Category NASA in the World

The original stimuli to international collaboration were two; both of them were referred to in the episode described at the start of this book and are illustrated in table 1.1 . First, there was the wish, inspired by major international initiatives such as the International Geophysical Year (IGY), and coherent with an abiding thread in American foreign policy, to engage other countries, especially friendly and neutral countries, in an exciting new scientific and technological adventure where they could benefit from American leadership and largesse.30 Second, there was the need for global coverage in some applications and for a worldwide track­ing and data handling network to support NASA’s multiple space missions from planetary probes to human exploration. Sunny Tsiao has recently covered the latter dimension in depth.31 This book will concentrate on the scientific and technologi­cal aspects of international collaboration in scientific and applications satellites and in human spaceflight from the creation of NASA into the twenty-first century.

In 1965 Arnold Frutkin published an important book in which he identified a number of criteria for a successful international collaborative project.32 Twenty years later they were presented more or less unchanged as the basic guidelines for NASA’s relationship with its partners.33 In this summary form they read:

• Designation by each participating government of a government agency for the negotiation and supervision of joint efforts;

• conduct of projects and activities having scientific validity and mutual interest;

• agreement upon specific projects rather than generalized programs;

• acceptance of financial responsibility by each participating agency for its own contributions to joint projects;

• provision for the widest and most practicable dissemination of the results of cooperative projects.

This list requires some elaboration.

The first requirement was that NASA have just one interlocutor to deal with in the partner country, and an interlocutor that had official authority to engage the resources, human, financial, and industrial in the collaborative project. Frutkin was aware that, at the dawn of the space age, many individuals, pressure groups, and gov­ernment departments would be jockeying for control of the civilian space program, as they had in the United States. He wanted to avoid NASA becoming enrolled in these domestic conflicts or, indeed, unwittingly being used to promote the interests of one party over the other. Hence his reluctance to negotiate with anyone but an official representative. This policy, coupled with NASA’s offer to fly foreign payloads in March 1959 (see chapter 2), not only stimulated the creation of space programs in foreign countries, but also encouraged the national authorities to designate one body as responsible for international collaboration, and in some cases led to the rapid establishment of a national or regional space agency. Whereas Frutkin originally left the door open for collaborating with “a central, civilian, and government sponsored, if not governmental authority,” by 1986 space agencies were so widespread interna­tionally that NASA could simply designate them as its preferred partners.34

The second criterion was obviously meant to make scientific exploration, not political exploitation, the core of any collaborative space program. Frutkin was emphatic that each country “poll its scientific community for relevant ideas” and, in consultation with NASA, “develop full-fledged proposals for cooperative exper­iments having a character of their own.”35 This would also deflect charges that the United States was using its superior space capabilities to “dominate” its partners.

This concern also informed the criterion that all agreements should be on a proj­ect-by-project basis. An open-ended engagement to collaborate could lead to NASA committing itself to costly projects that were of no interest to US investigators. By evaluating each proposal on a case-by-case basis, it could be assessed for its novelty and compatibility with the general thrust of the American space effort, so contrib­uting to the knowledge base of both partners. For that reason too, both would be willing to invest resources in their part of the project without seeking help from the other. This clause, summarized by the slogan “no exchange of funds,” was a cor­nerstone of NASA policy, and a touchstone for the willingness of its partners to take space collaboration seriously and to invest their (often scarce) resources in a project.

The demand for full disclosure in the fifth and last criterion listed above flows from this. It was also meant to ensure that the joint program did not touch directly on matters of national security at home or in the foreign country. Frutkin was well aware of the tight interconnection between the civil and the military in space matters. The requirement that the results of any joint effort be disseminated as widely as possible was at once a gesture to this commingling and an attempt to carve out a space for civil, peaceful activities that could be conducted internation­ally alongside military, and so predominantly national programs.

Frutkin’s principle of “clean technological and managerial interfaces” was an ingenious solution to resolving NASA’s two, potentially conflicting, missions as mandated by the Space Act: to collaborate without jeopardizing leadership. Leadership depended on the capacity to define the frontier of space science and technology. Scientific and technological collaboration, unless carefully man­aged, could undermine that leadership. By maintaining “clean” technological interfaces, and by regulating knowledge flows across them, NASA was able to protect its cutting-edge science and technology to secure American preeminence while sharing knowledge and skills that foreign partners still valued.

