Category NASA in the World

.^Although the Space Act of 1958 specifically mandated NASA to promote international collaboration, it was up to officials in the new organization to define the terms and conditions under which they would work with partners, most of whom had little or no experience in the domain. Chapter 1 described the parameters that Frutkin believed were essential if international collabora­tion was to be a success.1 He was emphatic that those who wished to work with NASA had to come to the table with their own scientific ideas, their money to fund them, an industrial capacity able to produce the hardware, and with official support for their program. In the late 1950s very few countries were in any posi­tion to meet these demands. In the context of the widespread interest in space at the time, this meant that scientists, industries, and national administrations had to come up with experiments, payloads, adequate funding, and an institutional home for space before they could exploit the opportunities that NASA offered. In short, NASA played a major role in kick-starting and orienting incipient space programs in many friendly countries.

A significant step toward international collaboration in space science was taken about six months after the Space Act was signed into law. It was announced at the second meeting of the Committee on Space Research (COSPAR). COSPAR was set up by the International Committee of Scientific Unions to maintain the momentum of the IGY.2 At the meeting in The Hague in March 1959 the American delegate to the committee, Richard Porter, made a formal offer of international cooperation on behalf of the United States. NASA’s offer, con­veyed by Porter, was that the United States would support the work of COSPAR by launching “worthy experiments proposed by scientists of other countries,” either as “single experiments as part of a larger payload, or groups of experi­ments comprising complete payloads.”3 In the former case the proposer would be “invited to work in a United States laboratory on the construction, calibra­tion, and installation of the necessary equipment in a U. S. research vehicle.” If that was not possible, a US scientist could help the originator bring the payload to fruition or, less desirably, the investigator abroad could simply provide the payload as a “black box” for installation. Entire payloads, which could weigh anywhere from 100 to 300 pounds and be placed in orbits ranging from 200 to 2,000 miles, would be accepted if recommended by COSPAR. In such cases

the United States was willing to “advise on the feasibility of proposed experi­ments, the design and construction of the payload package, and the necessary pre-flight environmental testing.” NASA also offered substantial funding for resident research associate positions in both experimental and theoretical space research.

This offer had an electrifying impact on those present. As Frutkin writes, “[T]he future of international cooperation in space exploration was raised at a stroke from the token to the real.”4 COSPAR emerged as an essential forum bringing together “precisely those individuals and national agencies best situated to motivate a positive response from their governments,” so facilitating bilateral and multilateral programs. NASA’s prestige and desirability as an international partner of choice was also confirmed at The Hague.

European space scientists were quick to respond to NASA’s offer, and remain unanimous in their praise for the help that NASA provided them, particularly in the 1960s. Reimar Lust, who was a leading figure in the European space effort for many years, spoke for many when he gave the Fulbright Fortieth Anniversary lecture in Washington in April 1987. “That the Europe of today can be seen as an autonomous, real and reliable partner of the United States in various fields of science and technology,” said Lust, “is thanks to the immensely unselfish help given to it by the United States.”5 This chapter fleshes out that remark by describing the crucial role that the agency and the US administration played in kick-starting the space programs in the “big four” European countries: Britain, France, Italy, and West Germany. This country-based approach is followed by a brief description of Europe’s contribution to the Hubble Space Telescope and a survey of two major projects undertaken between NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA). The first, the International Solar Polar Mission, is interesting for the light it throws on the misunderstandings that can arise in international col­laboration when partners are constrained by different funding mechanisms for space projects. The second, the Cassini-Huygens planetary mission to Saturn and Titan, is a prime example of a successful joint venture of immense cost, complexity, and scientific interest.

The tapestry that weaves together NASA and Western Europe in space science has hundreds of threads and tens of knots, and it grows ever richer. This chapter can do no more than highlight some salient features. Some readers may have preferred an account that chose to be broader rather than to probe deeper. They are referred to a National Academies publication that surveyed about a dozen col­laborative projects between the United States and Europe in selected domains of space science, and that drew lessons for future collaboration from them.6

The United Kingdom

In October 1957 Harrie Massey, the leader of the British space science com­munity, was at a reception at the Soviet Embassy in Washington, DC, when the launch of Sputnik was announced.7 He was taken completely by surprise. In fact 18 months earlier the British IGY Committee had concluded that American and Soviet plans to launch satellites were not likely to succeed, and that even if they did, they were not likely to be of much scientific interest. This is not to say that space research was entirely neglected in the country. On the contrary, the Royal

Society and the Ministry of Supply—responsible for the country’s guided missile program—supported the development of a sounding rocket program for upper atmosphere research. After several test flights of their own Skylark, launched from the Anglo-Australian rocket range in Woomera, an experimental program got under way just after Sputnik II orbited the earth.8 The excitement of exploit­ing the new device, the conviction that any useful scientific data beyond the atmosphere would be freely available to all, and of course the cost led British scientists and policymakers to remain aloof at first from embarking on a satellite – based research program.

Two main factors inspired a change of thinking. One was internal pressure from leading figures such as Bernard Lovell, the director at Jodrell Bank, whose giant radio-telescope had tracked the trajectory of Sputnik over British soil.9 Lovell and some sections of the government, notably the Foreign Office, argued that the United Kingdom would be “classed as an underdeveloped country” if she did not launch her own satellite.10 Then there was the wish to improve relations with the United States. The launch of the Sputniks transformed the parameters of scientific and technological collaboration between the two nations. For a decade the British had resented the constraints imposed on scientific and technological exchange by Washington with one of its most faithful allies, par­ticularly in sensitive areas.11 A few days after Sputnik II was launched the min­ister of defense told Parliament that the Soviet satellites had “helped precipitate closer collaboration with the United States” and remarked that this new impetus “offers new prospects which we dared not hope for a few months ago.” The country’s crash program to develop a hydrogen bomb was given a major boost.12 Cooperation in space science also moved center stage. In September 1958, six months before NASA’s offer at COSPAR, American officials offered to launch a British payload on an American satellite more-or-less free of charge. In October the administration released a report praising British achievements and extolling the importance of international collaboration in space. The State Department hoped that Britain could quickly launch a payload into space, so becoming the first nation after the superpowers to do so, denying the communist bloc another space first.

The British community was in no position to meet a tight deadline: the use of the Skylark sounding rocket still defined the limits of its space ambitions. However, the new opportunities for UK-US cooperation led the Royal Society and the Ministry of Supply to reconsider a satellite program. Massey master­minded two major policy statements in October 1958 in which he made a strong plea for an autonomous British program; he was even opposed to launching a British satellite with an American rocket, as this would involve “an obvious loss of prestige.” This national approach was quickly undermined, both for lack of domestic support and by NASA’s offer at COSPAR in March 1959. Six weeks after Porter made his statement at The Hague the British National Committee on Space Research, chaired by Massey, had established working groups to define experiments that could be launched by NASA.

In June 1959 Massey led a cohort of British scientists armed with 11 experi­ment proposals on a trip to NASA.13 They were warmly received. A provisional agreement was reached for using a Scout rocket to launch three satellites at roughly annual intervals.14 There would be no exchange of funds and clean interfaces. The scientific instruments would have to be tested using sounding rockets, preferably British but if need be also American. The first launches would probably be from Wallops Island and if the launch failed every experiment would be launched a second time. NASA would provide the body of the first satel­lite and auxiliary services such as power supplies and telemetry: Britain would gradually assume responsibility for the entire satellite. The agency’s tracking and telemetry network, possibly supplemented by British facilities, would be avail­able. For the first satellite NASA also offered to receive the telemetry tapes from the ground stations, catalog and edit them, and compress them into digital form before sending them to the United Kingdom for further analysis. NASA also provided equipment to have a quick look at the first data received from the satel­lite so that experimenters could gauge if their instruments were performing as hoped. The entire process of data reception and analysis would be handed over to the British teams after this first “tutorial.”

The design of the satellite required close collaboration between teams on both sides of the Atlantic. The performance characteristics of the Scout rocket had still not been fixed early in 1960: payload capacity and orbit capability were in flux, and temperature and vibration conditions at launch were only vaguely known. As Massey and Robins explain, the scope for mishap was immense. NASA had to design “the satellite structure, power supplies, data storage devices and encoders, and telemetry transmitters.” Groups in Britain, for their part, “would design the instrument sensors, which would interlock and interact with practically every aspect of the NASA design activities.”15 They had chosen their seven experiments by December 1959 by drawing as much as possible on the experience gained with Skylark. This favored instruments that studied the high altitude ionosphere.

To manage the project a joint US/UK working group, which met every three months, was established. By the end of 1960 a number of major difficul­ties still loomed on the horizon. Data encoding and transmission was proving more demanding than anticipated. Mechanically complex external paddles were needed to support the solar power cells. For safety reasons the maximum launch inclination of the Scout from Wallops Island was 52°, somewhat less than the British scientists had planned for.

The restraint on launch inclination was lifted during the course of 1961, when it became clear that the Scout would not be available early in 1962, as planned. NASA accepted the additional cost of launching with the already developed and reliable Thor-Delta rocket from Cape Canaveral. The British were more than willing to oblige, and took advantage of the enhanced telemetry coverage by enrolling radio stations in Singapore, Port Stanley in the Falkland islands, and on a Royal Navy ship off the coast of Tristan da Cunha.

The first launch of the satellite, on April 10, 1962, was aborted due to a fault in the fuel system of the rocket. A few weeks later, on April 26, 1962, Britain’s first scientific payload was successfully lofted into space on board a satellite bap­tized Ariel 1. Its capacity was degraded unexpectedly three months later by a high-altitude test of a hydrogen bomb that temporarily perturbed the opera­tion of its instruments and permanently damaged the solar cells providing elec­tric power. Ariel 2 (launched from Wallops Island in March 1964) and Ariel 3 (launched from the Western Test Range in May 1967) followed, with the United

Kingdom taking increasing responsibility for the engineering design, construc­tion, and testing of the satellite itself, as well as for data handling and analysis.

