The British manned space program that almost was

As World War II drew to a close, the Allies were eager to get their hands on one of the most technologically amazing yet terrifying weapons in Nazi Germany’s armamentarium: the V-2 rocket. A long-range, liquid-fueled supersonic guided missile, the V-2 could carry a 2,000-pound (910 kilograms) warhead a staggering 200 miles (320 kilometers) from its launch site. 

And, a 1946 British proposal suggested, perhaps it could also provide the vehicle needed to put a man in space.

The Allies acquire the V-2

The V in the V-2’s name stands for Vergeltungswaffen, which translates to “vengeance weapon.” The V-2 was a more advanced and more destructive successor to the V-1 flying bomb. Over the course of the war, the Nazis built more than 5,000 V-2 rockets via the efforts of forced laborers, using them to great effect against targets in England and Europe.

In early 1945, the American forces beat the Red Army to the Germans’ V-2  construction site, known as the Mittlewerk, confiscating the wealth of hardware they found. The U.S. military ultimately hauled an astonishing 300 railway cars full of V-2 parts and related equipment out of occupied Germany and shipped it all the way to New Mexico, where it was studied in detail and put to use. This hardware, which has been estimated as sufficient to build 100 V-2s, greatly informed the development of early American manned rocket programs, aided by many captured Nazi rocket scientists. 

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The British, in comparison, were only able to get their hands on a relatively small number of parts — enough to build a single-digit number of V-2s. Still, they were eager to exploit these spoils of war and save years of work developing their own ballistic missiles. By the end of 1945, the British had learned enough to test fire three V-2 rockets as part of a project called Operation Backfire, two of which flew successfully. 

From missile to spacecraft

The V-2 could, without a doubt, fly high enough to enter space (currently defined as an altitude above about 62 miles [100 km], also known as the Kármán line). But it lacked the power to put an object into orbit around the Earth. Still, the V-2 could fly a parabolic mission to space. In fact, British researchers had noted that the V-2 rocket was almost large enough to carry a man in a small capsule. 

Putting these two facts together, British researcher H.E. Ross realized that a modified V-2 could put a human into space. There, considerable research could be performed even on a mission with a suborbital, ballistic trajectory — as the first two missions of America’s Project Mercury eventually accomplished.

In 1946, British Interplanetary Society member Ralph Smith submitted a proposal for an enhanced and upgraded V-2, termed Megaroc (short for “mega-rocket”). Smith’s Megaroc would carry a human inside a small capsule in place of a warhead. His goal was for the capsule to reach an altitude of 186 miles (300 km). Smith’s Megaroc was a more muscular version of the V-2, with structural reinforcements added and an increased hull diameter. Megaroc lacked the V-2’s iconic fins, as it was spin-stabilized and did not need them, which also saved weight. 

The capsule that would have perched atop Megaroc could hold a single occupant. Equipped with radios and scientific instruments, its orientation was designed to be adjustable via the use of peroxide thrusters (which were used by later spacecraft). It would have afforded incredible views through one or two windows to what could have been the first human to see Earth from space. 

Megaroc’s booster and capsule would each have returned to Earth via parachute. The capsule itself had no heat shield, as the parachute was to deploy at high altitude for use all the way down (as opposed to parachutes that opened late in the mission profile and were employed by Projects Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo). 

Ahead of its time

Sadly, it was never to be. Britain, although victorious at the end of the war, was nonetheless near bankruptcy. Beyond that, the use of atomic bombs over Japan in 1945 had made acquiring such a weapon a key priority to the UK government, with additional funds diverted into the development of long-range bombers to carrythem. There simply wasn’t enough funding or appetite to move forward with such an ambitious plan to put a human into space.

Yet it’s worth stressing how incredibly forward-thinking the 1946 proposal of Megaroc truly was. It wouldn’t be until April 1961 that Soviet pilot Yuri Gagarin flew the first human mission to orbit, with American Alan Shepard completing the first suborbital Mercury flight a month later. Had the British government funded Megaroc, it is likely the first human spaceflight in human history could instead have occurred in the early 1950s, a full decade before it actually took place. 

Although it’s the rocket that never was, Megaroc gives us a fascinating view into an alternative past where the first human in space would have hailed from Great Britain.