It is not surprising that of 38 international cooperative spacecraft projects undertaken or agreed on between 1958 and 1983, 33 were with Western Europe,

Table 1.2 Benefits of NASA’s international programs in Western Europe Scientific/ Technical Benefits

Attracts brainpower to work on challenging research problems

Shapes foreign programs to be compatible with US effort by encouraging others to “do it our way”

Limits foreign funds for space activities that are competitive or less compatible with US space interests

Obtains outstanding experiments from non-US investigators

Obtains coordinated or simultaneous observations from multiple investigators

Opens doors for US scientists to participate in foreign programs

Economic Benefits

Has contributed over $2 billion in cost savings and contributions to NASA’s space effort Improves the balance of trade by creating new markets for US aerospace products

Political Benefits

Creates a positive image of the United States among scientific, technical, and official elites Encourages European unity by working with multinational institutions Reinforces the image of US openness in contrast to the secrecy of the Soviet space program Uses space technology as a tool of diplomacy to serve broader foreign policy objectives

Source: Adapted from John Logsdon, “US-European Cooperation in Space Science: A 25-Year Perspective,” Science 223:4631 (January 6, 1984): 11-16.

given its relative wealth and industrial capacity. Of a total of 73 experiments with foreign principal investigators, 52 were with this region. Canada, Japan, and the Soviet Union, along with several developing countries made up the balance.36 This was quite unlike a program like Atoms for Peace that proliferated research and some power reactors throughout the developed and developing world in the late 1950s driven by foreign policy and commercial concerns that had little regard for indigenous capability. This difference was deliberate: Frutkin was emphatic that space collaboration should never become a form of foreign aid, so effectively restricting the scope of NASA’s activities to industrialized or rapidly industrializing countries with a strong science and engineering base.

This also explains the insistence that collaborative experiments should be of “mutual interest” (second criterion above). How could a foreign experiment that had “a character of its own” be of some value to NASA and to American inves­tigators? For Frutkin, it had to dovetail with the broad interests of the American program, if only to justify the expenditure of US dollars. Thus, each cooperative project had to be “a constructive element of the total space program of the United States space agency, approved by the appropriate program officials and justifying the expenditure of funds for the US portion of the joint undertaking.”37

John Logsdon has put together some of the “constructive” contributions that international collaboration, notably with Western Europe, made between 1958 and 1983, not only to the US space effort as such, but also to the American economy and to the pursuit of American foreign policy. His findings are summarized in table 1.2. This table not only shows the concrete ways in which foreign experiments were to be of “mutual interest” scientifically, but also draws attention to the economic and political benefits of space collaboration, including channeling foreign resources down

avenues that would not undermine American scientific and technological leadership, creating markets, projecting a positive image of the United States abroad, and pro­moting foreign policy agendas, including the postwar integration of Europe.

These putative benefits were not always welcomed by those actually engaged in the practicalities of international collaboration. American scientists and engineers, flush with the enormous success of their own program, feared that their partners were less capable than they were, and might not fulfill their commitments. They balked at the additional layers of managerial complexity, and the assumed added cost of international projects. As resources for NASA’s space science program shrunk in the 1970s they sometimes resented the presence of foreign payloads on NASA satellites, suspecting that they had been chosen less on the basis of merit than because they were free to the agency. And they noted that by encouraging foreign powers to develop space capabilities NASA was undermining American leadership in high-technology industry: it was producing its own competitors.38 International collaboration was not uncontested at home, particularly as NASA’s partners gained in maturity, and were competitors as much as collaborators.

The weight of the several factors (scientific and technical/economic/politi – cal) that were brought into play in the first two decades of international collabo­ration varied depending on circumstances. A scientific experiment built with a foreign principal investigator and paid for by a national research council—like Geiss’s solar wind experiment on Apollo 11—raised few if any broader economic or political issues. Complex and expensive projects calling for major technologi­cal developments and managerial inputs were at the other end of the spectrum.