As was mentioned earlier, NASA originally hoped that, in the context of Cold War rivalry, a British satellite might secure a space first for the free world. This was not to be. On September 29, 1962, Canada’s Alouette 1 was successfully orbited by a Thor-Agena rocket.16 NASA provided the launch vehicle, launch facilities, and a worldwide network of ground stations. The satellite was designed and built by the Defense Research Telecommunications Establishment (DTRE) in Ottawa. The project was intended to help Canada gain a space capability, to acquire new data for the engineering of high-frequency communication links, and to enhance the DTRE’s considerable in-house expertise on the effects of the ionosphere on the scattering and deflection of radar beams. Alouette 1 was the first successfully launched satellite to be developed indigenously by a country other than the United States or the Soviet Union.

Launcher availability, and its relationship with the ongoing negotiations on the definitive Agreements establishing Intelsat, overshadowed the post-Apollo nego­tiations.51 It was raised at a joint meeting of senior representatives from the State Department and NASA early in 1970.51 U. Alexis Johnson, the deputy secretary for political/military affairs, headed the delegation from State. Johnson was an enthusiastic proponent of international collaboration who had just pushed through a very controversial agreement to share rocket technology with the Japanese (see chapter 10). Paine and Frutkin represented NASA. Those present noted that

[w]e had anticipated, and the Europeans have now informally but unmistakably confirmed, that they cannot be expected to participate in the development of the shuttle unless they can be assured that they will be able to purchase shuttle launch­ings for any peaceful purpose. Put bluntly, this means they will not participate if they could be denied access to US launching capabilities whenever their purposes are judged undesirable by the US on narrow grounds of US national interest.52

As NASA saw it the entire collaborative project with Europe hung in the balance, its success crucially dependent on this one issue. Robert Packard in the State Department put it thus: “However ungrateful or disingenuous or misguided the reactions of many of our partners in Intelsat, we have managed to evoke their hostility and distrust in comsat matters to a greater degree than in most other areas of our relationships with them. This includes many of our closest allies and foreign associates.”53 A positive response to European demands “could well cause Europe to abandon large launcher development programs.” It would also make the Europeans more willing to trust the United States in the renegotiation of the Intelsat interim agreements. A negative reaction, by contrast, would not only mean losing a contribution of up to a billion dollars to the post-Apollo pro­gram. It would “confirm the position of those Europeans who preach the need for non-dependence on the US,” which would in turn “provoke decisions in Europe to channel funds into competitive and independent, as well as wasteful, European space programs.” It would also complicate the United States’ position in Intelsat, “strengthen[ing] those forces which argue that the US continues to seek by every means to dominate space telecommunications into the 1980’s.” The sentiments expressed here do of course have a familiar ring about them. As we saw in the previous chapter, the combination of US dominance in Comsat and the administration’s support for their position expressed in NSAM 338 had been a source of constant friction between NASA and Western Europe, and indeed between NASA and other arms of the US administration. Yet, while both Frutkin and Barnes were immensely irritated by European distrust of US motives in Intelsat (Europeans seem to think, Frutkin wrote, that the United States was “seeking by all means, fair or foul, to maintain political and technical control of Intelsat”54), it was also recognized that it was difficult to maintain international cooperation on the basis of the interim Intelsat agreements. In 1966-1967 the debate was dominated by worries over the “technological gap” and NASA strongly favored a proactive attempt to encourage technological sharing with European industries so that they could compete more effectively with US firms for comsat contracts in the space segment. The debate in 1969 had moved beyond this. As the negotia­tions over the definite agreements got under way, the entire structure of Comsat itself was being challenged, and questions were being asked regarding the United States’ willingness to provide launch assistance to foreign countries that wanted to establish their own comsat systems separate from the global system.

The negotiations over the Intelsat agreements brought home to the Europeans how vulnerable they were to American technological leadership. As we saw earlier,

NSAM 338, promulgated on September, 25 1965, denied American assistance in the development of foreign communication satellite capabilities, and further emphasized the determination of the US authorities to leverage that leadership, and the dynamism of their industry, to shape the contours of an international com­munication satellite system to their commercial and political advantage. Within a few years the evidence of a fruitful collaboration between the state and private industry was there for all to see. Between 1964 and 1970, NASA and the DoD (which developed its own system) had invested $207 million and $377 million, respectively, in research and development for communication satellites: Comsat had invested $143 million.55 The sophistication and capacity of four generations of Intelsat satellites increased apace. Intelsat I (Early Bird), the first satellite built by Hughes, was an experimental-operational satellite, with 240 two-voice chan­nels, that inaugurated commercial transatlantic communication in June 1965. The Intelsat II series added a television channel. The first successful Intelsat III launch, on December 18, 1968, had 1,200 two-way voice circuits and four-color television channels. This series ensured global coverage by 1969, ushering in the first and only global commercial communications satellite system, and so achiev­ing Intelsat’s prime mission objective. The first Intelsat IV satellite was success­fully placed in orbit in January 1971, as the final negotiations on the definitive Intelsat agreements were being settled. Positioned over the Atlantic, Intelsat IV had 3,000-9,000 two-way voice circuits and up to 12 color television channels.56

Economically speaking, the United States was the main investor in, and benefac­tor of this system. As the State Department reported to Congress in 1970, “Since 1964 the 76 members of the Intelsat consortium have invested $350,000,000 in the system and America’s share (and voting power) is currently about 52% or $226 million. Ninety-two percent of the total spent ($323,500,000) went to American contractors.”57 There was no foreign procurement for Intelsat I. It was 2.3 percent in Intelsat II and 4.6 percent in Intelsat III. It rose to about 26 per­cent in the first four of eight in the Intelsat IV series, for which Hughes Aircraft subcontracted $19.6 million abroad. It then fell back to about 10 percent for the next four in the series.58

The benefits reaped in the space segment were supplemented by the domi­nance of US firms in the ground segment. Congress was told that, by 1970, 28 countries had invested some $250 million in 50 earth stations, in which at least 50 percent of the hardware had been provided by American manufacturers.59 Indonesia was one such country. A ground station built near Jakarta that was car­rying 95 percent of Indonesia’s international communications was equipped with hardware provided by an American company. It was operated by an American firm that employed only relatively uneducated Indonesian technicians, and that was slated to reap all the profits from the operation for the first 20 years.60

Situations like this were obviously not tenable in an “international” organiza­tion. France, which firmly believed in the technological, commercial, political, and cultural value of communications satellites—and who realized that increased investment and improved technology were keys to improving Europe’s situation in Intelsat procurement—took the lead. As mentioned in chapter 3 , in 1967 it agreed with Germany to build an experimental communication satellite called Symphonie as a first step toward the acquisition of the technological and indus­trial know-how needed to compete meaningfully with American firms for Intelsat contracts. Symphonie was a small (185 kilograms) satellite that was to be launched with ELDO’s Europa II rocket in 1973. Its capabilities were marginally better than Intelsat I and II. It would be placed in geostationary orbit at longitude 15°W, where it could provide the overseas territories and provinces of France “with cul­tural television programmes and commercial or governmentally run telephone ser­vices,” as one French engineer put it in September 1970.61 The first flight model would be a “technical test phase.” It would be followed by a “non-commercial experimental operational phase,” in which interested countries could build the ground stations needed to receive its signals. In 1970 there were still some doubts about the more contentious “operational phase” that would follow.

The negotiation of the definitive Intelsat agreements got under way in January 1969. The Europeans moved forcefully to ensure that they had a greater say in the running of the new body that would emerge. After long, difficult, and bruis­ing discussions the definitive agreements were adopted in May 1971 by a vote of 73-0, with 2 member countries absent and 4 abstentions including France.62 The legal and political anomaly, whereby Comsat was both the representative of an international organization, the defender of US corporate interests, and the manager of the space segment was abolished. The definitive arrangements unam­biguously split the administrative and financial side of Intelsat from the technical operations. It vested authority for the former in an Assembly of Parties, the prime political organ of Intelsat, in which all Member States had one vote. Technical matters fell into the domain of a more restrictive Board of Governors, the exten­sion of the ICSC, and in fact the heart of power in the Intelsat system.

The European demand that Intelsat should help develop technology in those countries that lagged behind the United States—another issue that had been raised in 1964—was again rebuffed by the American delegation, now with the support of the developing countries. The latter saw no reason to subsidize the economy of an industrialized region by placing contracts for hardware that was more expensive than the best bid. All the same a compromise wording was found that left the door open for some concessions in procurement policy. Article XIII of the definitive agree­ments not only specified that procurement would be open to “international invita­tions to tender.” It also allowed that, if there was more than one bid that offered the “best combination of quality, price and the most favorable delivery time,” the contract would be awarded primarily so as to stimulate worldwide competition, thus nominally breaking the grip of US firms on the supply of goods and services.63

Article XIV(d) was one of the most controversial items in the Intelsat defini­tive agreements, and one of particular pertinence here. It dealt with the rights of Intelsat member countries “to establish, acquire or utilize space segment facili­ties separate from the Intelsat space segment facilities to meet its international public communications services requirements” (my emphasis). Comsat went into the negotiations demanding that “the definitive arrangements should contain an absolute prohibition against any Intelsat member’s participation in the estab­lishment or use of any communications satellite system other than the Intelsat system for international telecommunications purposes.” The draft agreement put forward by the US delegation suggested “sanctions for the breach of this obligation by way of suspension and eventual expulsion from Intelsat.”64

The US delegation led by Comsat won little if any support, either from gov­ernment authorities at home or from other nations in Intelsat. The compromise

hammered out, against strong American opposition, allowed for separate regional comsat systems under two conditions. First, such a system had to be “technically compatible [. . .] with the use of the radio frequency spectrum and orbital space by the existing or planned Intelsat space segment.” Second, and more ambiguously, the new system would be allowed if it did not cause “significant economic harm to the global system of Intelsat.”65 These two conditions (technical compatibility and absence of significant economic harm) would first be voted on by the Board of Governors, where votes were weighted, and a complex formula was established to curb the powers of any single major country, or bloc of industrialized coun- tries.66 The board’s recommendation would be passed on to the Assembly of Parties, where each country had one vote. To be implemented its recommenda­tions required the support of two-thirds of those present and voting.

