When deciding on a name for our team we looked for inspiration to the Black Knight program. Black Knight had been used to study re-entry phenomena under joint UK/US/Australian programs named Gaslight and Dazzle. These came to an end with the launch of BK25 in November 1965. A new program code named Crusade was planned to follow-on from Dazzle with launches of an enlarged Black Knight scheduled up to BK30. Unfortunately Crusade never progressed as HM Treasury declined to fund further Black Knight projects.
While we are not focused on the larger Black Knight (yet….) we thought that using the name Crusade would be another tribute to this early and extremely successful UK rocket program. So, Crusade Rocketry it is!