The 1975 Apollo-Soyuz Test Project (ASTP) is an example of this (see chapter 7). Often reduced to simply a “handshake in space,” it involved docking an American Apollo and a Soviet Soyuz spacecraft with each other in orbit 120 miles above the earth. During the two days in which the hatch between Apollo and Soyuz was open, three American astronauts and two Soviet cosmonauts exchange pleasantries and gifts, and conducted a few scientific experiments together. This was above all a political statement, a concrete manifestation of the new climate of detente with the Soviet Union being pursued by President Nixon and his national security adviser and secretary of state Henry Kissinger.39

Political concerns also provided a trigger for two other major projects in the 1960s and 1970s. One was Helios, the $100-million venture to send two probes built in West Germany, and weighing over 200 kilograms each, to within 45 mil­lion kilometers of the sun (see chapter 2). Helios was the most ambitious joint project agreed to in the 1960s between NASA and a foreign partner. It was the result of an invitation for space collaboration made by President Lyndon Johnson to Chancellor Ludwig Erhard during a state banquet at the White House in December 1965. For Erhard a major civil space project was one way of reduc­ing German obligations to buy military equipment from the United States as required by the offset agreements between the two countries. For Johnson it was a gesture of support for America’s most faithful ally in Europe at a time when the Vietnam War was increasingly unpopular, and the French were increasingly hostile to NATO. Of course, once the official offer had been made these political concerns receded into the background. Scientific and technical success, however, should not be decoupled from the political will that created the essential window of opportunity for scientists, engineers, and industry to embark on such an ambi­tious project so early in Germany’s postwar space history with NASA’s help.

The same can be said of the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment (SITE), another impressive international project that was agreed on with the Indian authorities in 1970 (see chapter 12). Here an advanced application satellite (ATS-6) broadcast television programs to village receivers directly, or via relay sta­tions provided by the Indian authorities. For India the satellite was an ingenious way of bringing educational television, produced locally and dealing with local needs such as family planning, into otherwise inaccessible rural areas, while giv­ing an important popular boost to the indigenous space program. For the United States it served a variety of political and economic needs. It promoted the mod­ernization of India as an alternative model to China for developing countries. It was part of broader strategy to channel Indian resources down the path of civilian technologies. And, by withdrawing the satellite from service after a year, NASA successfully encouraged the Indian government to buy additional models from US business. SITE, while being of undoubted benefit to various constituencies in India, also served multiple geopolitical needs for the United States in the region.

In all three of the cases just described, while political (and economic) motives were part of the broader context inspiring the collaboration in question, they were essentially left behind or bracketed during the scientific and technical definition of the projects and their implementation. Once the programs got under way the fundamen­tal maxims of clean interfaces and no exchanges of funds dominated development.

There was a notable exception to this: the major initiative, inspired by NASA administrator Tom Paine, to engage Europe at the technological core of the post – Apollo program between 1969 and 1973 (see chapters 4-6). In a nutshell, with NASA’s budget shrinking dramatically after the “golden years” of the Apollo lunar missions, Paine hoped to get Europe to contribute as much 10 percent (or $1 billion) of an ambitious program that initially included a space station and a shuttle to service it. Foreign participation would also help win the support of a reluctant Congress and president for NASA’s plans. And it would undermine those who insisted that Europe needed independent access to space—Europeans were told that they were wasting valuable resources by developing their own expendable launcher to compete with a reusable shuttle that, it was claimed, would reduce the cost per kilogram into orbit by as much as a factor of ten. For several years joint working groups invested hundreds of hours discussing a variety of projects. Some, like having European industry build parts of the orbiter wing, threw clean interfaces to the winds. Others, like the suggestion that Europe build a space tug to transfer payloads from the shuttle’s low-earth orbit to a geosynchronous orbit, a project of interest to the Air Force, touched directly on matters of national security. The entire process was reconfigured soon after President Nixon authorized the development of the shuttle in January 1972. Clean interfaces and no exchange of funds imposed their logic on the dis­cussion (and were reinforced by anxieties about European capabilities to fulfill commitments and by fears that NASA was becoming entangled in unwieldy and costly joint management schemes). The European “contribution” was reevalu­ated, many existing projects were cancelled, and Germany decided to take the lead in building Spacelab, a shirt-sleeve scientific laboratory that fitted into the shuttle’s cargo bay and that satisfied all the standard criteria of international col­laboration. So too did Canada’s construction of the Remote Manipulator System (RMS), a robotic arm that grabbed satellites in space, or lifted them from the shuttle’s payload bay prior to deployment. Once built both Spacelab and the RMS were handed over entirely to NASA to operate.