The final agreements were not specific as to how “significant economic harm” was to be established, other than saying that two-thirds of the delegates in the Assembly of Parties had to agree on it. On one interpretation, to proceed with a separate system required a positive vote from member states, that is, two-thirds of them had to agree that the new system would not do the global system signifi­cant economic harm. On another interpretation, comsat systems could proliferate unless Intelsat made a negative finding, that is, unless two-thirds of those voting agreed that the system would cause significant economic harm to Intelsat.

This distinction was crucial for the proponents of a separate comsat system. On the first interpretation, a so-called positive finding, the onus was on the can­didate for a new system to persuade two-thirds of the member states that it would not do significant economic harm to the global network. On the second interpre­tation, a negative finding, the onus was on two-thirds of the Intelsat Assembly of Parties to show that it would. The assumption was that the requesting member was confident that the separate system would not be at the expense of the global system. Countries like France that wanted to develop separate regional systems obviously preferred the “negative” interpretation, since this placed the onus on their opponents to muster widespread support to stop them.67

The definitive agreements did not empower Intelsat to make binding determi­nations on any of its parties. It was reduced to a consultative body, which could only make advisory recommendations. Thus a member or group of members could proceed with developing a separate system even if the Intelsat Assembly voted that it would do significant economic harm to the international organi – zation.68 The only factor stopping a member state defying Intelsat would be the opprobrium of those in the body who sought to defend and respect its proce­dures, and who would be incensed to find revenue-producing traffic diverted to a separate system to the exclusive benefit of a limited number of (necessarily industrialized) countries.

For NASA, Comsat’s attempts to protect Intelsat from competition were unnecessary and counterproductive. Europe was a decade behind the United States in the development of communications satellites—a decade in which US business would still dominate the market. Anyway US industrial support would be essential for Europeans to build advanced communications satellites for the 1980s, thus ensuring a net dollar inflow into the country for both the payload and the launcher. In short NASA was emphatic that the advantages of foreign participation in future space programs “far outweighed any benefit we could hope to get from continuing to restrict launch services so as to protect Intelsat.”69 Hence the conclusion:

What is required is a positive internal policy directive, short and clear enough to be unequivocal, permitting the Department of State and NASA to make clear as appropriate that the US will agree, in any broader agreement on major foreign con­tributions to the post-Apollo program, to make STS launch services available on a reimbursable basis for any peaceful purpose. The internal statement should come from the White House so all agencies can and will reflect it.70

The same assurances would have to be provided for the supply of reimbursable launch services in the 1970s, before the shuttle was operational.

By mid-July 1970 the State Department and NASA had devised a satisfactory formula, in their view, as regards the availability of launchers (the DoD hav­ing withdrawn from the issue).71 They were persuaded that some proliferation of communications satellites systems was unavoidable if the United States was to maintain credibility in the negotiations over the final version of the Intelsat agreements. To meet this new situation NASA declared that NASM 338 should be revised to allow for reimbursable launchings or to sell shuttles “to those who will have participated substantially in the development of the shuttle,” like the Europeans. New international agreements being finalized in Intelsat would no longer express President Kennedy’s proposal for a single global comsat system; they would have to allow for “domestic, regional or specialized communications systems.” In this more relaxed regime it was suggested that the United States would launch foreign comsats unless “the appropriate organ of Intelsat reached a negative finding with respect to such a system.” In this situation the United States would be “obliged to withhold our own collaboration,” that is, it would not col­lude with a petitioner that wanted to override a majority vote in Intelsat.72

NASA was aware that while this was as far as they could go at the moment, it would not satisfy Europeans. As Frutkin explained to Packard in the State Department, “[T]oo many interests in Europe would wish to regard such a qual­ified assurance as negative at this point, exactly as was done with the Symphonie launch correspondence some years ago.”73 On that occasion the United States had stipulated that, to respect the Intelsat agreements, it would only launch the Franco-German satellite if it was to be used for experimental, not operational purposes. Imposing conditions on launching comsats to satisfy Intelsat was anathema to the Europeans, who felt that, if they judged that they were respect­ing the agreements, it was not up to the United States to use their monopoly on access to space to thwart European ambitions. A Congressional rapporteur on an ESC meeting held in Bonn early in July reported back to Washington that he was told “time and again” that European participation in post-Apollo required an “iron-clad agreement by the United States to make available launch vehicles and services, unconditionally, for any peaceful purpose.”74 In sum, the launcher issue was never going to be resolved as long as some influential members of the European space community demanded unconditional access to American launch services. The stark choice between a major contribution to the post-Apollo pro­gram and the maintenance of a costly and putatively obsolete European launcher was also seen as the choice between deriving advanced technological knowledge from the United States and being at the mercy of the United States’ interpreta­tion of the definitive Intelsat agreements.

The idea of foreign participation in the post-Apollo program moved through two quite distinct phases. The first was dominated by NASA administrator Tom Paine, and lasted for about a year from October 1969 through September 1970. Paine’s enthusiasm for including other countries and regions—Western Europe, but also Australia, Canada, and Japan—in NASA’s ambitious schemes for the 1970s and 1980s, produced a flurry of activity on both sides of the Atlantic. Frutkin took the lead in exploring, along with interlocutors represent­ing the European Space Conference, the financial, industrial, technological, and managerial possibilities of a major contribution to the Space Transportation System. In the second phase, which lasted from the end of 1970 to the middle of 1972, new and extremely determined actors played an increasingly impor­tant role in shaping the contours of collaboration. White House staffers Peter Flanigan and Tom Whitehead, with the support of the president’s science adviser Edward David, led the charge. They were hostile to Paine’s “swash-buckling” approach, believed that NASA had to completely rethink its role and redefine its demands on the public purse, and were deeply concerned about technol­ogy transfer to Western Europe. New NASA administrator Jim Fletcher, while willing to fight for the STS, shared their grave doubts about international col­laboration. His sentiments permeated through NASA once the president had authorized the shuttle program, and were adopted by Deputy Administrator Low and by Arnold Frutkin. By March 1972 only the State Department was still prepared to make a strong case for European participation in the core of the program, but it was too late.

Senior negotiators on both sides adopted entrenched positions that were immune to argument. For the Europeans, it was the Belgian chairman of the European Space Conference, Theo Lefevre, with strong backing from France, who demanded watertight launch guarantees before he would fully commit Europe to post-Apollo cooperation. The horizons of his thinking were domi­nated by the fear that the United States might use its monopoly on access to space to impede the development of a strong European telecommunications sat­ellite industry. The short history of Intelsat in the 1960s had convinced him, and many people in Europe, that America would only relinquish its control of this lucrative market with great difficulty, and that the State Department would work along with Comsat to undermine meaningful competition from separate, regional telecom systems.

On the US side it was Whitehead, along with David, who sought cast-iron guarantees that there would be no significant technological leakage to Europe through its participation in the shuttle program. When Paine launched post – Apollo cooperation in 1969 the argument that the United States should help close the technological gap with Europe still had considerable traction in Washington, DC. By 1970 it was technological competition, not collaboration that dominated the thinking of many in the White House. Whitehead, who could barely conceal his contempt for Paine, was convinced that NASA was reck­lessly giving away US technology to Europe. Endless reports and analyses failed to change his position, which found resonance with Ed David. When one adds this unrelenting hostility to technological leakage with the problems of manage­rial organization, the dangers of cost-overruns, and the fears that the Europeans were not quite up to the technological tasks they wanted to undertake, one has a bundle of arguments that was immensely corrosive to any collaborative project.

The president had the authority to bring his White House staffers to heel. The image of Nixon that emerges from these debates, however, is one of a presi­dent whose policy pronouncements were often vague, imprecise, and off the cuff—and open to manipulation and self-serving interpretation by his closest advisers. There is no doubt that Nixon was genuine in his desire for interna­tional space collaboration, above all with the Soviets and the eastern bloc (see chapter 7). This was central to his geopolitical strategy of detente, a strategy that sidelined Europe in the interest of improving relations with both the Soviet Union and Mao’s China. Within that broad policy framework the president was usually vague about the scope and intimacy of technological collaboration. This left considerable room for officials in NASA and the White House—doubtless in good faith—to justify policy agendas, even conflicting policy agendas in the president’s name. Though Kissinger was extremely frustrated by these gambits, Nixon apparently ignored them: certainly he did little to clarify his position.

American industry did not share the concerns over technological transfer that so preoccupied senior members of the administration. All of the major American aerospace contractors were positive about incorporating European firms as sub­contractors in various parts of the shuttle system. They had identified European technological strengths, which complemented their own. They were convinced that a foreign contribution would provide greater long-term stability to the program, especially before Congress. And they had no doubt that, even if the Europeans did acquire new and significant knowledge from them, they would still emerge superior in the long run, both because of what they picked up them­selves from Europe, and because they were confident that US industry was far more dynamic, entrepreneurial, and innovative than its sluggish, bureaucratized European partners.

