Skylark is an upper atmosphere rocket designed to carry a payload of 150 lb. to a height of 100 miles. The project was the outcome of discussions between the Royal Society and the Ministry of Supply which started in 1953 and were completed in 1955 when Treasury approval was given for a joint Royal Society-Ministry of Supply programme of upper atmosphere research using a vehicle to be designed by the Royal Aircraft Establishment. The programme was the responsibility of the Gassiot Committee of the Royal Society, matters of detail being agreed at a working party and endorsed by the Gassiot Rocket Sub-committee.

Today we are Interested in the scope of the research programme rather than the actual details of the physics. Further I shall discuss space research rather than just upper atmosphere research, because we include astronomy and this will be discussed by others as well.

Now I have, in fact, a formidable task, because I find I have something like twenty-three experiments to deal with in twenty minutes. What I am going to do therefore is to list the experiments that are going on, to tell you whether they have been carried out successfully, or are awaiting completion, and thus to try to give you some idea of the scope of the work which has been undertaken.

It should not be necessary to explain the presence of a meteorologist at a symposium on any aspect of upper atmosphere research. Meteorologists understand their science to comprise the dynamics, thermodynamics and chemistry of atmospheres, wherever atmospheres occur. They are happy to have the facilities for observation and even experiment in the higher layers of the earth's atmosphere which rocket and satellite vehicles begin to provide, but can point to a considerable body of existing knowledge obtained by other means.

As this is a wide subject area with many specialised fields, a broad review from a systems viewpoint would appear to serve the purposes of this Symposium best. Also, such a review may help to show that the importance of range instrumentation in upper atmosphere research is rather more fundamental and widespread than generally appreciated.

MR. Hazell has outlined some of the future improvements both in performance and in experimental facilities—such as attitude measurement or control— which it is hoped to be able to offer for Upper Atmosphere Research in the sounding rocket Skylark. I propose to try to look further ahead and, in particular, into the future possibilities in the United Kingdom of upper atmosphere and space research in earth satellites.

But before doing this I should like to rehearse briefly some of the arguments which suggest that sounding rockets and earth satellites will have a complementary part to play in upper atmosphere and space research in the future.

For the past 150 years man's ingenuity has been exercised in producing machines to transport himself faster and faster until today he is talking of aircraft which can travel faster than the rotating speed of the earth at the equator, and such that any point on the earth's surface is within ten hours flight time from any other point. But such is the contrariness of the situation that these speeds involve the use of extensive runways away from the crowded city centres and, what with the crowded roads and trains, the journey from the airport to the city centre can be long, tedious and uncomfortable.

The helicopter enthusiast suggests that this problem can be overcome by using a machine that can take off vertically from the city centre and carry the passenger rapidly in comfort to the airport. He also suggests that for journeys up to 200 miles or more, the helicopter is the quickest form of transport from city centre to city centre.

Thomas Moy's declaration at the 1873 Meeting of the Society, that he and his partner Shill were constructing a large-scale model of a flying machine, roused considerable interest. Twelve months later, at the Meeting held on 15th May 1874, he said:

“We have not got on so fast as we had hoped. Various difficulties had arisen which had to be mastered one by one as they cropped up. As their machine was only a working model, the aeroplane required to be made of some light material. Some time ago I was trying to get thin steel rolled and corrugated but I was unable to get anything suitable. I next tried a fine kind of brown holland for our wing sails, but found this would not take the curves kindly, but got into wrinkles. I am now making use of thin pine lathes nicely planed and fitted so as to form a sectional screw surface, and I think they would answer very well, and would form the nearest approach to a perfect screw that can be obtained.”

In many internal flow problems, the velocity profile of the flow in a duct of a given cross section is of major importance. In combustion chamber flow, for example, the entry velocity profile is a critical factor in determining the relative amounts of primary and secondary combustion air. Further, in the flow in an axial compressor, the peaked velocity profile between the root and the tip of the rotor blades has a marked effect upon the design of the blading. Recent work by Zanker has shown the effect of variation in velocity profile upon the accuracy of orifice-plate flowmeters.