RT Journal Article
T1 Black Arrow R4: the object behind the screen
A1 Doug Millard
YR 2022
VO 
IS Spring 2022
K1 Black Arrow rocket
K1 gallery display
K1 history of science and technology
K1 meanings
K1 Museum
K1 objects
K1 Prospero satellite
AB The Black Arrow R4 rocket passed through many hands on its way to and within the Science Museum. Sets of relationships were established around and enacted through the object at each stage of its journey, so imbuing it with a range of meanings. This journey was in turn built around preceding sets of circumstances, people and relationships that contributed to the rocket’s creation as an artefact. This paper seeks a better understanding of the Black Arrow rocket as a museum object. It does this first by reviewing the relationships mediated by it during its ‘lifetime’ before and at the Science Museum. In so doing it seeks a voice for the ‘mute’ object, one that can bear testimony to the beliefs and actions of those people involved with it, so foregrounding previously hidden or undervalued meanings of the museum object. However, the paper touches briefly on whether the rocket itself, as a physical object, may be encountered in its own right – as a ‘thing’ in the gallery and not necessarily tied to any suggested or implicit meanings.
NO As of November, 2021.
NO https://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/objects-and-stories/pictures-black-arrow-rocket, accessed 17 November 2021.
NO The Congruence Engine is a three-year research project starting in November 2021 that will use the latest digital techniques to connect industrial history collections held in different locations. It is one of five ‘Discovery Projects’ funded by the Arts and Humanities Research Council under the ‘Towards a National Collection’ funding stream. See https://www.sciencemuseumgroup.org.uk/project/the-congruence-engine/, accessed 17 November 2021.
NO Thomas is considering the ethnographic field but his arguments can be applied more widely and, in this case, to collections of science and technology.
NO DeVorkin acknowledges the spaceflight object in question may only be a surrogate (flight spare, engineering model, etc.), by dint of the original not being accessible as, for example, in a launched satellite still in orbit.
NO Science Museum file 270A, Nominal File: Department of Trade and Industry (Space Administration Branch)
NO Lacey’s description is accurate in relation to the rocket and the satellite, both of which were designed and constructed in the UK. However, their launching, alongside that of the Blue Streak, Black Knight and Skylark programmes, occurred abroad, mostly in South Australia at the Weapons Research Establishment of the Anglo-Australian Joint Project. See Morton (2017).
NO Dame Margaret Weston (1926–2021) succeeded Sir David Follett (1907–1982) as Director in 1973.
NO Science Museum file 270A, Nominal File: Department of Trade and Industry (Space Administration Branch)
NO The Exploration of Space gallery brochure (London: Science Museum, 1986)
NO See Millard (2005), p 30
NO Rolled Steel Joist
NO The chambers were designed to swivel in pairs so enabling the rocket to be steered depending on the pair combination swivelling at any one time. See Millard (2001), p 30.
NO Science Museum file 270A, Nominal File: Department of Trade and Industry (Space Administration Branch)
NO Each Black Arrow rocket was launched from the Woomera rocket range of the Anglo-Australian Joint Project in South Australia. The preserved artefact can therefore act also as a focus for considerations of space exploration as components of both British colonial history and its relationship with indigenous populations. See Gorman (2005).
NO The mission planned a docking of the Gemini IX-A capsule with an unmanned Agena rocket. The fairing of the Agena failed to open and separate properly leading to the docking manoeuvre being abandoned. The partly opened fairing of the Agena earned the sobriquet ‘Angry Alligator’.
NO This cultural association contrasts with the apparent public profile of the Black Arrow programme itself during the 1960s and 1970s. A cursory search of The Times digital archive, for example, reveals only a handful of entries relating to Black Arrow, including but a brief article in the Business Section of the paper reporting its cancellation. See The Times, 30 July 1971, p 19. The nearby satellite flight spare and its Shakespeare-derived name (Prospero) offers further cultural meaning including the rationale and reasoning behind the naming of spacecraft – see, for example, Wells, Whiteley and Karegeannes (1976). It is likely this particular name was continuing a tradition started with the naming of the first US/UK scientific satellite after Ariel, another character in Shakespeare’s Tempest, by the wife of a British government official. See Massey and Robins (1986), p 86. 
PB The Science Museum Group
SN 2054-5770
LA eng
DO 10.15180/221706
UL https://journal.sciencemuseum.ac.uk/article/black-arrow-r4-the-object-behind-the-screen/
WT Science Museum Group Journal
OL 30