>>>>>>Dude.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>That's pathetic. Dick Rutan's private Spaceship One goes 5 times that high. We had balloons going to those heights 60 years ago but we didn't attach freeze-dried teddy bears to them.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>When will Britain/ESA grow a real space program? By the time Europe gets to the moon they'll land at a Chinese terminal with American restaurants, Russian taxis, and Indian hotels.
>>>>>>
>>>>>>>http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1091896/British-bears-space-Schoolchildrens-teddies-pictured-19-miles-Earth-strapped-giant-weather-balloon.html
>>>>>
>>>>>Been there - done that!
>>>>>http://www.bbc.co.uk/dna/h2g2/A430903
>>>>
>>>>The lack of government support for this was a real shame. With a few millions invested we could have had a very effective space program employing UK engineers and science students. They're always happy to chuck money at things like opera though.
>>>
>>>Tell me about it! And yet "developing" countries like India can go for it.
>>>
>>>We produce stuff, invent stuff, develop stuff, then the govt always gets tight-fisted and drops projects or sells/gives them away.
>>>
>>>I'm still smarting from handing over the Harrier jump jet, one of the best aviation inventions in history, to the US.
>>
>>We did even worse with the Avro Arrow, which at the time, was ahead of its time. We didn't sell it at all (well, unless you count selling the destroyed planes to a junk dealer for 6.5 cents a pound). We destroyed the planes, and all the drawings, plans etc. as if it never existed. It was a weird event in Canadian aviation history.
>>
>>>
>>>WHY? FGS!
>>>
>>>BTW at least one of the satellites sent up from the Br space proj is still circling the earth and is detectable.
>
>
>Alan
>
>we had exactly the same thing here with the TSR2.
>
>Makes you think the US government had someone by the short and curlies to ensure US plane manufacturers got the orders.
>We ended up with the F1/11 which was a vey poor aircraft.

Part of what was going on here was the introduction of the NORAD agreement. The U.S. insisted that for Canada to be a party to NORAD, we had to allow interceptor testing launches from the U.S. and the use of U.S. planes. The problem with that, of course was that they weren't so long range that they wouldn't be over major cities in the south of Canada. It also meant (in some feeble minds) that we didn't need to spend money on continuing to develop the Arrow. The allowing of Nuclear systems into Canada at the time is generally agreed to be the straw that broke the Diefenebaker government's back. They lost a non-confidence motion and the election because of it. Unfortunately, by that time, they'd already dumped the arrow (and the 400 mill that had already been spent developing it).

What has never been satisfactorily explained is the need to destroy all the engineering information, plans, drawings and already built planes. Not to mention why it had to all be done out of the eyes and ears of the press at the time.

Lots of conspiracy theories were going around (still are, in fact). But no real good explanations that I've ever heard.