to the stars. But what role does a popular seaside tourist

attraction play in this story? And how did it all begin? This

is the story of when Britain joined the Space Race.

Have you ever imagined being a fly on the wall of history? Join

me for an insider view of the stories of people, places and

moments that made us. I'm historian Helen Antrobus. Lean

in for a tale from time back when.

Our story starts in 1954. At the westernmost tip of the Isle Of

Wight, where three limestone stacks, known as The Needles,

rise dramatically from the sea. Perched high above Scratchell's

Bay stands the New Battery at Highdown. Built in the 1890s,

this military gunning point once played a vital role in Britain's

defences. But after 60 years of service, the guns have been

removed. The MOD departs and the New Battery has met. Its fate.

By now, Britain is caught in the middle of the Cold War, a tense

geopolitical standoff between the United States and the Soviet

Union, overshadowed by the threat of nuclear conflict. As

tensions rise, the superpowers race to dominate the skies,

using the advanced V2 rocket technology pioneered by Nazi

Germany during the Second World War. Determined not to be left

behind. Britain develops Blue Streak, a missile capable of

carrying nuclear warheads over 1,500 miles. But before missiles

can be effective, they must survive re-entry through the

Earth's atmosphere. And this is where the Black Knight test

rocket comes in. Unlike Blue Streak, it isn't built for war,

but designed to study what happens to the payload, the

nuclear warhead, when it's launched

In 1956, under a shroud of secrecy, Britain starts its

journey towards the stars, and the New Battery at high down

roars back into life. Across the island in Cowes, a local

aeronautical engineering company is chosen to build the Black

Knight Rocket.

PAUL CAREY: Britain at that time was developing nuclear power and

wanted to have a way of delivering high explosive

warheads. My name's Paul Carey and we're at the White Aviation

Museum on the Isle Of Wight. One of the big companies was

Saunders, later became Saunders Roe. Saunders started making

gondolas for airships.

After the Second World War, Saunders Roe diversed into

building helicopters and also looked at rocket power for

developing missiles. They did some experiments into this. They

built rockets at Cowes, tested them at The Needles, and then

shipped them to Australia and launched them.

HELEN ANTROBUS: But just how do you go about keeping a rocket

like Black Knight under wraps? High Down, with its isolated

cliffs and ready-made fortifications, became the

perfect hidden site for testing the Black Knight Rocket.

Security is intense. Police officers guard the doorways.

Alsatian dogs prowl the perimeter and secrecy shrouds

every operation. The High Down test site spans 35 acres and is

divided into two zones for safety, the preparation area and

the firing area. There are equipment rooms, storage

facilities, laboratories and even a staff canteen.

Now, decades later, only the weathered concrete firing

gantries and the underground control rooms remain. Volunteer

Steve Berden takes us inside.

STEVE BERDEN: As you can see, you've got... A big iron door.

So this big iron door was installed on the front of the

magazine for protection in case any of the missiles exploded or

there was a fire.

So we're now entering the control room one, which is a

brick construction from the 1890s, built underground for

protection against any bombardment. But obviously now

it's been reutilized by Saunders Row as their control rooms.

HELEN ANTROBUS: One of the engineers who worked here at

Highdown is Ray Wheeler. He is responsible for testing the

rockets made on site. In a 2011 interview for Island Life

magazine, he shared a glimpse of what it was like to be at

Highdown.

ACTOR : The rocket head gets very hot and has to protect the

weapon inside. So basically we were testing the nose cone. We

tested all sorts of shapes and different materials before we

thought we'd got it right.

STEVE BERDEN: So in this room you would find lots of control

gear. Early computer equipment and from here they would be able

to monitor the activity of the rockets while they were in their

gantries being tested.

HELEN ANTROBUS: In April 1957 the team at Highdown hold their

breath as they stage the first static firing of a Black Knight

Rocket.

The test rocket stands tall on one of the two concrete gantries

positioned 130 meters below the clifftop.

STEVE BERDEN: The views are amazing. You can't see anything

in land because we are in this natural hollow. So when the test

firings were going on, the smoke and the vapour would head down

the bowl and out to sea and wouldn't be seen by anyone.

HELEN ANTROBUS: For the crew working on site, the landscape

isn't just picturesque, it's practical. The hollow acts as

natural acoustic shielding, muffling the deafening roar of

the rocket engines and minimising the risk of flying

debris.

