Historic UK satellite launch may spur military appetite

tech.hindustantimes.com:

A mobile air-launched rocket system to be used in Britain's first domestic satellite launch could sow the seeds for a globally dispersed rapid-response capability to put extra eyes in space in times of war, executives and analysts said.

Virgin Orbit, part-owned by billionaire Richard Branson, plans to launch nine satellites from a LauncherOne rocket attached under the wing of a modified Boeing 747, to be flown from a new spaceport in Cornwall on Monday.

Barring delays, it will be the first time a satellite has departed from western European soil.

For now the focus is on commercial payloads from companies such as Space Forge, which is developing in-orbit manufacturing.

But the launch is also seen by many as a blueprint for quicker launches of limited satellite capacity for tactical military purposes, in what planners call "Responsive Launch".

"Ukraine woke up the world in a lot of ways," Virgin Orbit Chief Executive Dan Hart told a news conference in southwest England on Sunday.

"Clearly there is a hope of a pan-European, as well as a U.S. collaboration ... and that we have responsiveness so that if something happens in the world, we can get assets there right away," he told the pre-launch briefing, monitored online.

Virgin Orbit said last year Britain's Royal Air Force was doing exercises to demonstrate the value of "Responsive Launch".

Britain had a brief foray into space launch activities in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when its Black Arrow rocket was cancelled after just one successful mission.

The rocket's four launches took place in Australia in an era when commercial satellites barely existed.

Now, constellations of miniaturised satellites are heading an explosion of commercial activity in low Earth orbit.

Lobbing small