Examination of Witnesses (Questions 240
- 259)
TUESDAY 11 APRIL 2000
MR MARK
HEMPSELL, MR
DAVID ASHFORD
AND MR
ALAN BOND
240. With just private equity?
(Mr Ashford) Yes, absolutely. The point about the
X15 is a very good one. You do not have to be a rocket scientist
to appreciate that the re-usable launch vehicle is going to be
far less expensive to operate and safer and more reliable than
a throw away one. This was a common idea in the late 50s and the
early 60s, and there was a lot of project work done in Europe
and America on aeroplanes that would go into orbit. In fact, that
was my first job in the early 60s, working on one of those projects.
The X15 was showing the way. It demonstrated most of the technology.
To this day it is still the only fully re-usable vehicle that
has been to space and back and it last flew in 1968. That is fact
and that fact alone should throw up lots of question marks about
what NASA and ESA have been doing since. What we are saying is
that there is an opportunity for the United Kingdom, by using
a fairly sneaky cunning approach, to grab the lead, not as a big
national programme, but to get started on key new projects which
will enable us to dictate the agenda on a programme of international
collaboration.
241. I have to say that I assumed that by now
we would have got a lot further down this particular line.
(Mr Ashford) We should have done.
(Mr Hempsell) I think we all feel that.
242. Are there any Governments that are actually
funding research into this area quite heavily?
(Mr Hempsell) Other than the Americans?
243. Other than the Americans.
(Mr Hempsell) The Japanese are funding very heavily.
244. Are they?
(Mr Hempsell) Yes.
245. What sort of money?
(Mr Hempsell) I do not know their budget, but they
have a full scale engine test bed for their breathing engine and
they keep coming up with new space planes based around hope and
they have quite a considerable programme going, and the rest of
Europe has programmes going as well.
(Mr Bond) I would like to emphasise that. The European
Space Agency is really the area that has caused significant anxiety
of late. Back in the 1980s the British initiated the European
Space Agency's interest in re-usable vehicles with the HOTOL project.
We were very instrumental in this country, through pressure from
British Aerospace, for the Europeans to set up the first of their
research programmes on re-usable launch vehicles and caused the
Europeans to put considerable investment into it, whilst not participating
ourselves. Over the intervening period you have seen quite poorly
directed programmes from Europe but still at a considerable spend
in various areas of technology. Of late, of course, we have come
to the more recent programme, which is the FLTP programme. One
has to emphasise that the FLTP is not directed to a particular
type of vehicle, it is directed towards sorting technologies out
to find out what vehicles should be built. One of the criticisms
that one might raise against the American programme is that they
do everything by knee-jerk. We saw them rush into the X30 programme,
which was a SCRAM jet-powered vehicle, we have even seen them
rush into the X33 programme, which is a rocket vehicle and all
of these were predicted within the United Kingdom not to succeed
before they spent the first dollar on them. So, within Europe
there are programmes and there is considerable spend, but it needs
the sort of input that we have created in the United Kingdom to
direct them.
246. Which are the areas where we still have
an edge, do you think?
(Mr Hempsell) The starting point is that we have a
better system appreciation of the routes that get you there and
we have a better appreciation of how re-usable launch vehicles
interact with the rest of the space infrastructure. I think we
are world beating in that area. I will leave Alan to deal with
the detailed technologies.
(Mr Bond) We have specific technologies in terms of
materials. These were acknowledged at one of the festive meetings
in which I suggested from the floor that ESA should be looking
at the carbon reinforced glass/ceramic matrix materials for example,
and they specifically stated that they could not because they
only resided in the United Kingdom and there was nobody based
in Europe and we were not contributors to the programme. There
is the heat exchanger technology, which Mark has already alluded
to, but also there is undercarriage technology. Undercarriages
for space planes are a specific issue. In the past we were fooled
by taking undercarriages from the aviation field, but we now know
that there are special considerations in space planes that makes
undercarriage technology very different and a vehicle with a rolling
take-off undercarriage is quite readily do-able.
(Mr Hempsell) I think you should mention also the
structure concept.
(Mr Bond) Structure concepts in particular have evolved
a long way in the United Kingdom with it being part of the FLTP
programme, had we participated. In particular, space planes, unlike
aeroplanes, are very lightly loaded structures and they deserve
special design consideration. Most people have rushed in in the
past and said that a space plane is either like a rocket or like
an aeroplane. In reality it is an animal in its own right.
