Most photos do not give a feeling for the size of the vehicle - the cars and people put it into perpective!
Most photos do not give a feeling for the size of the vehicle - the cars and people put it into perpective!
This is an early model seen at Spadeadam, the test site located in Cumbria. Several non flight models were built for testing.
Another non flight model - probably D4 - at Woomera.
A flight model seen at Hawker Siddeley's Hatfield works.
A single stage flight model. The nose cone was a dummy one ton weight for ballast. The distinctive spiral pattern was suggested by experimental Officer Mary Whitehead of the Long Range Weapon Establishment (LWRE) to observe whether the vehicle was rolling in flight.
The launch team at Woomera ...
The launch itself ...
It is often said that Blue Streak launches were flawless. This is not quite true. These are three photographs of the early termination of the flight. Sloshing of the fuel in the nearly empty tanks causes the vehicle to tumble.
By now the vehicle is around 40 miles down range, but the film shows the guidance system losing control. The sloshing deprives the engines of fuel, and the flight ends a few seconds early.
More can be found out about this in the F1 flight report by Harold Robinson.
... back to the Blue Streak page ...