The Department of Defense was another actor that had little influence on the trajectory of post-Apollo collaboration. It was deeply implicated in the shut­tle design by virtue of its demand for an orbiter cross-range capability of some 1,250 nm. That demand, in turn, made major technological demands, particu­larly regarding the Thermal Protection System on the leading edge of the delta wings. Europe’s experience with Concorde was a potential asset here, however. If the Air Force eventually took little interest in the course of deliberations it was because it rapidly concluded that it would need to build its own tug anyway— and of course as the technological feasibility of that element waned so too did the Department of Defense’s engagement in the negotiations.

From the European perspective, the departure of Paine and the arrival of Fletcher turned out to be a serious setback to post-Apollo collaboration. Paine’s enthusiasm was infectious, yet his optimism was misguided, even irresponsible. He simply did not have the support in NASA, and certainly not in the Nixon White House for an ambitious collaborative project. Of course Frutkin and Low did what they could to carry out the administrator’s wishes. Their efforts were truly Herculean. They had to contend with European negotiators who sought to be treated as equals in a massively asymmetric financial, industrial, and technological project. They found attempts to move forward on discuss­ing concrete sites for collaboration constantly thwarted by European demands for launch guarantees. On top of this they found the ground cut away under their feet by senior officials in other sections of government. Johnson’s will­ingness to yield to Charyk’s last-minute demand to reinterpret the meaning of votes on what counted as significant economic harm in the Intelsat Assembly of Parties infuriated Europeans and isolated NASA. So too did the collapse of the negotiations over Aerosat, in which once again Whitehead and Flanigan’s concerns about technological leakage played an important role. Fletcher, for his part, seems to have had no stomach for a fight with the White House staffers. More precisely, perhaps, he agreed with their concerns. He too was concerned about the multiple complications that would ensue on giving the Europeans a large technological role in post-Apollo, and quickly came to the conclusion that the only possible merit of post-Apollo collaboration was its foreign policy aspects. It was a definitive move in a climate in which, as we have said, Europe was no longer a major concern in the president’s foreign policy agenda, and its growing technological maturity—and not concerns about the “technologi­cal gap”—was shaping the contours of policy thinking by senior White House staffers. Rogers and Johnson—the latter already discredited for having made a too-generous deal with Japan over launcher technology (see chapter 10)—could not hope to bring off a major collaborative project with Western Europe under these circumstances.

If the Sorie Can/Spacelab survived this lengthy process at all it was because Germany remained determined to keep the collaborative ball in the air, because the State Department saw considerable interest in working closely with a tradi­tional ally that was itself reevaluating its relationships with the eastern bloc and the Soviet Union, and because this technological element embodied Frutkin’s two cardinal principles of “no exchange of funds” and “clean interfaces” in their pure form. In March 1972 George Low wrote that NASA sought foreign par­ticipation in the use of the shuttle, not in its development. Spacelab satisfied that requirement.

In the late 1980s, Soviet policymakers identified a new use for space infrastruc­tures. Over time and in certain circles, the Russian space program came to be interpreted not simply as a collection of state assets providing public and defense services, but also as a collection of products that might be sold on the interna­tional market. As state finances plunged, the sale and lease of space assets prom­ised cash from abroad.

Soviet space program officials had begun flirting with the notion of sell­ing or leasing equipment as early as 1985. That year the Ministry of General Machine Building (MOM) created the Main Directorate for the Development and Use of Space Technology for the National Economy and Science Research— Glavkosmos. This, the “commercial arm of the Soviet space program,” emerged from the Soviet industrial complex geared specifically to placing Soviet space technologies on the international market.1

Shortly thereafter, at a 1987 symposium for roughly four hundred foreign­ers, the world market perused many of the same goods and services that were offered for sale again in the 1990s. There, Glavkosmos offered microgravity space for rent in the then one-year-old Mir space station, space on returnable capsules, rocket launches on the Proton, entire communication satellites, along with com­munication satellite transponders. One American was particularly struck by the Soyuzkart mapping agency. Remarking on the quality of aerial and space imag­ery available for sale, he recalled, “[W]e bought what I think was the first print they sold, paying about $800 for a print of an area in Oregon with five-foot resolution—better than anything Landsat or Spot has for sale.”2

However, this early engagement between Soviet sellers and prospective buyers revealed a limited understanding of late-twentieth-century market mechanisms. The director of Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Space Engineering Research Center (Edward Crawley), and a colleague in MIT’s Soviet Space Policy Institute (Jim Rymarcsuk) observed that “the USSR appears to have a limited conception of the financial and decision-making of US firms. The busi­ness planning process (including market assessment, capitalization, product development, and marketing) is new to the USSR.”3 The authors noted the ten­dency of Glavkosmos to insist upon the immediate sale of hardware as opposed to entering long-term development agreements that were common to US contract­ing relations. Driven by a need for hard currency, Soviet marketing resembled “US practices of old” in which the supplier need only assure final functionality of a part, but did not invite user input in design or production.4

In addition to this, the marketing of this surplus equipment and space facilities allegedly faltered under a number of American federal controls protecting domestic industry from foreign competition or prohibiting the transfer of defense-related technologies to other nations. Among these were the regulations laid out in the Arms Export Control Act, intended to block the transfer of items falling under the Munitions Control List to communist countries.5 This Western Bloc embargo dated to 1949, when seven nations signed on, including the United States, Belgium, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, and the United Kingdom, forming the Coordinating Committee on Multilateral Export Controls (CoCom).6

As of the spring of 1992, nearly all space-related hardware was included in the US Munitions List and regulated by the Arms Export Control Act and its International Traffic in Arms Regulations (ITAR) (see chapter 14). Additionally, Congress exercised control over the export of space commodities destined for third parties intending to launch American space hardware on Soviet launch vehicles. These protectionist measures were intended to benefit both US national security and the nascent private launch industry.7

Thus it came as a shock to many when in 1992, the Bush administration eased into negotiations for a handful of hardware purchases. In the interest of upgrad­ing Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) systems, the Space Defense Initiative Office considered the purchase of a Topaz 2 nuclear power system and $6 million of plutonium 238, a nonweapons grade isotope commonly used in NASA deep space probes as well as some Defense Department applications.8 More important, but less publicized, SDI administrators were planning to purchase electric thrust­ers for station-keeping on a projected 40-60 Brilliant Eyes satellites.9

At the same time US firms GE Astrospace and Space Systems/Loral were con­sidering the purchase of thrusters from the Russians. GE Astrospace intended to use four such thrusters (costing $200,000-300,000) for station-keeping on AT&T satellites. Space Systems/Loral considered higher-performance thrusters.

On October 16, 1964, the government of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) successfully tested a 22-kiloton atomic bomb at the Lop Nur site. The balance of power in Asia clearly tilted toward Beijing. The government of India began to reconsider its non-nuclear posture, and eventually tested its own bomb a decade later—an option denied to Japan by Article 9 of its postwar constitution that prohibited the development of nuclear weapons. Instead the press and officials in Tokyo emphasized the loss of prestige suffered at the expense of a third-world communist country, and suggested that a robust space program would be a valu­able technological antidote that could save national pride.18 Indeed, as one lead­ing politician and space advocate put it in 1966, “[I]f Mainland China should succeed in launching a satellite ahead of Japan, the sense of hopelessness of the Japanese will be so great that no one will have the heart to see it. It is the national responsibility of the leaders of our country,” Yasuhiro Nakasone went on, “to take the initiative so that this national confidence cannot be lost, even a little.”19 The risks of nuclear proliferation to nonaligned countries led the State Department to plan for an appropriate response even before the explosion occurred at Lop Nur. The imminent Chinese test, the State Department sug­gested, provided “an opportunity to demonstrate U. S. cooperation in sharing of advanced technology with countries of Asia.” Granted the strict limits on nuclear collaboration with Japan, an alternative like “full and active cooperation with the Japanese in such outer space endeavors as space communications and the launching of a Japanese space satellite” suggested themselves.20 This was not going to be easy, however, as officials in the American Embassy in Tokyo pointed out after China had tested its bomb. The Japanese would not leap at the opportunity to collaborate with the United States since there was “a feeling among Japanese space officials that independent development of a successful space program is important to Japan’s prestige, especially in view of the recent ‘Chicom’ [State Department abbreviation for the PRC] successes in the nuclear field.”21 Certainly the prime minister wanted to see a Japanese satellite aloft to counter the impact of the PRC’s nuclear test, and to demonstrate Japan’s advanced scientific and technological capability. What is more, “Assistance from the U. S. in tracking and communicating with such a satellite would be well received in Japan and would contribute to U. S.-Japan relations.” However, the Embassy emphasized, granted Japanese sensibilities, “[t]he position of the U. S. was to remain one of cooperation and assistance, rather than guidance or domi­nation, if the political objectives of the Japanese were to be met.”22 Too much engagement would obviously expose Tokyo to a propaganda onslaught from Beijing for being dependent on the United States.

