<story><title>How Britain beat the odds to achieve space flight, and then abandoned it</title><url>https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/an-empire-of-stars-d6b24f92cbc7</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>phobosdeimos</author><text>The UK was so broke in the 1970s they could barely keep their military budget up, most importantly an independent nuclear deterrent. Superpower status was a thing of the past. With Brexit coming up its insightful to read up on post WW2 British history and how it got itself into the EU.</text></comment>
<story><title>How Britain beat the odds to achieve space flight, and then abandoned it</title><url>https://medium.com/lapsed-historian/an-empire-of-stars-d6b24f92cbc7</url></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fractalwrench</author><text>The Isle of Wight test facility is free to visit, it&amp;#x27;s worth a look if you&amp;#x27;re in the area. There isn&amp;#x27;t a massive amount left - just the concrete structure and a lot of rabbits grazing the cliffs below.&lt;p&gt;However, there&amp;#x27;s enough left to make you slightly sad that the space race didn&amp;#x27;t end up in colonisation (yet). There are also a bunch of other features within less than a mile (an old military battery, The Needles, great views over The Solent, the colored sands of Alum Bay). Definitely underrated.</text></comment>