Mr Berry
247. Could we turn to the role of the BNSC in
all of this? You have all been pretty critical, I think it is
fair to say. In the Reaction Engine's submission you refer to
the BNSC as being completely arrogant and you refer to statements
they make as being either completely untrue or whitewash. It is
almost as strong as the language that we sometimes use in here.
(Mr Bond) I was being restrained.
248. Clearly you have raised a very, very serious
issue about the BNSC not following standard procedures when looking
at the issue of launchers, which I would like to explore. Is it
your understanding that the resistance to United Kingdom involvement
in this enterprise is primarily from the BNSC or do you believe
it is a political decision taken by ministers?
(Mr Hempsell) My view is that seems to reside within
the Civil Service. It has been a consistent policy since 1968.
It has been a policy that has been supported by Tony Benn and
Edward Leigh, who are politically as far apart as you can get.
It does not seem to matter what space minister goes in, you get
exactly the same policy out and no movement. Neither, when we
talk to space ministers, do the ministers seem to have any real
appreciation of what the subject is and what we have been telling
the BNSC. It is not conclusive evidence that it is Civil Service
driven, but it is certainly the impression we get, that it is
within the Civil Service that the problem lies.
249. Are there any obvious reasons for this?
The REL submission refers to the management attitude that the
BNSC implies that some other factor is involved beyond the arguments
there that you state. What, therefore, in your opinion are the
other factors that are involved in the BNSC decisions?
(Mr Bond) The bottom line to this is that it is almost
unfathomable, because with every scenario that you get you cannot
see how it completely fits the attitude. For over 10 years now
Reaction Engines has been plaguing BNSC, and David's company has
had similar experience. We have been given just about every conceivable
excuse for why we should not participate and the latest one is
that British industry could not now win a place in Europe, when
10 or 15 years ago we were guaranteed a place in Europe, but back
in those days there were other reasons given. We have all experienced
prevarication and a straightforward lack of appreciation of what
the programme was about. We could give it the best possible motive.
There is also obviously a conspiracy theory, in that the Foreign
Office may well be behind this because we have drawn up a deal
with the Americans not to tread on American industry's toes or
whatever exchange we might have agreed to. We have allowed them
to go off and make this their particular area of technology. Some
time ago, with the help of John Nott, I engaged the services of
Tony Newton, former minister for the DTI, in order to try to get
to the bottom of that. Unfortunately John Nott died of a heart
attack and that particular investigation came to nothing. I would
be very pleased to know what Tony actually found out. I know that
in one particular instance—and unless this minister leans
on me I would rather not quote it—the Foreign Office intervened
in manned space activity in this country. That is absolutely certain.
I do not feel able to disclose it.
250. If that is an invitation to be leant on,
it is virtually irresistible. Can you clarify?
(Mr Bond) If you lean on me I will have to tell you,
but if you do not, then I do not feel I can volunteer it.
251. I would like to know more, please.
(Mr Bond) British Aerospace, of their own volition,
invested in the multi-role capsule back in the 1980s. I, in the
course of the HOTOL exercise, was visiting Sir Raymond Lygo, then
the chief executive of British Aerospace, on the afternoon that
the Foreign Office informed British Aerospace that they had to
cease activity on the multi-role capsule. You might well appreciate
that Raymond Lygo and Ivan Yates were extremely disturbed by this.
If you want further information on the background to all that,
I guess you would have to ask those people. I sit here and tell
you that that is the situation that occurred. So I know that the
Foreign Office will intervene when there are areas of space policy
that do not suit them. I do not know whether anyone else can fill
you in on the background details of that. There are possibilities
as to why that particular event was prevalent at that particular
time. I think that Mark may be able to provide an answer to that.
(Mr Hempsell) I have puzzled since discovering this
for some time. It is very difficult to know why they were upset
by it. We did upset the French with the multi-role capsule study,
because it did implicitly, not directly, criticise Hermes. With
the passage of time I can admit that that was the intention. I
think it highlighted so many failings in the Hermes programme
that rather than responding to them positively they just got very
upset about it. I know that one of my colleagues got an ear full
when he was over in France about the issue. Maybe they were just
responding by saying that there is no point in upsetting the French
over something that we were not going to pursue, I do not know,
but it was an extraordinary story to discover.