In September 1965 President Lyndon B. Johnson suggested to NASA administrator James Webb that the American space program “should have more visibility abroad and should yield more return to American foreign pol­icy objectives.”23 Assisting the Europeans and the Japanese with their space programs would help strengthen the alliance within the capitalist bloc and assure greater American involvement in those nations. By helping its allies, the United States could also impress them with its technological superiority vis-a-vis the Soviets. Following up on this, Vice-President Hubert Humphrey, who was also chairman of the Space Council, visited Japan late in December 1965. There he suggested that the two countries work together on a major project akin to the Helios mission that the American president had proposed to German chancellor Erhard just a few days before (chapter 2). “We in the U. S. have watched Japan’s remarkable advance into this field with interest and admiration. We look to your country,” Humphrey went on, “for a major con­tribution on the leadership role as the world crosses the threshold into the space age.” Hence the value of cooperating on “major space projects which none of us can do alone.”24

This high-level willingness to collaborate constructively with Japan was thwarted by Itokawa’s determination to remain autonomous, and his con­tempt for his competitors. Itokawa made official statements beginning in 1964 calling for Japan to launch a satellite in 1966. He wanted his country to be the fourth nation to orbit a satellite after the United States, USSR, and France. However, he insisted that his group achieve the feat alone and without help from foreign countries, unlike Canadian and European scien­tists who had sought US assistance in launching their satellites. He chose the three-stage Mu series rocket to launch a Disturbed Ionosphere Patrol Satellite (DIPS) or an All-Wave Radio Noise Receiving Satellite. He viewed both the satellites as a distinctly Japanese contribution to space science and as an exten­sion of the experiments with Japanese instruments sent up in NASA sounding rockets from Wallops Island. Responding to critics who argued that “lack of coordination might result in duplication of effort within Japan,” he said he saw “no harm in duplication.” He also dismissed all efforts by the NSAC to rationalize the program by discrediting the Council: “[T]here are no space scientists among the members of the NSAC,” said Itokawa, “and its chair­man Kaneshige could hardly be called a space scientist. His field was textile machinery.”25

In exchanges with State Department officials in April and May 1966 Kaneshige confirmed that the internal strife that so struck Barnes and Frutkin was damag­ing the Japanese space program. The chairman of the NSAC remarked on the “lack of a good program,” and said that “the fact that Japan has not yet suc­ceeded in integrating its two space programs—the Itokawa program sponsored by the Ministry of Education and the Program of the Science and Technology Agency—[was] causing embarrassment.” According to Kaneshige, the prime minister was making policy with regard to space, but “there [was] nobody now who can speak for the Japanese space program.” He amplified this statement by claiming that no one (presumably other than the prime minister) was even authorized to request American tracking assistance in the event of the launching of a Japanese satellite. Kaneshige believed that Japan might ultimately establish some sort of national space agency, a “little NASA,” though he felt that it was first essential to work out a sensible, long-range plan for space research.26

Kaneshige’s gloom led him to pour cold water on every suggestion made by senior State Department official Herman Pollack for closer collaboration between the two countries, no matter how tentative. A memo summarizing an exchange between the two men, in which Pollack emphasized how much store he placed on collaborating with Japan, concluded that Kaneshige’s replies “in general carried the impression that until Japan’s internal problems with its space program are settled by the Japanese themselves, Japan would find it difficult to discuss with the U. S. the details regarding a useful program of international cooperation in space.”27

To sum up, during the 1960s NASA collaborated sporadically, and with difficulty with Japan. Absent a coherent national space program and a single government-sponsored organization to serve as interlocutor, there was no reli­able point of contact in Tokyo. Frutkin was emphatic that he would not deal with individuals unless they were empowered by their national authorities. Itokawa’s strident nationalism and public misrepresentation of NASA’s launcher policy ruled him out as a partner. Kaneshige’s intentions were sound but he was not able to rein in his rival, a man who enjoyed wide public visibility and who contemptuously dismissed him as a meddling bureaucrat. Relations with the United States were further soured by provocative remarks by Itokawa that may have struck a popular chord at home but that only increased consterna­tion in Washington. The Chinese nuclear test particularly irked the head of ISAS. In 1964 the State Department reported that Itokawa had said that “some Japanese scientists had been considering the possibility of publicizing Japan’s potential to produce nuclear weapons if it so chose, as a means to counteract any claims about the superiority of Chinese Communist science in connec­tion with its nuclear program.”28 ISAS’s work on solid propellant research also raised eyebrows. It was noted, for example, that the Mu series of rockets, which were being developed by ISAS in collaboration with firms like Nissan and Mitsubishi, had the potential to evolve incrementally to an Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile (IRBM). Under these circumstances NASA could not but tread cautiously, above all in the domain of launchers, and notably since NSAM334 of July 1965 specifically prohibited technological assistance to foreign entities that might enable them to acquire independent access to the geostationary orbit for comsats (chapter 3).

That said, it is all the more remarkable that in 1969 the two governments signed an agreement to provide Thor Delta technology to Japan. The steps taken by the president and the State Department to draw closer to Tokyo after the Chinese nuclear test in 1964 planted the seeds of this agreement. Those initial contacts, however, were limited to discussions of what might be done at a general level to foster space collaboration between the countries. The narrowing down of the field to one major project required a determined push by senior officials in the State Department against the wishes of NASA and other arms of the admin­istration. This episode is important enough to merit a study of its own, and is handled in depth in chapter 10.

I have always claimed with gratitude that CNES is the child of NASA, and I would add, the loving child of NASA. There has always been a great friendship and mutual understanding between the two agencies. . .

Jacques Blamont17

Nazi missiles raining down on their country stimulated the French military’s interest in rocketry.18 About 100 V-1s fell between June and September 1944; almost 80 V-2s struck in four weeks from September to October that year. Henri Moreau, the director of a Parisian laboratory, was so impressed with the weapons that he made several trips to Germany to study them more closely, including a visit to the infamous production facility at Nordhausen. Moreau brought back nine wagon loads of missile parts and signed an agreement with the American authorities to receive ten complete V-2s. These were never delivered, presumably because of the presence of communist ministers in the postwar French govern­ment and in important scientific organizations.

A ballistic missile research laboratory was established at Vernon in May 1946 to exploit the spoils of war, a test range was built at Colomb-Bechar in the Sahara Desert, and 123 German engineers and technicians who had been involved in Von Braun’s program at Peenemunde were employed under contract to work on missiles for the French military. One of them, Karl-Heinz Bringer, was to stay in France and play a crucial role in developing the pro­pulsion systems for the French sounding rocket Veronique as well as its first missile-derived satellite launcher, Diamant, and the immensely successful European rocket, Ariane.19

France was ill-prepared for the opportunities provided by the IGY. Contrary to Britain, it had no space policy, no institutions to promote it, no technologi­cal or industrial capability in the space sector, and no space science community. This was partly because of the weakness of science in France after the war, and its inability to organize groups having a critical mass, partly due to interser­vice rivalry between the technical branches of the three arms of the military, and partly due to the huge investment, undertaken in 1956, to test a French atomic bomb within four years. In summer 1958 the Ministry of Foreign Affairs lamented the country’s marginal influence on the international scene. The dis­persal of already limited resources between different administrative organs made it impossible for France to speak with one voice. The essentially military charac­ter of its rocket program excluded it from playing a role in COSPAR.

The arrival of President General de Gaulle to power in June 1958 was trans­formative. De Gaulle was determined to strengthen the country’s scientific and technological capability, believing that it was essential to reestablishing “la grandeur de la France” and to its strategic independence. A major missile pro­gram was established to provide an independent nuclear deterrent. A new civil Committee for Space Research was set up in January 1959 at the request of the minister of foreign affairs. Its brief was to take stock of the resources already at hand, to draw up a plan for the future, and to advise the prime minister on national and international space policy.

With space assuming a new significance, considerable resources were released for a campaign using an enhanced Veronique-IGY sounding rocket. The first launches that got under way in March 1959 were a spectacular success. The payloads were provided by a newly minted PhD, Jacques Blamont, who had worked at the University of Wisconsin in 1957. Blamont visited the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories near Boston on his way home, where he was given the blueprint of the mechanism for ejecting sodium vapor into the atmo­sphere that was being used with the American Aerobee sounding rocket. It was perfectly adapted to the limitations of the French situation at the time: cheap, solid, simple, of proven success, and it did not require any electronic equipment. Three German engineers prepared the rockets for launch at Colomb Bechar. Though the first launch did not attain the expected height the next two achieved their objectives. The ejector released a huge orange sodium cloud over Algeria between 90 and 130 kilometers, and then between 90 and 180 kilometers.

On Blamont’s telling, in addition to its scientific achievements, this campaign had two major consequences. First, there was renewed interest in having a French space program. The rocket-borne sodium clouds that could be seen hundreds of kilometers away for over an hour were given wide media coverage. The public was so enthralled that hundreds of newborn girls were named Veronique.20 Second, it brought him together with Robert Aubiniere, “a brilliant army colonel whose ambitions were inspired by technology and the future.”21 Strong bonds were quickly established between the two men and with Aubiniere’s support previ­ously unimaginable resources were made available for Blamont and for French space science. What is more, the authorities were persuaded that France now had the means to move beyond sounding rockets to ballistic missiles and satel­lite launchers. In March 1962 the French national space agency, CNES (Centre national d’etudes spatiales) came into being to replace the Committee for Space Research. Over the years the agency developed launchers, built a national sat­ellite industry, a tracking network, and a dedicated equatorial launch pad in Kourou, French Guyana, as well as being responsible for international affairs.

Relationships with the United States were an important source of train­ing and of legitimacy for the young community of French space scientists and engineers. Bell labs helped engineers from the national center for telecommu­nications research (CNET—Centre nationale d’etudes de telecommunications) to build a ground station at Pleumeur-Boudou to receive signals from Telstar 1.22 Blamont’s sodium vapor experiment was followed by an invitation to the Goddard Space Flight Center in October 1959. NASA encouraged Blamont to extend the range of his investigations to higher altitudes and in 1960 and 1961 he launched his payload with Javelin sounding rockets from Wallops Island, reach­ing an altitude of 600 kilometers (compared to 200 meters for Veronique). In March 1961 a formal agreement was signed in Washington for launching French payloads on American rockets and for hosting French engineers in NASA centers in the framework of the COSPAR offer. A French group took over a major bal­loon project that had lost support in the United States, and which they baptized Eole. In 1963 CNES and NASA signed a protocol defining a two-phase FR1 program: sounding-rocket studies of the upper atmosphere between 75 and 100 kilometers followed by the launch of a scientific satellite using a Scout.

