National space agency for Blighty, says Drayson

And...

RAF Space Command is born! Bring on Jet Ace Logan and his sidekick Plum Duff.

Alien... Does it need explaining.

I wonder what the chances...

of it being called the British Experimental Rocket Group...?

Bernard would finally be proud...

MW

@knotty question of what the proposed body should be called

How about USS ! :) ... as in, Uk Space Stuff or Uk Stuff in Space (USS) ... (I was going to go for Uk Starfleet Ships, but lets face it, this is the UK so sadly we don't do big high tech futuristic forward looking space ships, we just do "stuff" in "space").

@Skylon

Backing Skylon would be utterly awesome, it would piss on the antiquated Shuttle design, it would make an incredible launch platform and the UK could earn billions from it, but sadly the UK politicians have apathetically and ignorantly failed to back it ever since the days it was HOTOL.

I may be being cynical but...

I may be being cynical but you have an industry which has become successful (very successful, lets be honest) with almost no government assistance or regulation. Now the government wants to "co-ordinate" the industry. Am i the only one thinking that if this goes ahead it spells the death knoll for the British Space Industry?

"BSA" - Bastard Stopped Again

at lease that's what it meant in my social circle.........

Paris, because she never stops.......

Well hot damn! At last!

Could this mean that, finally, Thunderbirds really are "go"?

Too bad Dan Dare's a bit old to be flying these days.

I remeber the good old days

We had proper nostalgia back then.

"Plum duff," perhaps "Broon" pudding might be more appropriate.

Lets send

.. Mandelson up as a test pilot - first stop .. Uranus!

I agree with the privateers!

I wholeheartedly agree with those who've already the governemnt should leave well enough alone, otherwise we'll just hear more Reg stories of how the MoD blew yet another eye-watering amount of cash on obsolete. overbudget junk we could've had off the shelf years ago for a fraction of the price!

Good article though, I didn't know we were still good at anything anymore!

Seemed to have been proposed about 10 years ago.

Did not happen then. Unlikely to happen now. After all the government is too busy putting in place the remainder of its cradle-to-grave surveillance system for the British people. For their own good of course.

The BNSC is basically a buyers club to get Quintiq or SSTL to build a sat for them. It also operates the theme park in Leicester. AFAIK It still does not have an independant budget despite (as pointed out) the UK space industry having a turnover near that of the automotive industry.

BNSC's attitude to launcer work seems to have improved a bit from the days when they

seemed to think any such project would be like a "Son of Concorde" leviathan

Yes it would be a good idea, so I say go. Will it happen with less than 181 days remaining to election and the chance of a Labour return to power as high as me shagging a super model.

You are having a laugh, are you not?

The reason we never got into space is....

because ultimately, it has very little value, there is nothing up there, just empty space, whats the point of investing money into it?

think about it more logically, the americans have a big willy contest over how amazing they are at geting people into space, thats fantastic, amazing! but really, when you get up there, there is very little to do, watch how muscle/body weight alters, experiment on butterflies.

the problem is that space is very hard to access, so the amount of money to go there, is huge, therefore, when you get there, you better get your monies worth or you're just pissing money down the drain, right now, we barely do anything interesting, because most of the technology we need to live "comfortably" up there, doesnt exist yet.

It's like the vikings and their ships, before that, we didnt have many nations experimenting with constructing ships to transport people or cargo, we just shipped it around on donkeys, horses, etc, why? because building ships is problematic because at that time, we didnt know how to do it, the vikings did, they knew how to use them, build them and exploit the benefits, we learned that and then started to build ships.

basically, the vikings paid the R&D budget single handedly and then we just copied it at a fraction of the price, the same "strategy" is being deployed here, right now, space is a waste of money, we can build things that help others, but we arent interested in going because the value of what you get when you arrive, is so low. let the americans pay for the R&D and when it becomes childs play to enter space, you'll see a renewed interest from the british.

It's like stealth aircraft, the americans paid how many billions to figure out how to build it? we come along and I remember a story on theregister a couple of months back about how the british are building their own stealh and guess how much it costs? (hint: not billions). The americans cried foul over it saying we MUST have stolen it, or the ideas, but the simple fact is.

It's expensive to be the trailblazer and cheap to be the runner up, but at the end, we are all at the end of the racetrack.

@ Chris Thomas Alpha

"because ultimately, it has very little value, there is nothing up there, just empty space, what's the point of investing money into it?"

Tell that to SSTL and EADS. They have made successful businesses supply stuff to do work in this nothingness. Further ahead satellite solar power could run a lot of the world until the sun goes out.

"the problem is that space is very hard to access, "

With expendable rockets yes. It has been known since the 1960s that the energy to get to orbit is about the same as the round trip (both ways) fuel consumption for uk-Australia (worked out by Douglas aircraft. The people who built the DC3).

"right now, we barely do anything interesting, because most of the technology we need to live "comfortably" up there, doesn't exist yet."

And if I'm understanding you correctly never would. Nothing to see, nothing to do, no reason to go -> no reason to develop long term life support.

<viking analogy skipped>

Not equivalent. Lots of peoples developed ships. Quite a lot developed ocean going ships. More to the point was there were *incentives* to do so. In the US those incentives are driving the COTS programme to fund 2 developers to supply the ISS at rather less than a Shuttle flight. They don't get paid if they don't deliver anything. So far it's working well. There are also disincentives. For example the responsibility for cleaning up a failed launcher (or out of control satellite) is not on the supplier, but on their national government because the relevant treaty *never* considered that orbital launch could be carried out by a private company.

It's like stealth aircraft, the Americans paid how many billions to figure out how to build it?

Actually they paid to make aircraft the shape that their software said they needed to be in the materials they needed to be made in. The original research was Russian.

It's expensive to be the trailblazer and cheap to be the runner up, but at the end, we are all at the end of the racetrack

People have played follow-the-leader with the US for decades, not just in the technology but in the development process.

Guess what. If you copy a very expensive vehicle (built by a very expensive development process) using the *same* process you *get* a very expensive vehicle with the same very high launch costs giving a very high cost per Kg to orbit.

Note the common denominators here. Limited independent thought and a belief in a highly bureaucratic process.

The last generation of US government sponsored expendables cost in the $1-1.5Bn to develop (without any launches). The Space Exploration (compatible with he low-mid range of these) has cost $200-250m, including 4 launches so far. Does that suggest that how you develop is as important as what you develop?

What could it be if a more creative approach was tried?

You should be careful when reasoning by analogy. They can be very misleading.

Waste of bloody money!

Given that the UK has a minimal aircraft industry, as well as a minimal industrial base, why is Brown wasting money on this?

It will make Britain the butt of even more jokes, like those Navy ships floating around waiting for their armament. What would Nelson say?

Maybe they will draw up specifications for fireworks and meteorological rockets?

UK car industry turnover

According to http://www.autoindustry.co.uk the UK car manufacturing industry had turnover in 2004 (the most recent year that they show figures for) of £49bn, and the motor trade nearly £134bn, giving a combined total of c.£183bn, and that's excluding petrol stations/fuel.

What do you mean "Nothing will change" ?

Of course it will. The creation of a government Department is always the precursor to the demise of the industry.

You have forgotten ASI.

The Agenzia Spaziale Italiana, is 21 years old, and can buy it's own beer in the US...