The willingness to share technology in the post-Apollo program (and also in support of the European Launcher Development Organization in the mid- 1960s—see chapter 3) was part of a general sentiment in Washington that some­thing had to be done to close the technological gap that had opened up between the two sides of the Atlantic at the time. Space technology was seen as a crucial sector for closing this gap.40 Technological sharing would undermine European criticisms of American dominance in high-tech areas, while helping to build a European aerospace industry that could eventually serve as a reliable partner sharing costs in civil and military areas: Europe would assume some of the bur­den for its own defense.

Soon after taking the oath of office in January 1969 President Nixon estab­lished a Space Task Group (STG) chaired by Vice President Spiro Agnew. Its three other members were NASA administrator Tom Paine, Lee A DuBridge, the president’s science adviser, and Robert C. Seamans, the secretary of the Air Force and former deputy administrator of NASA. The STG’s aim was to find ways of making cuts in the space program, and to come up with a “coordinated program and budget proposal” that factored in “international implications and cooperation.”4 It submitted its report to the president on September 15, 1969, and met the press two days later.5

The STG proposed three alternatives programs having different budgetary levels. All shared the same goal, “and I emphasize the word ‘goal,’” said Agnew, “and not a commitment—a manned landing on Mars before the end of the cen­tury.” Each offered a different path to that goal depending on how quickly it was achieved.6 At the core of the STG’s program lay an orbiting space station and a space transportation system. The station, envisaged for the mid-1970s, would be initially designed to house 6-12 astronauts. It could be expanded by the subse­quent addition of modules to accommodate 50-100 people. Paine emphasized that since “a substantial reduction in the cost of space transportation [was] essen­tial. . . a new and truly low-cost space transportation system [was] an integral part of the space station concept.”7 Three components were foreseen for this system: a reusable space shuttle that could access low-earth orbit from a terrestrial launch pad, reusable space tugs to move people and equipment from the shuttle’s cargo bay to various other orbits as well as onto the moon, and, third, a reusable nuclear engine, derived from the Nerva project then well under way.8

The original shuttle concept made maximum use of existing aeronautical technology.9 As described by Paine, the shuttle, which would hopefully make its maiden flight in about 1976 or 1977, would “look like one of these giant new 747 intercontinental jets, but instead of being on the airstrip horizontally for a takeoff it will take off vertically, so it will be racked up sitting on its tail. Instead of having jet engines slung under its wings,” the NASA administra­tor went on, “it will have rocket engines, of the type that power our Saturn 5 rockets, clustered in the tail.” The second “orbiter stage,” mounted on the nose of this “booster stage,” would also be a spacecraft with wings “about the size, weight and appearance of a big transcontinental Boeing 707.” Both were fully reusable, had a crew of two (plus passengers in the orbiter), and would be piloted back to earth at the end of their missions, where they would land horizontally, like airliners. It was hoped that the reusability of the space transport system could reduce the cost of injecting one pound of payload into orbit by at least an order of magnitude, from some $500 with a Saturn launch vehicle in the 1960s, to something below $50 per pound of payload in orbit in the 1970s. Seamans was quick to emphasize that the Department of Defense (DoD) was particularly attracted by this feature.10

While DoD support was obviously an asset in Congress it had important tech­nological implications. Apart from requiring a large payload bay and extremely powerful motors, the DoD insisted on a high cross-range capability (on the order of 1,250 nautical miles) for the orbiter.11 The Air Force wanted the shuttle to be able to recover an orbiting payload and return to the Vandenberg Air Force Base in Southern California after a single 110-minute shuttle orbit. The landing strip would have moved about 1,250 miles east as the earth rotated during this time. The operational flexibility required by these kinds of missions required sacrificing payload weight for the added weight of the Thermal Protection System (TPS) that would be needed to protect the orbiter in the hypersonic maneuvers called for. It also required NASA to replace a straight-wing configuration with a delta-wing.12