The origins of Eole can be traced back to a project called GHOST (Global Horizontal Sounding Technique) promoted by Vincent Lally at the Air Force Cambridge Research Laboratories. Lally suggested floating 2,000 mylar bal­loons in low earth orbit along with a system of satellites that would localize them and relay meteorological measurements made at different heights back to earth.23 This corresponded with a surge of interest in mathematical models of the atmosphere that needed an input of fresh data points at least once a day. Blamont realized that a project of this kind was one that was both prestigious and politically visible and NASA agreed that France pursue it. Eole was led by Pierre Morel using mylar balloons imported from the United States. About 500 balloons were launched from stations constructed in Argentina for the project. The lifetime of each was about 103 days, and each took some 8 days to go around the world. The project was haunted by the fear of a collision with high­flying aircraft and was gradually wound down. Morel’s conclusion is uncompro­mising. Eole, he says, was a courageous and risky choice but it was not a scientific success. His team launched less balloons than they had hoped. The project was premature given the state of knowledge at the time, and it was undertaken in a hemisphere about which the French scientists knew very little.

NASA’s help was unstinting in the FR1 program. Arnold Frutkin and Jack Townsend arranged for 12 young, enthusiastic French engineers to spend six months at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Each worked in a separate technical domain and was instructed to establish bonds of mutual respect and friendship with their American colleagues. Whenever possible, contracts for the hardware were placed with French firms; otherwise NASA helped arrange for orders to be given to American companies that were visited regularly by CNES engineers to improve their own skills. To facilitate communications with NASA’s tracking network the French used the already crowded VHF bands that NASA used, 136 MHz for telemetry, 148 MHz for tele-command. Relationships were warm, and with the help of NASA the French were able to proceed far more rapidly, and with a reduced risk, than if they had worked alone. Sam Stevens, the project leader at NASA was particularly effective. Jean Pierre Causse, the first director of the satellite division at CNES, affectionately remembers him as a kind of elder brother who freely gave of his advice without ever imposing his solutions. In fact this support meant so much to him that at a recent conference Causse exclaimed, “Thank you Sam! Bravo NASA and the United States!”24

The construction of FR1 also established close ties between Thompson Ramo Wooldridge (TRW) and Matra.25 TRW sought international partners to strengthen its bid for communications satellites being built by Comsat on behalf of Intelsat (see chapter 5), while the French firm sought an American partner to build its credibility as a prime contractor for projects being developed by CNES and by ESRO (the European Space Research Organization). In 1965 a “Technical Assistance and License Agreement” was signed between Matra and TRW’s Space Technology Laboratories division (STL) that allowed Matra to have access to the patents and know-how of STL through visits and internships of French engineers and technicians at its headquarters in California. The inter­penetration of practices between the two firms was so great that one senior ESA official reputedly remarked that “[w]hen one spoke with people from Matra one had the impression that one was speaking to American industrialists.”26

In 1964 NASA established an office in Paris that gave the agency a permanent representative in Europe. The first to arrive was Gilbert Ousley, who left GSFC in 1964 to take up his new post. He has described his role at the time as primar­ily being “to find cooperative programs which would benefit NASA and which in our judgment could be done with a partner that would live up to their side of the agreement.” The training offered at GSFC was not simply intended to bring young French scientists and engineers up to speed, however. It was also intended to export NASA’s way of running projects abroad. As Ousley puts it, it

was a great excuse for us to really share technology and training but we also had a selfish purpose. It was to get young engineers that were experienced to participate in our program and later come back to France speaking the same terminology that NASA uses, that understood our review process and did not feel insulted by peers looking at what was being done and making constructive criticism.27

Jean Pierre Causse amplified this by stressing how important the NASA man­agement principles of “no exchange of funds,” memoranda of understanding, a single project manager, design reviews, systematic testing by engineers in the project and in industry, and so on were to the success of the French teams sent to Goddard.28 This flow of management practices across the Atlantic from TRW and from GSFC was a characteristic feature of NASA’s relationship with European projects in the 1960s and 1970s, as Stephen Johnson has shown, and played a major role in helping Europeans acquire the skills needed to bring com­plex space projects to fruition.29

Close collaboration with France also had an important political and ideologi­cal role. Many French scientists were left-wing. Working with NASA sharpened their perception of the differences between the two world systems. Roger Bonnet, for example, who grew up in a communist family was first attracted to space by Soviet achievements. And even if he would have liked to work closely with Soviet colleagues, he found that, by adopting an “open policy of information which we could not always get from the Russians,” NASA “could attract and involve the best foreign scientists in their programs, directly or indirectly [. . .] So, ultimately there was a greater appeal to cooperate with the Americans.”30

From NASA’s point of view, collaboration with France did not simply kick – start the national space program, and build a community that adopted NASA’s management practices, so facilitating the day-to-day technical cooperation between people on both sides of the Atlantic. It was also an instrument of “soft power” that provided a counterweight to the attraction that some French scien­tists felt for working with the highly successful Soviet program.31

In July 1970 the European Space Conference took a major step forward in what came to be known as the first package deal.75 At the core of this deal lay the decision to reorient ESRO’s mission away from scientific satellites toward appli­cations, with top priority being given to a communications and an aeronauti­cal satellite. ELDO would continue to work on the completion of the Europa II launcher. Belgium, France, and West Germany, along with the Netherlands (to the end of 1971 only) were also willing to go it alone and to embark on the development of a more powerful launcher, Europa III.76 The delegates also agreed to establish a working group that would draft a convention establishing a single European space agency, similar to NASA. Collaboration with the United States was not neglected. Not only did the ESC commit itself to an immedi­ate start on the project definition phase of an aeronautical satellite (Aerosat) in cooperation with NASA, it also wanted “all possibilities” for European partici­pation in the post-Apollo program to be studied by a working group of ESRO and ELDO officials in consultation with NASA. It voted $2.5 million through June 1971 for studies of the space tug.

The American authorities were heartened by these developments. The Europeans would gain technical, managerial, and industrial benefits, would be able to “avoid investment in the development of redundant European launch capabilities,” and would be given additional assurances regarding American launchers and launch services.77 For the United States, a major European con­tribution could be of substantial domestic value. It would bring in financial resources and technology, and enhance the use of the systems, so strengthening the justification for developing them. It would improve NASA’s political hand as it battled for its budgets. As George Low wrote in a memo intended to “empha­size [his] own enthusiastic and strong support” for “wide and meaningful coop­eration in the post-Apollo program”—if successful, such a project would “have a strong influence on support for our post-Apollo program objectives both in Congress and within the Executive Branch.”78 It would also provide a template for further partnerships of this type, and contribute to the North Atlantic alli­ance. On the down side, a joint project would be more complex to manage, for “although the Europeans will be heavily dependent on us, we will become dependent in some measure on them.” But only in some measure: this was not a level playing field, as emphasized in a position paper prepared for the State Department:

In view of the preponderance of U. S. resources and effort which will be put into the development of these systems and the far greater use which the U. S. will have for them, when operational, this collaboration with the Europeans would be very asymmetrical [. . . ]. There will be no credible basis on which this collaboration could be viewed as an equal partnership. The responsibility and control will neces­sarily be American.79

The challenge then was to give the Europeans a meaningful stake in a pro­gram in which the balance of power was tilted heavily toward their partner.

On September 16-17, 1970, a delegation led by the Belgian minister of state in charge of scientific policy and planning, Theo Lefevre, was hosted by the Department of State in Washington, DC. Lefevre headed the mission in his capacity as chairman of the ESC. He was assisted by J. F. Denisse, the president of the French national space agency, and Lord Bessborough, the United Kingdom’s minister of state in the Ministry of Technology. Causse and Dinkespiler were among the very few scientists and engineers present. The American delegation was headed U. Alexis Johnson for the State Department. The other principal members were George Low in his capacity as acting NASA administrator, Edward David, the science advisor to the president, William Anders, the executive sec­retary of the National Aeronautics and Space Council, and John Morse, deputy assistant secretary of defense for European and NATO Affairs. Senior staff mem­bers from these various arms of the administration attended as advisors, includ­ing Arnold Frutkin and Dale Myers, NASA’s associate administrator for Manned Space Flight. This was then a discussion at a very high level of a “preliminary and exploratory character,” to sound out the “political, financial and other implica­tions of an eventual European participation” in the post Apollo program.

The meeting moved beyond the usual formalities and exchanges of views and tried to make concrete progress on fundamental matters of policy.80 During the opening session on September 16 the members of the American delegation made brief statements expressing their enthusiasm for European participation in post-Apollo, while taking care to add that the program had not yet been officially adopted. They indicated possible areas where the Europeans may like to cooperate, from building a discrete element of the orbiter to participating in an integrated system. They remarked that the collaboration would be guided by no exchange of funds and management integrity. A number of other items that were of concern to Europeans—access to information and facilities and participation in decision-making—were addressed. However, the burning issue, and the one almost immediately raised by Lefevre, concerned the availability of launchers. Europe, Lefevre said, did not have the financial means to maintain an independent capability in satellites and launchers and to participate in the post-Apollo program. Faced with this dilemma, it had to have US launchers available “without political conditions, and on a commercial basis.” There was a preliminary exchange of views on these issues the next morning.81 Two weeks later, on October 2, 1970, the US undersecretary of state officially replied to Lefevre. His 14-page letter carefully described the administration’s thoughts on three key European concerns: acquisition of launch services and launch vehicles, the extent of European involvement in decision-making, and European access to US information and facilities.