STEVE BERDEN: When the rockets were assembled, they would be

brought by truck down this ramp to get to either end of the

gantries.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Here, engineers clad in protective suits and

glass-fronted helmets work with meticulous precision, using

hoists to lift the rocket into place within the towering

60-foot gantries.

STEVE BERDEN: And it would be fixed to the concrete via those

metal pads.

HELEN ANTROBUS: For lead engineer Ray Wheeler, the test

firings were... Particularly nerve-wracking.

ACTOR : At the base of the rocket's first stage sat a metal

ball held in place by a hydraulic clamp. If that clamp

had failed, Southampton might have found itself with a rocket

heading its way.

STEVE BERDEN: We descend these steps down into the pump house.

So up on the top of High Down would be a reservoir around

about 30,000 gallons.

ACTOR : People mistakenly thought that all that smoke

coming out was from the rocket, but it wasn't. It was actually

water being poured onto the vehicle to keep it cool.

STEVE BERDEN: We are in this fully armoured, very well built

observer room. Protection again from a very big, thick steel

blast door in case anything goes wrong. You can see the little

holes in the wall where the little glass windows are with

iron armoured plating. So the scientists and observers can see

exactly what's going on.

HELEN ANTROBUS: The static firings simulate every aspect of

a launch, except for liftoff, ensuring that all systems are

operational before the rockets are transported to Woomera,

Australia, a remote outback location chosen in case anything

goes wrong.

Meanwhile, the Soviet Union makes history, taking the world

by surprise. On October 4th, 1957, Moscow Radio announces the

successful launch of Sputnik 1. The first nation to put a

satellite into space. It's not until the following year, in

1958, that America catches up and launches their own

satellite, Explorer 1.

But despite these groundbreaking achievements across the world,

the outlook for Britain's voyage into rocket development looks

bleak. On April 13, 1960, during a cabinet meeting at Downing

Street, Prime Minister Harold Macmillan announces the

cancellation of Britain's missile programme. Spiralling

costs and safety concerns prompt the government to adopt American

missile systems for nuclear deterrence.

However, there's a glimmer of hope on the horizon. Later in

the year, at a pivotal meeting, scientists propose an ambitious

new direction to repurpose some of this British rocket

technology towards space research.

ACTOR : There is little doubt that space research is opening a

new field of human endeavour with significant commercial,

military, scientific and technological implications.

HELEN ANTROBUS: This decision changes everything. The Black

Knight Rocket is given a new role, still for the military,

but as a platform for testing telecommunication and satellite

technologies. So the engineers resume their work at High Down,

building and testing the Black Knight Rocket until the final

launch at Woomera, Australia in November 1965.

Paul Carey at the White Aviation Museum.

PAUL CAREY: They built 25 of the... Black Knight rockets.

They launched 22 of them successfully and they did that

within budget and within schedule, something that no

other rocket programme has achieved either one of those and

they did all of them.

HELEN ANTROBUS: By this time Britain still hasn't sent

anything into orbit but what it has done is gain invaluable

expertise in rocket technology, laying the groundwork for any

future space programmes.

As the 1960s unfold and the Space Race between the US and

the USSR grips the world, plants, dogs and people are sent

into orbit. This is the era of Stanley Kubrick's 2001 A Space

Odyssey and David Bowie's Space Oddity, where space isn't just

science, it's popular culture. But while the Americans and

Soviets are busy strapping humans into rockets, Britain

takes a different approach.

In 1965, they roll out their own space ambitions with a bigger,

better rocket, codenamed Black Arrow, this time with the

capability of sending Britain's first satellite into orbit. Yet

for the team on the Isle Of Wight, the odds were stacked

against them, with setbacks on launch days, government funding

cuts, and the sheer challenge of competing with the space

superpowers.

So what did it really take for Britain to reach the stars? To

uncover the answer, I've come to a place where the history of

British engineering and innovation is brought to life,

the Science Museum in South Kensington. I'm meeting Doug

Millard, a curator with a lifelong fascination into space.

Hello, you must be Doug.

DOUG MILLARD: Yes, I am. Hello.

HELEN ANTROBUS: It's so nice to meet you. I believe you are the

person to talk to about all things Black Arrow and Britain's

role in the Space Race.