What of international collaboration? The STG identified it as one of the five principal program objectives of the post-Apollo program. During the month prior to the release of its report the Nixon administration issued two National Security Study Memoranda, NSSM 71 and NSSM 72, signed by the national security adviser, Henry Kissinger. NSSM 71, dated August 14, 1969, established an interagency committee to review policies “governing the access by foreign countries to certain advanced technologies vital to our national security.” It had to “give full consideration” to the administration’s commitment “to international cooperation in the peaceful application of nuclear and space technologies and to the necessity for the free exchange of scientific knowledge when national security is not impaired.”13 NSSM 72, dated September 4, 1969, called for the creation of a small ad hoc group on International Space Cooperation to report on possibili­ties for cooperation “with friendly countries as well as the Soviet Union.”14

In a letter to the president in August 1969 Paine welcomed the policy review authorized by NSSM 71, which he hoped would “clear away unnecessary restric­tions which could seriously obstruct the increased international activity” Nixon had called for.15 He saw possibilities for collaborating in planetary exploration with the Soviet Union, and for closer collaboration with Japan, Australia, and Canada. But it was Western Europe that particularly interested him. The possible scope of cooperation reflected NASA’s judgment of where European scientific and technological strengths lay, and what they could afford. The emphasis was placed on applications satellites, planetary missions (along with the Soviets), and the inclusion of foreign astronauts in post-Apollo manned flight programs.16 The State Department echoed these sentiments.17 Indeed, at this stage of planning, no one saw much scope for Europe doing more than being involved in science and applications, and in using the space station and the space transportation system. Participation in hardware development as such was not seriously considered.

The Shuttle Is Authorized. . . and the Options Shrink

On January 5, 1972, President Nixon announced that the United States should proceed at once to develop “an entirely new type of space transportation system designed to transform the space frontier of the 1970s’s into familiar ter­ritory,” readily accessible to humans in the decades to come. The space shuttle would “revolutionize transportation into outer space.” It would “take the astro­nomical costs out of astronautics.” It promised to become “the workhorse of our whole space effort, taking the place of all present launch vehicles except the very smallest and the very largest” (the Scout and the Titan-III rockets) soon after it became operational at the end of the 1970s. The economic benefits of reusabil­ity, which promised to “bring operating costs down as low as one-tenth of those for present launch vehicles,” would allow the shuttle to transport humans safely, routinely, and relatively cheaply. The shuttle would take America “out from our present beach-head in the sky to achieve a real working presence in space.” It would also secure the “pre-eminence of America and American industry in the aerospace field” by engaging the talents of thousands of highly skilled workers and hundreds of industrial contractors who would ensure that the United States maintained its leadership in “man’s epic voyage into space.”1

Nixon did not refer to the military use of the shuttle in his public statement. He authorized NASA administrator James Fletcher, and his deputy George Low, to mention military applications, however. And indeed this aspect was one of several emphasized by the two NASA officials at the San Clemente White House immediately afterward.2 In the press conference Fletcher claimed that the low cost and the ability to launch “on a moment’s notice, when something strange happens,” to be in space within “24 to 48 hours,” would certainly interest the Department of Defense. The NASA administrator said that he was “sure the military will be using the shuttle routinely for most of their payloads,” though he did not specify that this would involve the development of the space tug.

The president only made passing reference to international collaboration in his official January announcement. In conversation just beforehand, however, he told Fletcher and Low how important international collaboration was to him, particularly the flying of astronauts from all nations, East and West.3 He affirmed that it would also be valuable to encourage “meaningful participation” in experiments “and even in space hardware development.”4 Foreign participa­tion, he said, could reduce the development cost of the shuttle, now estimated to be $5.5 billion, by some 10-15 percent.

