Background During the early 1950s, the British government had identified the need to develop its own series of
ballistic missiles due to advances being made in this field, particularly by the
Soviet Union and the United States. A British programme to develop such a missile, named
Blue Streak, was promptly initiated; however, there were key questions over the then-relatively unknown scenario of what such a vehicle would encounter when attempting
re-entry to the atmosphere, there were fears that such a vehicle might simply burn up like a meteor and therefore be unachievable. Accordingly, during 1955, the
Black Knight research rocket programme was commenced for this purpose. Following several launches, the Black Knight came to be regarded as a successful programme, having produced a relatively low cost and reliable rocket, and thus there was impetus present to proceed with further development of the platform. On 13 April 1960, the
Defence Minister Harold Watkinson announced the cancellation of Blue Streak as a military programme, and went on to state that: "the Government will now consider with the firms and other interests concerned, as a matter of urgency, whether the Blue Streak programme could be adapted for the development of a launcher for space satellites." In 1957, a proposed design, known as
Black Prince, was put forward by
Desmond King-Hele and
Doreen Gilmour of the
Royal Aircraft Establishment (RAE) during 1957. As envisioned by this proposal, an
expendable launch system could be developed using a mix of preexisting and in-development assets; the multi-stage launcher was to be formed of a Blue Streak first stage, a
Black Knight (or later a
Black Arrow) second stage, and a military solid rocket as a third stage. In 1960, the
Royal Aircraft Establishment at Farnborough was given the job of considering how the Blue Streak missile could be adapted as a satellite launching vehicle, in conjunction with other rocket stages. Accordingly, the 1957 concept design for a combined Blue Streak-Black Knight launcher was put forward once again, and this time received a favourable appraisal; the project was assigned the
rainbow code of
Black Prince; in official documentation, the platform was referred to as the
Blue Streak Satellite Launch Vehicle (BSSLV). However, it was quickly recognised that the programme's cost would be a major issue, one estimate of the total development costs would have been equal to half of the British
university budget. Along with the high costs involved, it was becoming clear that, due to British military satellites already being delivered by American launchers and the domestic science community being perceived as lacking the funding to conduct multiple major research satellite programmes at once, domestic demand for such a launcher was not guaranteed. Accordingly, it was decided that it would be preferable for other nations to be involved in the programme in order to share the burden of the costs and to be predisposed to making use of the launcher. Diplomatic approaches were made to various nations, however it became obvious that the members of the
Commonwealth of Nations alone were not prepared to provide the necessary backing for such a programme.
Collaboration As early as 1961,
Peter Thorneycroft, the Minister of Aviation, had been thinking about a joint European project, in order not to waste the advanced development of the Blue Streak, and not to leave space exploration to the Americans and Russians. Britain made diplomatic approaches to various European nations: the most significant of these was to France. Both France and Britain approached various other nations to join on the collaborative programme, however negotiations with interested nations were often protracted, in part due to scepticism; author C.N. Hill stated that "many countries thought that the U.K. was seeking to foist an obsolescent launch vehicle on them, and making them pay the costs". The participation of many nations hinged upon gaining the endorsement of Germany, which was eventually won over and chose to participate. As a result of this diplomacy, it was decided to proceed with the formation of the
European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) group. The headquarters of ELDO were in
Paris. The founding members were Belgium, France, the United Kingdom, Italy, the Netherlands and West Germany: Australia, Spain, Switzerland, Norway, and Sweden had chosen not to participate. ELDO not only served the purpose of harnessing Blue Streak, but also fulfilled ambitions to produce a European rival to the American and Soviet launchers being developed and deployed at that time. After studying various designs and concepts, ELDO arrived at a three-stage approach which was given the designation
Eldo A; this was later formally named as
Europa. According to Hill, Black Prince and Europa were comparable launchers, capable of delivering similar performance and roughly the same payloads; the overlap left little room for both programmes. However, there was criticisms that Europa would take longer to deliver than the Black Prince launcher for no significant improvement, while suffering from the same core economic problem of being too expensive for scientific satellites while too small for commercial communications satellites. In January 1965, the French thought the initial three-stage rocket design would not be sufficiently advanced to carry the size of payloads required, while another rocket – referred to as
Eldo B – which featured liquid
hydrogen-fuelled second and third stages, came to be viewed as a superior design, partly due to reduce the cost of the project by eliminating transition test launchers. It would still use the Blue Streak as the first stage. The ELDO later disagreed, but the French would ultimately get their way when Eldo B became the foundation for the later
Ariane launcher, which first launched in 1979.