DOUG MILLARD: Well, this museum's chock-a-block full of

wonderful things, but I think Black Arrow is one of my

favourite.

HELEN ANTROBUS: What made you interested in space in the first

place?

DOUG MILLARD: Well, in the first place, I'm old enough to

remember the Apollo programme, so I watched it on television.

You know, I was about 11 years old, so there are very few

people around the world who weren't watching the moon

landings.

But then, of course, Apollo finished. That is the end of an

era. Then I got a job at the Science Museum in the Education

Department and ended up working with the Space Collection. So it

was rather unplanned.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Unplanned, but sounds like the perfect job.

DOUG MILLARD: I mean, space in its own right is fascinating,

but it's the way in which we explore space. So it's actually

about us. It's about the human ingenuity, spirit,

inquisitiveness. The ability to build technologies which can

take us beyond this rather wonderful planet that we live

on.

HELEN ANTROBUS: As we step into the darkened gallery, the walls

painted midnight blue to mimic the night sky, I'm hit by a wave

of noise and movement.

Doug, you've brought me into the exploring space gallery and you

can't help but look up. I can see rockets and engines.

DOUG MILLARD: Well, you're quite right. We've got a few rockets

here. That long thin one, that's an American rocket. It's called

Scout. But then over there we can see some rocket engines. Now

the biggest one was used on the Apollo Saturn V rocket, which

was much, much bigger than Black Arrow. And then over here we

look at what we put on tops of rockets, apart from astronauts,

and we're standing underneath a Black Arrow Rocket.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And there it is, in all its glory, suspended from

the ceiling above us, the Black Arrow Rocket. It's really

impossible not to feel a sense of awe standing beneath it.

DOUG MILLARD: We mentioned the Apollo program which used an

enormous rocket as tall as St. Paul's Cathedral in London. But

this Black Arrow Rocket we're standing beneath was far, far

smaller. It was something that was not as well known as Apollo

at the time.

HELEN ANTROBUS: It's incredible to have it over your head. It's

quite daunting, actually. I mean, you say it's small. It

doesn't feel small when you're standing under it.

At 30 metres long, with its silver-white body and its

distinctive red nose, it's no wonder Black Arrow is

affectionately known as the Lipstick Rocket.

DOUG MILLARD: Now, the Black Arrow Rocket used to be sitting

on the floor. And that's when we started to talk to the guys from

the Isle Of Wight who built the rockets. All retired.

HELEN ANTROBUS: In 2000, the engineers from the Black Arrow

Program were invited to the Science Museum for a very

special task, to help take apart and suspend the rocket from the

ceiling.

DOUG MILLARD: We were dealing with quite a few of the original

team, but Ray Wheeler was in charge of Black Arrow Programme

and Black Knight. And then Jim Scrag, he also worked on the

Black Knight and the Black Arrow programmes.

HELEN ANTROBUS: For many of them, it had been nearly 30

years since they had last seen and worked on a Black Arrow

Rocket.

DOUG MILLARD: So one of the questions we needed to ask the

team, was it safe to hang the rocket from the ceiling and then

would we be able to separate the stages? Of course, a lot of

their memories came back to them when they were playing with

their baby.

HELEN ANTROBUS: After all, this wasn't just any rocket. It was a

Black Arrow Rocket.

DOUG MILLARD: So that's what we see now. We have really a living

diagram of how a rocket uses more than one stage to save

weight and to accelerate and get faster and faster and faster,

which actually accelerates the satellite, which is the bit that

matters, to orbital velocity, which is 17,500 miles per hour.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And that was the ultimate aim for crew members

like Ray and Jim, who spent their days on the Isle Of Wight

building and testing the Black Arrow Rocket. To successfully

launch a British satellite into space.

But all the hard work at high down was just the beginning. The

real test came on launch day. Half a world away, in the

sweltering heat of the Australian outback, the team

gathered at Woomera, a remote test site where success was

anything but guaranteed.

DOUG MILLARD: You were out in the Australian outback, so it

was very hot, and you did have to wait for any passing wind.

Wind was a problem because it might push the rocket off

course. Then there'd be the countdown, and then you would

see not a great deal because the flames that came out of the

Black Arrow rockets were very clean, and you'd have had a lot

of dust.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And that dust may have caused the failure of

the first launch on the 28th of June 1969.