The group of NASA/ELDO/ESRO experts were scheduled to meet again early in February to narrow down the options for collaboration discussed at the end of 1971. Now that the shuttle was authorized, there was a flurry of activ­ity inside the administration intended to adjust the US position, and the scope it allowed for transatlantic collaboration to the new, more stable political and budgetary situation. A subcommittee of the International Space Cooperation Committee met four times in the latter half of January. The meetings in January 1972 were chaired by John Walsh, a senior staff member of the National Security Council. They dealt with various technological, managerial, and foreign pol­icy aspects of post-Apollo collaboration with Europe that had the shuttle at its core.5 One meeting was devoted to presentations from senior businessmen from the Aerospace Corporation, Hughes Aircraft Company, Lockheed of Georgia, and McDonnell Douglas, all of which had experience in working with European firms. A summary report of the findings of the Walsh subcommittee was sub­mitted to Herman Pollack in the State Department on February 18, 1972, and received in NASA on February 23.6

The European delegation to the joint experts meeting, held in Washington from February 8 to 10, 1972, was again led by Causse and Dinkespiler.7 The US delegation was led this time by Philip E. Culbertson, the director of advanced missions in the Office of Manned Space Flight. The first striking development since the previous expert meeting a little over two months before was the reduc­tion in candidate work packages on the shuttle (see table 5.3). There had been fourteen such packages in all in December. Now there were just five which had a “high probability of being suitable for development in Europe”: the tail assem­bly, elevon, cargo bay door, nose cap, and the landing gear and door. Europe’s potential financial contribution to the shuttle program had also dropped sharply, from about $400 million for the original fourteen packages to $100-115 mil­lion for the five items on offer (see table 6.1).

Several technology-related concerns drove this reduced offer. Culbertson and Frutkin assured John Walsh’s ad hoc committee that the five work packages offered to the Europeans were limited to “subsystems which require least trans­fer of technology,”8 and to tasks that their firms could carry out “substantially on their own, thus minimizing European need for US technical assistance.”9 NASA also stipulated that anything Europe built should not have a significant impact on critical US schedules. If the Europeans failed to deliver as expected, there had to be “reasonable recovery options” on the US side. It was also impor­tant to choose elements whose design was more or less frozen, and not likely to change. National security concerns provided an added twist. Indeed the entire propulsion package was withdrawn at the second experts meeting, probably to reduce the risk of proliferating missile-related technology. The net result was a

package that was relatively simple and “exclude[d] the most interesting tasks” (Frutkin). Indeed, he added, “they have already been termed uninteresting by Europeans involved.”10

Two other major difficulties beset a joint effort on the shuttle even with the work packages simplified to reduce technological transfer to the minimum. One was the problem of project management. As we saw earlier, everybody agreed that the prime contractor on the shuttle would be an American firm. The sub­contractors would be European, and they would be paid for their work by the appropriate European funding authorities. While this mechanism respected the principle of “no exchange of funds,” it raised problems of its own. Among the more serious management problems identified by the joint expert group were “source selection, the negotiations of out-of-scope changes, limitations on the control by the prime contractor over the subcontractor and the relations between subcontractor and its own government authority.”11 In an international project such strains could rapidly escalate to the government level since the American prime would have to negotiate their resolution with the European funding agen­cies that were supporting the subcontractors. As one document put it, “There is a high probability that the contention and acrimony of the subcontracting rela­tionships will degrade, rather than improve, our relations with Europe.”12

The different rhythms of the decision-making process on both sides of the Atlantic complicated technological collaboration on the shuttle even more. NASA was calling for bids for the orbiter in mid-March and expected phase C/D development to begin by July 1, 1972. The expert meeting agreed that if European subcontractors were to be included in the bids by the American prime contractor, a draft government-to-government agreement had to be settled, at least “in principle,” by this date. Frutkin rejected this timeline outright two weeks later. “A working level draft is not adequate for the confidence level we need to defer US subcontractor negotiations and to authorize instead exten­sive interplay between US primes and foreign subs,” he wrote.” The American authorities negotiating with Lefevre and the ESC should insist upon a “commit­ment in principle or letter(s) of intent signed at the ministerial level in interested countries” by July 1 (emphases throughout in the original). It was necessary, wrote Frutkin, “to shock senior European officials into a recognition of the magnitude of the commitments they would have to undertake and the very inad­equate time for negotiating them.”13

The 1977 Bilateral Agreement on the Peaceful Sharing of Outer Space lapsed in 1982, not to be renewed until President Reagan signed a 1984 Joint Resolution of Congress, Public Law 98-562.93 However, the end of detente did not dictate that the world’s two leading space powers would resort to unilateral or bifur­cated multilateral space policy in toto. In some respects, the two nations con­tinued their tacit competition, such as maintaining leadership roles within their respective blocs of communications satellites. For the biosciences, atmospheric sciences, and navigation and rescue satellites, this period was more a time of “business as usual.” Often the execution of these programs depended on the tenacity of a few key individuals.