Johnson reassured the Europeans that they would have a role in decision­making and management commensurate with the extent of their participation. They would be consulted in the development of the shuttle and the space station whenever matters arose of “significant, mutual concern to both parties.” There would be an “extensive role” for Europe in the management of those areas in which its contractors were involved, even if they worked under an American prime. Europe would also have to be “a partner in reaching any decisions which have a measurable impact upon European costs or European tasks.” As regards the use of either the shuttle or the space station, “we would expect Europe to take part in mission planning and experimental programs in generous propor­tion to their use.” That said, given the preponderance in the United States’ con­tribution to both development and use, “overall responsibility for management of the post-Apollo program would necessarily rest with the U. S.”82

As for access to information and facilities, Johnson noted that the aim was to make optimum use of resources and skills on both sides of the Atlantic. In doing so one had to distinguish between general and detailed access to technical data and facilities. All countries would have general access, meaning access through visits and published information, to all technology and facilities in the over­all development of the program. Detailed access—meaning “access to design, development, and production data to the level of commercial know-how”— would be allowed to participating countries “commensurate with the measure and character of their participation.”83 It would be released by the United States or by Europe “on a need-to-know basis necessary for the accomplishment of their specific tasks under the agreed collaboration,” and in phase with their progress with those tasks.84 Access to technological know-how was thus tied directly to the extent of investment and participation, and was not a generalized right that could be acquired with a minimum of effort by the foreign partner. As Frutkin put it in a briefing document, Europe can “determine the extent of its access to commercial know-how in the program by increasing its contribution, and through it the number of interfaces it will be involved in, and through its requirements for such information.”85

Sensitive information, classified or unclassified, was not directly dealt with in the meeting on September 16-17, but the State Department had prepared itself for the question if it arose. Only individuals or teams clearly identified as requir­ing it would be granted access to this knowledge, it would be restricted to the location where the work was done, and it could not be transferred or applied in strategic military weapons systems. If by chance guidance or reentry technology was involved Europeans could only be allowed access to such knowledge “if it could be clearly demonstrated that (1) better technology and know-how exists in the prospective contributing country or, (2) in the case of only equivalent technology and know-how, there are over-riding reasons to seek foreign par­ticipation in these areas, and (3) neither the U. S. technology nor end products resulting from it would be transferred to any third party.”86 In sum, if there was little to lose the need for international collaboration could trump national security, but only under the strictest need-to-know regime and with appropriate safeguards.

The launcher policy described by Johnson was effectively that agreed between NASA and the State Department in July (see earlier).87 It was conditional on Europe making a substantial contribution to the program, meaning “at least 10%” of its estimated cost of some $10 billion over ten years. This share could be met by contributing significant new technology to the system, or by developing a major system or subsystem, or by a combination of these. If the Europeans were willing to make this 10 percent-plus financial engagement, the United States “would no longer determine the availability of launch services for European payloads on a unilateral case-by-case basis”: American and European interests would be on an “equal footing” with regards to the supply of launchers “for pos­sible commercially competitive purposes.” This “blanket assurance” to launch had to be “consistent with relevant international agreements,” however: the United States would respect the decisions of the Intelsat Assembly of Parties. In particular, unless two-thirds of the Intelsat member states voted that a proposed separate system did do significant economic harm to the global system (a “nega­tive finding”), the United States would launch for Europe.

Johnson did not want to provide substantive criteria for “significant economic harm,” as requested by the Europeans. The Intelsat negotiations were drawing to a close, major concessions had been made, and this was no time to reopen the debate on the highly contested Article XIV of the definitive agreements. However, he did stress that the United States “would provide the requested launcher facilities [. . .] even if it had voted against the project.”88 On the other hand, if there was a negative finding, the United States would still “consider their position, without saying that under no circumstances could they provide launchers”89 In short Johnson assured the Europeans, however significant eco­nomic harm was defined, the United States would not apply “the principle of being consistent with Intelsat arrangements” “in a narrow way.”90

The general philosophy underlying Washington’s position is clear. It was no longer trying to “help” a weaker ally, as in the 1960s. Europeans had a finan­cial, technological, and industrial contribution to make to post-Apollo. Once they had decided what they wanted to do, the United States would determine how best to meet their requirements, consistent with Washington’s desire to foster international collaboration and to protect its national interests broadly defined. Of course the relationship would, of necessity, be dominated by the United States. The asymmetries in contributions of all kinds were evident, “Nor will it be in our interest to attempt to enhance the benefits for the Europeans artificially.”91 Thus time and again when the Europeans sought to be treated as “equal partners”—in decision-making, in access to technology, in negotia­tions with third countries—they were reminded of their subordinate position. Europe’s ability to influence events would be proportional to their share in the program and restricted to the areas in which they were directly engaged.

The position on launchers followed the general pattern: greater US flexibility was tied to substantial European participation. The State Department made it clear that, if that participation was forthcoming, the United States had no inten­tion of using its power in Intelsat to indiscriminately protect American interests. The willingness to interpret voting majorities in terms of a negative finding, which favored the petitioner, was indicative of this flexibility.

Of course, there were still areas of uncertainty. How binding on the United States was a “negative finding”? How did one measure “significant economic harm”? Johnson recognized Europe’s fears of being held hostage to American launch policy if they did not retain independent access to space. He was willing to give near-blanket assurances of launcher availability: after all, there was a differ­ence between launching foreign payloads “subject to case-by-case determination on the one hand and, on the other, offering an assured, on-going commitment to do so for all European space projects (so long as they are for peaceful purposes and consistent with international agreements.)”92 However, he was extremely reluctant to commit the United States to launch European telecommunications satellites “unconditionally,” and in defiance of a “negative finding” by two-thirds of the appropriate Intelsat organ—a situation that, he thought, was most unlikely to arise anyway.

While the US authorities played down the difference between the two par­ties, the Europeans tended to emphasize them. Lefevre insisted that an adverse recommendation in Intelsat was not legally binding, and that Europe could legitimately defy it if it had its own launcher. Europeans also wanted to inter­pret “economic harm” so widely that they could reconcile their commitment to Intelsat with “projects which could be competitive with Intelsat rules without jeopardizing its existence.” Johnson was emphatic that the credibility of the United States as an international actor demanded that it respect the decisions taken by Intelsat (even if it had voted against them). Europe could not be treated differently to any other petitioner. The United States, Johnson wrote to Lefevre on October 2, 1970, “would adhere to the language and intent of article XIV, and would expect other countries to do the same.”93

Beginnings

The relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union in space is quite accurately portrayed as one of fierce competition. The launch of the Sputniks in late 1957 and Gagarin’s flight in 1961 were deep blows to American pride. They challenged preconceptions about the superiority of American sci­ence and technology, even about the superiority of the capitalist system itself. Thus, the global struggle for “the soul of mankind” inscribed itself upon a mul­titude of scientific instruments, launch systems, institutions, and individuals.1 For many years, historians have labored to reconcile the paradoxes of Soviet- American cooperation in space with the space and missile races of the mid-twen­tieth century.

Such histories commonly open with speculation centered on the likelihood of a joint lunar mission proposed by President Kennedy to Premier Khrushchev.2 Indeed, Kennedy’s famed May 1961 “Moon Speech,” announcing the United States’ “race to the moon” was bookended by both covert and public invitations to collaborate.3 In so doing, Kennedy unwittingly set up audacious expecta­tions for astronauts and cosmonauts to explore the moon and beyond. With human spaceflight as the agency’s signature activity, scholars have struggled to assign some sort of reason to the two nations’ rocky progression from (what was apparently) an utter lack of intercourse to the stilted Apollo-Soyuz Test Project and finally the interdependence of the International Space Station.4 Geopolitics became reified in human spaceflight: cold shoulders through the dire years of missile and space races; detente’s climactic 1975 handshake in space; and finally, the Cold War denouement in the International Space Station agreements.

Beginning with the Kennedy-Khrushchev moon flirtations, historians have characterized US offers for cooperation as meeting a “rhetorical goal” and functioning as a “benign hypocrisy.” Operating as such, the US space program appeared open to Soviet contributions, but at the same time participated in implicit competition to outdo their rival in hardware and soft power perfor­mances. Such narratives explain the complex motives and political economy of major commitments such as a joint lunar expedition, the ASTP, or the ISS.

Well-publicized, expensive, and demanding years of lead-time, these projects were carefully orchestrated under the watchful eyes of presidential administra­tions and Congress (whose interests at times conflicted with one another and/ or NASA administration).

On the flip side of the coin, the many years spanning Kennedy’s joint lunar base offer and the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project as well as those years separating ASTP and the International Space Station Agreements are commonly explained by intractable negotiations on diplomatic fronts: wrangling over nonprolifera­tion treaties, controversy over interventions in the developing world, or the uncompromising political will of heads of state. Collaboration seems impossible at these times.

These two chapters aim to add breadth to that presumption, exploring Soviet – American collaboration through the following questions. To what degrees did representatives of NASA attempt to sustain collaborative activities since the 1957-1958 IGY? To what degree might collaborative activities have been shaped by the interests of researchers and policymakers representing state, national, and transnational scientific organizations?

It remains something of a paradox that the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics/Russia have cooperated in space exploration for more than half a century. While their relations have been strained by fears of technol­ogy transfer, threatened by executive posturing, and reshaped by fiscal consider­ations, to fluctuating degrees individuals making up these research communities have labored steadily to share resources and exchange information.

The year 1991 ushered in a flurry of activity, calibrated to the rapid disarmament of both Soviet and American Cold War era weapons arsenals. At the July 1991 Bush-Gorbachev summit, the two signed the START I treaty, agreeing to cut their weapons base by roughly two-thirds. While meeting, they also signed an Agreement Concerning Cooperation in the Exploration and Use of Outer Space for Peaceful Purposes. As with previous agreements (including 1987, 1977, 1972, 1971, and to a lesser extent, 1962), the agreement charged joint working groups (JWGs) to negotiate cooperation in a number of fields including space biology and medicine, solar system exploration, space astronomy and astrophys­ics, solar-terrestrial physics, and earth sciences.