DOUG MILLARD: Dirt and grit got caught up in the rocket

chambers, and they kind of went to gimbal lock, so that's why

the first rocket failed. And that was 1969. The second launch

was 1970, which was successful, but it didn't have a satellite

on board, but at least demonstrated the rocket worked.

The third launch was also in 1970, and unfortunately that

failed for a different reason.

There was a leak in the pressurisation system, so if the

pressure is not sufficiently high, you lose thrust. And if

you lose thrust, you won't get up to the necessary velocity.

And that's exactly what happened, there was a leak

somewhere. So it didn't carry on going up. It kind of went, oh,

then back down and into the ocean.

HELEN ANTROBUS: One last chance remained. On October the 28th,

1971, the team at Woomera watched as the Black Arrow stood

on the launch pad for the fourth and final time.

DOUG MILLARD: Everything worked perfectly. The teams at the

launch site, they witnessed a very nice launch, the first

stage. They were tracking it with cameras, Fancy things

called kinetheodolites, but they then had to wait for a signal

from a ground station in Alaska.

When they heard that, they knew that the satellite was in orbit

and was actually passing over the extremity of North America.

So when that signal came through, the champagne corks

popped.

HELEN ANTROBUS: After years of work, the Black Arrow Rocket had

finally achieved its goal. On October 28, 1971, it

successfully carried the Prospero satellite into orbit,

but the victory was bittersweet.

DOUG MILLARD: The irony was that even before the successful

launch, the programme had been cancelled. Now, the political

mandarins had to decide whether to cancel before or after this

one final launch attempt. And they thought, if we cancel

before, then we'll never know. If we let the launch go and is

successful, then at least we know the rocket works and it

will have achieved something. One of the first nations to put

a satellite into orbit. And that's why I believe the

decision was taken.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Was the mission a success?

DOUG MILLARD: Fourth attempt, successful launch. That's pretty

impressive. The satellite itself returned valuable data on how to

build a better satellite. That was the whole idea behind this

Black Arrow programme. And today we have a very successful

satellite industry. So Prospero is all part of that story.

HELEN ANTROBUS: And incredibly, Prospero is still orbiting Earth

today. Though its onboard tape recorder stopped working just

two years after the launch in 1973, experts predict it won't

re-enter Earth's atmosphere until 2070, 100 years after its

launch.

The High Down test site finally closed its doors in 1972,

donating the R4 Black Arrow rocket to the Science Museum,

the very one that Doug and I have been standing under today.

And while this might feel like the end of the story, Doug has

one more thing to show me.

Nestled amongst the artefacts in the display cabinet are two

small Airfix models, a Saturn V rocket and a lunar module.

DOUG MILLARD: There's the rocket and there's the rather strangely

coloured blue lunar surface with the lunar module on top. The

insulation blanket, it's Bourneville plain chocolate

wrapper.

HELEN ANTROBUS: These models were carefully assembled by a

young Doug Millard long before he ever saw a real rocket.

DOUG MILLARD: And the reason they're here is because my

colleague... Was putting this walkway together. He was wanting

to convey the fact that Apollo was watched by kids on telly who

then went away and made model kits.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Doug never imagined that one of his

childhood heroes would one day see them.

DOUG MILLARD: We were down there by Apollo 10 a few years ago

doing some filming about space. The star of the show was getting

quite old, so I had to go and fetch him a stool. In doing

that, I said, Oh I can't resist this, please, but I just want

you to look at this model which I made a little before you

walked on the moon in 1972 on Apollo 17. So Gene Cernan was

down there. I just had to say, look, it's all because of you.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Thank you so much for giving all your time

and expertise.

As I prepare to leave, Doug sums up the story of how Britain

joined the Space Race perfectly.

DOUG MILLARD: It is a quintessentially British story,

and it rather disrupts the public image of space, which is

still predominantly American. So I like the idea of the British

space age being put together on this charming island off the

south coast of England. Very picturesque, lots of history,

views. That's where they actually built space rockets.

And that's juxtaposition rather appeals to me.

HELEN ANTROBUS: Thank you for listening to the very first

episode of Back When. I hope you've enjoyed it. Get new

stories as they're released every other week by following us

on your podcast app. We would love to hear from you. So please

get in touch with your ratings and your reviews. I'll see you

next time. And if you fancy visiting the Needles or any

other places mentioned in this episode. Then check out the

links in the show notes.