It was at this time that the international search and rescue programs COSPAS (including the Soviet Union and several allies) and SARSAT (including the United States, Canada, and France) united. In addition to continuing research in space biology and medicine, NASA continued with planetary data exchanges on programs such as the exploration of Venus, solar-terrestrial physics, and the exchange of lunar samples and cartographic data.94 In the meantime, researchers at the Fermi Institute sent their Dust Counting and Mass Analyzer (DUCMA) to Halley’s Comet in 1983-1984.

A few nongovernmental initiatives took place among research institutions based in the United States and USSR. These included the execution of an agreement between the California Institute of Technology and Moscow State University. Dating back to the late 1970s, this agreement carried out joint work in gravitational physics—roughly 30-40 percent of which dealt with space-re­lated fields such as the design of a gravitational wave detector.

In 1985 and 1995, the Office of Technology Assessment (OTA) released its reports US-Soviet and US-Russian Cooperation in Space. Therein the assistant director of the OTA, OTA’s director of international security and the space program, and NASA’s director of international relations labored to make sense of the rapidly changing field of international collaboration in space. Among a broad spectrum of policy concerns, the OTA took some time to reflect on the anomalous nature of collaboration following the 1982 lapse in bilateral coopera­tion. Rather than indicate a “lapse,” the OTA reported a sort of premature glas – nost setting in among researchers and policymakers. Life science in particular encountered an improvement in institutional relations. Before 1982,

[t]here were significant difficulties in acquiring information on mission plans, and in obtaining accurate and complete scientific data. These problems varied in sever­ity through time and across different fields. But workshop scientists believed that the situation was improving noticeably, with regard to both openness and data quality, when the intergovernmental agreement expired. . . At that time, US scien­tists were for the first time being taken into Soviet laboratories and shown instru­ments, performance data, etc.95

The authors continued, distinguishing between individuals and bureaucracy, “While recognizing more openness on the Soviet side,” “scientists stress the still essen­tially closed nature of Soviet scientific and technical programs, and the difficulties Soviet scientists may have working through their own political bureaucracies.”96 The OTA report of 1995 supplies an intriguing list of cooperative activities over the so-called Soviet-American hiatus. Indeed, researchers in both nations exhibited an unmistakable determination to cooperate—with or without a state mandate.

Human relations played a significant role in the sustainability of biosatel­lites. In her history of the Cosmos Biosatellite Program, Kristin Edwards details how the low level of personnel turnover—in the NASA ARC as well as Soviet Institute for Biomedical Problems—fostered a level of personal trust and respect that spanned decades. In Moscow, Dr. Yevgeni A. Ilyin managed each Cosmos mission from its beginning in 1973 to its end. At Ames, internal promotions constituted the only major changes to personnel.97

NASA commenced with negotiations for two Bion missions over the course of 1982-1984. In 1983, Moscow’s Institute for Biomedical Problems, partnered with space programs in the United States, Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, and the German Democratic Republic, launched Cosmos 1514. Researchers held the 1983 Cosmos mission in especially high esteem since this would be the first such satellite to carry primates—two rhesus monkeys.

Immediately thereafter, negotiations commenced on the next mission, Cosmos 1667, which was slated to carry on biomedical research and experi­ments regarding extraterrestrial radiation. By the time the Soviets had launched 1667 in July of 1985, US-Soviet relations had not only warmed, but the Reagan administration had even advanced the idea of simulated space rescue mission between the Shuttle and the Salyut-7 Space Station.