As detailed in chapter 7, cooperation between the United States and Soviet Union tapered off considerably in the 1980s, but by no means stopped. Several instruments were being built and flown on host satellites: between 1987 and 1997 a total of 70 NASA life science experiments flew on three Soviet/Russian bio­satellites.10 In August 1991, NASA sent its Total Ozone Mapping Spectrometer into orbit aboard a Russian Cyclone (Tsyklon) rocket.11 That same year, using a research ship, a plane, and a ground station, Soviet scientists made observations of chemical releases in the Caribbean for the American Combined Release and Radiation Effects Satellite program.

Four themes in the Agreement for Cooperation captured the limelight. For one, this agreement called for preliminary cooperation on the Shuttle-Mir mis­sions. Second, in a revolutionary change in trade limitations, Russia would be permitted to submit a bid for launching one US-built Inmarsat 3 communications satellite (a tremendously important shift in international trade relations, permit­ting the launch of a US instrument on a Soviet lifter). Third, the United States would contribute a hard lander to Russia’s Mars 94 spacecraft. And finally, the two nations would explore the possibility of using the Soyuz-TM as a “lifeboat” for the space station in medical or technical emergencies (also known as an Assured Crew Return Vehicle or ACRV).12 NASA and the White House viewed these projects as just the beginning of a long-term relationship in space exploration.

In July 1992, one month after the Bush-Yeltsin summit and just three months after taking office as NASA administrator, Daniel Goldin joined a delegation of military, industrial, and scientific leaders heading to the former Soviet Union. Led by NASA and the National Space Council, this interagency delegation included Brian Dailey (new staff director of the National Space Council), Martin Faga (assistant secretary of the Air Force for space), and representatives of the National Security Council, State Department, and Central Intelligence Agency. Following the failure of the Space Exploration Initiative in 1989, the Bush administration was interested in implementing significant changes in NASA functionality. To this end they recruited Daniel Goldin from TRW Space Technology Group, where he had considerable success running space programs using minimal mana­gerial structures and streamlined engineering practices. Goldin’s mandate was to implement a top-down change in NASA practices and procedures (in parallel to the space sciences success with “Faster, Better, Cheaper”).13

Following a visit to European Space Agency facilities in Germany, the delega­tion went on to a number of institutions in Russia and Ukraine. These included sites geared for both human and robotic space activities including the Russian Flight Control Center (TsUp), NPO Energia, NPO Energomash, Khrunichev, KB Salyut, Babakin Research and Test Center, Lavotchkin, NPO Zvezda, and the Yuriy Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center (Star City). NASA and NSC rep­resentatives met with the directors of the institutes visited. They also met with the heads of the Russian Committee for Hydrometeorology & Monitoring the Environment, the Institute of Biomedical Problems (IBMP—responsible for the Bion satellites detailed in chapter 7), the Ministry of Industry, the Department of Aviation Industry, the Central Aerohydro dynamics Institute (TsAGI), and the Institute of Aviation Motors.

The Goldin-Dailey delegation departed on July 17. On July 18 a second American delegation arrived. It was headed by the director of the Office of Space Commerce (in the Department of Commerce). In the days to come, senior management and engineers from 17 leading aerospace firms visited more than 40 locations in Russia. They met with representatives of design bureaus, scien­tific production associations, research institutes, and production enterprises to discuss possible joint ventures. Administrator Goldin explained the significance of the second delegation—the US government aimed to cultivate “genuine” partnerships among Russian and US firms. Hoping to thwart accusations that aerospace firms were unnecessary middlemen in state collaboration, he went on to explain that this Department of Commerce trip was necessary for US aerospace companies to assess Russian technologies and that the Russians were planning a similar trip in reciprocation in the hope of finding routes for Russian – American business partnerships.14

Transnational projects occupied a minefield of political and economic con­siderations, making it a shrewd decision for the government and industry execu­tives to travel separately. Might Russian launch vehicles infringe on the budding US commercial launch market? If NASA purchased surplus hardware from the Russians, would savings in taxpayer dollars outweigh the “cost” of engineer­ing and production work lost? Might profits from civil space and aviation joint ventures help US firms weather cuts in defense spending? That being said, was the government merely offering Lockheed, Boeing, Rockwell, and the like new “subsidies” intended to help weather recent defense cuts?

Instead, proponents suggested that the adaptive reuse of Soviet surplus equipment such as the Topaz reactor, electric rocket thrusters, and the dock­ing module originally intended for Buran-Mir missions provided value-added work to US industries. At the same time this hardware cut research and devel­opment overhead for NASA and the Department of Defense. Dan Goldin’s observations, though understandably crafted to appeal to the appropriate audience, reflect the tricky nature of Russian-American business dealings. Aviation Week and Space Technology explained that “[a]dministration offi­cials are eager to involve US companies in the cooperative process, but they do not discount the possibility that government funds will flow directly to Russia to purchase space hardware.” Addressing the specter of post-Cold War unemployment, Goldin intimated that he desired to be particularly careful that the US civil space program did not add to the woes of the aerospace industry as defense spending dropped precipitously.15 Rather than (in his own words) simply “ship money to Russia and get back a product,” the new NASA administrator suggested that these new international deals could wind up a win-win situation: with taxpayers saving money and US firms acting as prime contractors on retrofit projects concerning Russian machines. “Do we want to make work for Americans, or do we want Americans to do value-added work?” he asked.16

In the weeks that the Goldin-Dailey delegation and the Office of Space Commerce industrial commission toured Russia and Ukraine, they observed a network of communities in painful transition. What remained of the Soviet scientific research base writ large were roughly 400,000 public and semipri­vate institutions. Nested within complex hierarchies, some were at technical universities, others specialist institutions, and many situated within entire “closed” cities of technical specialization.17 These included organizations such as the Institute of Microelectronics and High Purity Materials, the Research Institute of Robotics and Engineering Cybernetics, the Moscow Institute of Electronic Technology, and the St. Petersburg Aerospace Instrumentation University, all in need of funding and all in need of administrative direction. Some institutes, such as the Committee for Hydrometeorology, dated to the Cold War era. The Russian Academy of Sciences was reestablished, its origins dating to Peter the Great.

The 1969 agreement on the transfer of launcher technology to Japan catalyzed renewed efforts in the country to establish a centralized body responsible for space that was similar to NASA. Japan’s National Aeronautics and Space Development Agency (NASDA) was established to that end. Though ISAS was sidelined in favor of NASDA, both these bodies along with a few other government agencies and private corporations steered the Japanese space program until an umbrella organization called the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) was formed in 2003.29 Cognizant of the “growing pains” of building and establishing a space program in Japan, of the geopolitical realities during the Cold War, and of domestic politics in Japan, over the last 50 years NASA has identified selective niches within ISAS, NASDA, and later JAXA for scientific and technological col­laborative endeavors.

NASDA was established as a public organization on October 1, 1969, with strong support from both the minister of science and technology and Prime Minister Eisaku Sato. It operated under the policy guidance of the STA who provided its budget, along with some government agencies. NASDA took over the functions of the National Space Development Center and of the Ionosphere Sounding Satellite Division of the Radio Research Laboratories of the Ministry of Posts and Telecommunications and included engineers and scientists from both academic and industrial circles.

The timing of the creation of NASDA reflected the trajectory space was tak­ing toward the application needs of nation-states. The agency took the lead in the development of space application capabilities in Japan, including satellites for remote sensing, communications, and meteorological observation, the develop­ment of launch vehicles for those satellites and the development of facilities for production, testing, and tracking the satellites. It also benefited from a change in Washington’s foreign policy initiatives in the 1970s that saw the waning of a “special dependency relationship” that had characterized US-Japan relations since the end of World War II. The opening of China during the Nixon administra­tion and the “changing nature of the cold war—detente with Soviet Union, the evolution of a new world economy, and domestic forces transformed the Pacific alliance.”30 This was reflected in NASA administrator Tom Paine’s invitation to Japan in March 1970 to participate in the post-Apollo program (see chapter 4).

While the Japanese space community was eager to participate in the post-Apollo program, it was unclear what they could contribute. Uncertainties over the evolv­ing configuration of the post-Apollo program itself (chapters 4 and 5) were com­pounded by the reorganization of the national program, and the limited resources Japan had for space. Minister Nishida noted that the country could only make a useful contribution to post-Apollo if it had achieved something significant of its own, and was suitably advanced technologically: “real international cooperation” was otherwise impossible.31 Notwithstanding these reservations a special commit­tee was formed by the Space Activities Commission on July 1, 1970, to consider what contributions Japan could make. It sought clarity from NASA on its detailed plans, but to little avail given the fluid nature of the situation in the United States and Frutkin’s determination that potential partners should bring their own sug­gestions to the table (see chapter 4). A top-level team visited NASA field centers and contractors in July 1971 and had extensive discussions with Arnold Frutkin at the NASA headquarters.32 The lesson that was drawn was that Japan should first close the technological gap with other countries by developing space technolo­gies indigenously. The Special Committee backed off from any major participa­tion in the shuttle, recommending instead, in its final report filed in May 1974, that Japan prepare experiments to use the shuttle and Spacelab, doing its best to develop and supply the hardware itself.33 It also recommended that when the next generation system for human spaceflight was developed it was in Japan’s interest to extend its cooperation to the full development of a space laboratory and to send­ing a Japanese astronaut into space.34 This came in handy when deliberations on participation in the space station came up in 1984.