Just like the World War Two codebreaking centre at Bletchley Park, some 24km (15 miles) to the north east, the Westcott site seems heavy with a brooding atmosphere – one you could almost cut with a knife. "This was the UK's main rocket development site during the Cold War, with all sorts of important programmes centred here. But as time passed things fell away," says Millard.
It's changing for the better now, however. "There is certainly a certain Cold War ambience here but with the new rocketry activities now taking place here there is a new sense of energy, the place is taking on a fresher character," says Jubb. "The atmosphere is getting back to what it once was, with regular rocket firings taking place," he says.
Falcon Project makes research rockets and specialist fuels for the UK and US militaries but is perhaps best known for prototyping a hybrid rocket motor for the Bloodhound Supersonic Car, which is being built in the hope of setting a 1,000mph (1,600km/h) land speed record on a South African lake bed sometime in the next couple of years.
The firm is just one of those in a surprising British rocketry renaissance, in which a clutch of rocket firms are setting up in business at Westcott to try and put British rocket engineering back on the map after many decades of decline. These pioneering companies include Reaction Engines. It will be testing Sabre, its revolutionary air-breathing rocket engine for future spaceplanes, plus the "precooler" that lets it scavenge liquid oxygen from the air as it powers through the atmosphere.
Also on the site is rocket motor manufacturer Moog UK, whose Leros 1b engine powered Nasa's Juno space probe into orbit around Jupiter last year – using a new motor technology which Moog has also seen flown on Nasa Mars and Mercury probes.
The testing site is also home to a rocket and propulsion test services company, Airborne Engineering, some of whose facilities are set to be seriously upgraded as part of an £8m investment in Westcott by the UK Space Agency. They’re hoping it will spark a new British space race – especially with the Space Act now in force, allowing commercial spaceports to launch rockets and spaceplanes from British soil as soon as 2020.
http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180418-the-return-of-a-secret-british-rocket-site
"The atmosphere is getting back to what it once was, with regular rocket firings taking place,"
ReplyDeleteThe polluted-with-rocket-exhaust atmosphere? Probably not what he intended to imply...