The potential for this country to get advanced technology well ahead of it's time getting rejected by bureaucrats because of other priorities (or really it serves none of their short term goals).
The same thing happened with our fibre network in the early 90's.
*a single satellite. The first two launches were suborbital tests; the third launch carried Orba, but failed to reach orbit. Only the fourth and final launch, with Prospero as the payload, successfully reached orbit.
People love to ask for regulation and more bureaucracy then complain when things don't go where they want it
> well ahead of it's time
"its", not "it's"
The UK could have owned the launch business, and also owned much of the satellite business. It would also have been the first country with ICBMs, which would have changed the balance of power significantly.
There was a serious failure of imagination in Whitehall. Or possibly serious pressure from Washington.
And it happened again and again - as with the cancelled TSR2 project, and more recently with the bizarre decision to buy the F35 for the UK's new carriers, which means they'll have no planes on them for a good 5-10 years.
It's also fair to say the Nazi engineers were even further ahead. By the end of WWII German aerospace was maybe ten years in front of everyone else, with not entirely unrealistic plans for ocean-crossing jets and ICBMs.
If Germany hadn't been run by a psychopath, German technology might be where the US is today.