In a development that has sent shockwaves through the corridors of British spacefaring ambition and left gin cabinet stocks trembling, NASA’s moon plans have been thrown into a celestial cock-up following a rather unfortunate mishap involving Jeff Bezos’s Blue Origin rocket. The contraption, which was supposed to be the chariot for humanity’s return to the lunar surface, instead decided to impersonate a firework display over the Texas desert. This has, naturally, placed Her Majesty’s space industry on high alert, because nothing says ‘global superpower’ quite like a rocket that forgets which way is up.
Let us paint you a picture, dear reader. Imagine a rocket. A big, phallic symbol of corporate ambition, festooned with the hopes of billionaires and the tax breaks of governments. Now imagine that rocket, mid-flight, deciding it has had quite enough of the whole ‘staying intact’ business, and instead performing a rather dramatic impression of a Roman candle. This is the current state of Blue Origin’s New Shepard, or as it should now be known, Old Smokey.
The British space industry, which had been carefully positioning itself as the plucky understudy to the American lead, is now left clutching its collective pearls and wondering if perhaps we should have stuck to trains. Our own spaceport in Cornwall, a project that has all the momentum of a hungover sloth, is now looking at this transatlantic failure with the grim resignation of a man who has just been told his pint has been spiked with reality. We had plans, you see. Grand plans. We were going to launch satellites, inspire a generation, and perhaps, if the budget stretched, send a particularly plucky badger into orbit. Now, we are left with a rocket that has the reliability of a British summer and the ambition of a council estate planning committee.
But let us not be too harsh on Blue Origin. After all, they are merely following a grand tradition of American aerospace failures. Remember the Challenger? The Columbia? The recent Boeing Starliner that couldn’t even dock without a team of engineers holding its hand? This is the nature of the beast. Space is hard, as they say. Harder, apparently, than understanding that your rocket is supposed to go up, not sideways, but that is a minor quibble.
The real tragedy here is not the loss of a few million dollars worth of tin and wiring. No, the tragedy is the loss of our collective dream. The dream that one day, we British would look up at the moon and see a Union Jack planted there, perhaps next to a very small plaque reading ‘We built this from kits’. But now, thanks to Mr. Bezos and his exploding pride, that dream has been kicked into the long grass, where it will join our hopes for a proper railway system and a cost-effective health service.
What are the implications for British science? Well, for one, our finest minds will have to find something else to do with their time. They could, for instance, turn their attention to the more pressing matter of why every Gin and Tonic in a plastic cup tastes faintly of regret. Or they could continue to work on the Miniature Fission Reactor that will one day power our space probes, assuming we can ever afford to launch them.
In the meantime, we must ask ourselves: are we really ready for a return to the moon? The moon, that graveyard of ambition and budget overruns. The moon, where no one can hear you scream as your taxpayer-funded project goes up in smoke. Perhaps it is time for a new approach. Perhaps we should focus on the things we are good at: queuing, apologising, and complaining about the weather. The moon, with its lack of atmosphere and pubs, seems rather unfriendly to the British way of life.
So, as the smoke clears over the Texas desert and the British space industry reaches for the Alka-Seltzer, we are left with a simple truth: the road to the moon is paved with good intentions and exploding rockets. And if we are to follow that road, we must be prepared for more than a few bumps along the way. Or, in this case, a few loud bangs and showers of smouldering debris.
In the words of the great British pessimist Eeyore: ‘We’re going, and we’ve more than likely never to come back.’ And you know what? For a British space programme, that might just be the most accurate mission statement we have ever had.
