When Nasa announced its Artemis crew list, the British space sector erupted in a paroxysm of self-congratulation. Two British-trained astronauts, Rosemary Coogan and John McFall, have been selected for humanity’s return to the Moon. This is not, as the breathless press releases would have it, a triumph of global collaboration. It is a symptom of a deeper historical truth: the United Kingdom, having squandered its empire and its industrial base, now moonlights as a training ground for other nations’ ambitions.
Let us examine the facts with the cold eye of a Victorian anatomist. Coogan and McFall are products of the European Space Agency, an organisation that has spent decades as a second-tier player in the space race. Their selection is a bureaucratic nod, not a strategic necessity. Nasa, the true master of the Artemis programme, has thrown a bone to its European partners to maintain the illusion of multinational unity. The British space sector, meanwhile, has never put a human into orbit on its own steam. Our last indigenous rocket, Black Arrow, flew in 1971 and was cancelled shortly after. We have become the court scribes of the space age, not its explorers.
This celebration mirrors the intellectual decadence of our era. We applaud inclusion and diversity of training backgrounds while ignoring the structural decline of our scientific and industrial base. The British space budget is a fraction of America’s. Our launch capabilities are non-existent. We are like the Roman provinces after the Antonine Plague: still proud of our citizenship, but utterly dependent on the imperial core.
There is a parallel here with the Victorian age. Then, the Royal Navy ruled the waves, and British engineers lit the world with electric light. Today, we produce astronauts who will fly on American rockets, trained by American expertise, to execute an American mission. Our role is that of the Greek tutor in a Roman household: valued for our culture, but never trusted with the empire.
To be clear, I do not begrudge Coogan and McFall their moment. They are capable individuals who have earned their place. But the nationalistic chest-thumping over their selection reveals a deep insecurity. We are a nation that once built a global transportation network on which the sun never set. Now we celebrate a few seats on a spacecraft that is not ours.
The Artemis programme itself is a monument to our age: a multinational, multi-billion dollar project with no clear purpose beyond symbolism. We are going back to the Moon, but we do not know why. The Apollo generation at least had the Cold War as a rationale. Today, we have only bureaucratic inertia and the desire for photo opportunities.
If the British space sector wants to be taken seriously, it should focus on developing independent launch capabilities, building space stations, and mining lunar resources. Instead, it rejoices in being a subcontractor. This is the hallmark of intellectual decadence: mistaking activity for achievement, participation for leadership.
I leave you with this thought. When the Apollo 11 crew returned from the Moon, they were greeted as heroes of the American frontier. When our British-trained astronauts return, they will be greeted as passengers on a journey that others paid for. That, in a nutshell, is the story of post-imperial Britain.
