Space Programme
In the 1950s and 60's, Brancaster was seriously mooted as a possible location for the launching site for the British space programme. This idea was further expanded to include the village becoming the base for a facility that could be used by a spy plane to undertake secret flights over the then USSR to take photographs and observe industrial and military build up.
Naturally, such a development would have meant that the village itself would probably have been razed to the ground and the villagers rehomed. However preposterous it may sound, this was seriously considered at one time, along with other sites in the Outer Hebrides and Australia, although the latter would only have been used for rocket launches.
The eventual installation of oil rigs in the North Sea saw the idea shelved, the thoughts being that the risk, however slight, of atmospheric re-entry material hitting, or being in close proximity to the rigs, was too great a gamble to take.
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