(Mr Bond) I am not saying that the Foreign Office
is necessarily leaning in this case, but we are against a policy
which is—
(Mr Hempsell) I have certainly spent most of the last
10 years trying to fathom out what is behind British protocol
and I cannot tell you why they do what they do and why they have
this policy. You can see from appendix C in my submission that
I go to some length to try to get behind what is going on, without
success.
252. Could you say a little more about your
views about the BNSC's evaluation process? Clearly one issue is,
are they right or wrong? Another issue is, are Government departments,
the Foreign Office or whoever, interfering? The key issue that
is central to your criticism of the way that BNSC has operated
is that they are not following the proper evaluation processes.
(Mr Hempsell) There is no identifiable evaluation
process. They are not appraising the policy on any infrastructure
issue and they are certainly not doing any evaluation that we
can establish on any specific proposals.
253. Sorry to interrupt. Are all infrastructure
projects like this excluded?
(Mr Hempsell) Yes.
254. It is not just your proposals, it would
be all proposals?
(Mr Hempsell) I do not know of any space infrastructure
proposal which has received an evaluation.
(Mr Ashford) I think one of the problems is that it
is just simply mindset, people just do not believe what is possible.
You have heard three examples earlier on this morning. Professor
Culhane said that the opinion of the RES was that they were opposed
to too much United Kingdom involvement in launch vehicles because
there is a very high entry fee for launch vehicles. Well, there
actually is not, if you go into it. If you do the key early developments
to show that there is a much better way of doing things than anybody
else at the moment has, you can bring it along with you. So it
is a very low entry fee. Then Professor Pillinger said that we
are not big enough players in space to benefit from nuclear ideas.
There is a window of opportunity right now to demonstrate a far
more cost effective way of going about space business than NASA
or ESA are doing. To appreciate these ideas you have to go into
it in some depth. I have personally found that there are two types
of people who readily understand what I am talking about, and
they are aeronautics professors and test pilots, and there are
no aeronautics professors or test pilots in the BNSC. So it is
a culture problem between aeroplanes and a way of doing business
in space.
Mr Hoyle
255. This multi-role capsule, if I remember,
in the 1980s—was it not in the newspapers—can cut
time travel down and get journeys—is that the one?
(Mr Hempsell) That is the HOTOL programme. On cutting
journey times down, I am afraid that was an artifact of the Public
Relations Department at Stevenage who put it in the first brochure
against the advice of the engineering team. We got it out, we
extracted it and it was never in from there on in, but it stuck
and we still get it.
256. That was the hype that came out of the
programme?
(Mr Hempsell) The HOTOL programme was solely and specifically
a space launcher and that is how it should be seen. I would not
want to enter into hypersonic travel as a subject.
257. But the multi-role capsule was purely—
(Mr Hempsell) That was an ARIANE launched capsule.
It was launched on ARIANE 4 and it was designed to do things like
the space station lifeboat role and general purpose European autonomous
delivery into space of men. It had other roles within the space
infrastructure that it could take and it came out as a theory
of making multi-role systems to reduce infrastructure costs, you
make a system do as many jobs as possible, so that is where it
came from. It was publicised in 1987 at the IF Congress in Brighton
partly as a sort of jab at Hermes and saying this might be a better
route for Europe. I was interested that all the people that derided
it at the time were, five years later, trying to get ESA to buy
into a capsule programme because Hermes had failed. It was only
a small study. We could have taken it further within ESA if we
had had the voice, but we did not have the voice and it was really
a shout from the outside.
258. Obviously the Foreign office put paid to
your plans.
(Mr Hempsell) To be fair I think they rather did not
need to do that, because British Aerospace did not have any plans
to take it any further anyway.
259. So really it was a bit of a red herring
that was thrown to blame the Foreign Office?
(Mr Hempsell) No. I think the Foreign Office did not
know that. I think they thought there was a real programme and
they needed to stop it. As I understand it, Raymond Lygo was threatened
with BAe programmes—
(Mr Bond) I can testify absolutely honestly that British
Aerospace were leaned on quite heavily and I believe it was implied
that British Aerospace's other contracts would suffer if the multi-role
capsule was not dropped immediately.
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