Rising costs and restructuring By April 1966, the project's estimated costs had increased to £150 million from an initial estimate of £70 million. By this point, hopes amongst several of the participants were not high that Europa would be suitable for the envisioned task; the Italians wanted to abandon the ELDO and instead participate in a single European space organisation that would not be as nationally divided as the ELDO. The first launch had been originally planned for November 1966; however, the first two-stage launch occurred in August 1967, while the full three stages (Europa 1) performed its first combined launch in November 1968. During the mid-1960s, Britain had been contributing 40 per cent of the programme's costs. In early June 1966, the British government (
Fred Mulley) decided it could not afford the cost of Europa and sought to leave the ELDO organisation – one of the few European organisations by which point it had become a lead player. Britain's contribution was reduced to 27 per cent. This was also at a time when satellite technology was on the verge of changing the world. However, the soon-to-be-common
geosynchronous satellites necessitated being positioned at an altitude of 22,000 miles (35 400 km) above Earth, which was far beyond the performance of Europa 1, being capable of launching satellites to a altitude. In November 1968, a European Space Conference held in Bonn decided on a proposal to merge the ELDO with the
ESRO, forming a pan-European space authority by early 1970; known as the
European Space Agency (ESA), this organisation would not be formed until 1975. Britain was lukewarm to the idea and did not believe that Europe could launch satellites economically. By 1970, the French launch base in
French Guiana had cost £45 million, and in that year France became the most important partner in the project, then planning to build two-thirds of the rocket as well as owning the launch site. Although only on paper, Britain's involvement in the project has been much reduced, after being largely responsible (with an Australian launch site) for getting the entire project going in the first place. However, all of the launchers, to the very end of the programme, were completely dependent on the British rocket used for the first stage. By 1970, the project was under a perceived economic threat from America's offer to fly satellites for foreign powers on a reimbursable basis. That agreement had been signed between ESRO and NASA on 30 December 1966 and by 1970 it was becoming clear that the advantage in having a national launch vehicle was insufficient to justify the cost. In 1972, NASA approved development of the reusable
Space Shuttle, which at that time was largely perceived to eventually offer greater savings over the launching of satellites using an expendable system. These hopes the Shuttle delivering lower costs would ultimately prove to be hollow. By 1971, over £250 million had been spent on the Europa programme; the Europa 2 itself cost over £4 million. On 27 April 1973, Europa was abandoned. On 21 September 1973, the legal agreement for the L3S, which later became known as the
Ariane 1, was signed. Under this agreement, the Europa III was formally cancelled, while the L3S would be developed as a multinational project. From the onset, this new launcher was to be developed for the purpose of sending
commercial satellites into
geosynchronous orbit, unlike many other competing launchers, which had been typically developed for other purposes and subsequently adapted, such as
ballistic missiles.
Division of labour in
Cumbria Workshare on the programme was a politically charged matter. Tasks were to be distributed between nations: the United Kingdom would provide the first stage (derived from the
Blue Streak missile), France would build the second and Germany would construct the third stage. It would carry a satellite, which would be designed and manufactured in Italy, and weighted roughly a ton. The
telemetry was to be developed by the Netherlands, while Belgium was to develop the downrange ground guidance system. By 1969, the ELDO was beginning to realize that dividing work up by country led to not enough overall collaboration and had resulted in a disjointed framework of planning. This disjointed structure has been accredited as having been responsible for the lack of successful launch. In effect, there had been no single authority or group that was entirely responsible or in control of Europa. Notably, in November 1971, the West Germans publicly blamed the failure and explosion of Europa 2 upon immense divisions within ELDO.
Programme stages The Europa programme was divided into 4 separate projects intended to follow each other in succession. Ultimately, only two of these projects would have any launches conducted, the third project being cancelled while the fourth remained a case study only: •
Europa 1: 4 unsuccessful launches •
Europa 2: 1 unsuccessful launch •
Europa 3: Cancelled before any launch occurred •
Europa 4: Study only, later cancelled ==Versions==