Multinational Cosmos Biosatellite programs continued, essentially in the same vein through 1992’s Bion 2229. This, the eighth consecutive mission to carry US instruments, was regarded as the most integrated set up for tech­nical collaboration to date. Notes ARC’s history of bioscience: “Russian and American scientists and engineers worked together more closely on Cosmos 2229 than on any previous space mission. NASA developed several flight hard­ware units for the mission, trained Russian engineers and technicians to operate the hardware, and in collaboration. . . developed postflight procedures.”98 These measurements included body temperature, electrical activity of the heart, and electrical currents generated in active muscles during space flight.99 With princi­pal investigators hailing from Mt. Sinai School of Medicine, University of Texas Medical Branch, ARC, University of California at Los Angeles, University of Louisville, University of California, and Davis, this mission still exhibited a drop in participation from the last satellite, which had more than 85 NASA-sponsored researchers from 19 states and 3 foreign countries.100

In practice, there were few marked differences between Cosmos 2229 and its successor, the Bion 11. Most notable is the fact that flight hardware on the satellite was the “most highly integrated combination of NASA and Russian sys­tems. These supported research in musculoskeletal, neurovestibular, and regula­tory experiments and necessitated a great deal of joint engineering in post-flight ground-based hardware.”101 However these two missions bridge an historically significant shift in NASA-Soviet principles and guidelines for cooperation.

Even before the launch of Cosmos 2229, Americans realized that they would be paying half the expenses of flight on the next satellite. These funds (roughly $16 million), in one respect, covered a portion of the operating expenses neces­sary for Bion satellites, but also functioned to infuse much-needed capital into the collapsing Soviet space infrastructure. A variety of factors led to the Institute of Biomedical Problems’ request that NASA fund half the Bion 11 and 12 mis­sions. In order to explore the circumstances that precipitated this transition in the principles of collaboration, we must first understand Soviet state infrastruc­tural changes that took place in the preceding decade.102

We know that right now your options at home are limited and outlaw regimes and terrorists may try to exploit your situation and influence you to build new weapons of war. [the physicists and engineers scribbled in tiny notebooks] But I think we should talk about a brain gain solution, and that is a solution of putting you to the work of peace, to accelerate reform and build democracy here, to help your people live better lives for decades to come.

—James A. Baker III,

US secretary of state to Soviet Nuclear Weapons Lab employees,

February 1992105

This chapter, by illustrating the broad scope of technical cooperation in trade, environmental regulation, scientific research, and space policy has demonstrated how the new conditions of cooperation placed both the Russian and American space programs in new positions of accountability (and vulnerability) to one another. Americans invested capital and credibility in exchange for regimes of sur­veillance of the aerospace industry, weapons trade, and the environment. At the same time, Russians agreed to become liable to American inspections, answerable to American contracts, and subject in limited degrees to American prescriptions for trade and business organization. Compliance was another matter.

In the 1990s, several (at times conflicting) post-Cold War objectives shaped the discourses and intercourses of space work. These included pressures for reduced budget expenditures, a new elan for streamlined budgets, desires to reduce nuclear arsenals, as well as a new science policy that often encouraged private industry to invest in its own R&D. The waning of the Cold War did not render space coopera­tion inevitable, neither did it necessitate amicable relations. Instead, Russian design philosophies of adaptability, variability, and compatibility combined with the abun­dance of Soviet era defense spending, providing NASA and American firms with a number of prospective bargains. The globalizing aerospace industry and 1990s trade liberalization both facilitated these transactions and benefited from them.

While Soviet-American competition in space no longer operated as quite the same driver to funding and political consensus as was characteristic of the 1960s, the people and artifacts of the Cold War continued to shape policy. Thus, for the Russians, idle productive capacity and surplus launch vehicles took on a new meaning in a new geopolitical environment.

For Americans, international scientific and technological collaboration in space were used in an attempt to promote American interests abroad with Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR) regulations and later the Iran Nonproliferation Act (INA). Clinton officials anticipated that ISS contributions and US leadership would facilitate the emergence of a consensus for a new US-led Western Alliance— one that co-opted the former Soviet republics against a new block of adversaries: Iran, Iraq, North Korea, Afghanistan, and other “rogue states.”

Between 1994 and 1998, the United States paid out approximately $800 mil­lion through ISS-related activities. The Congressional Reporting Service states that in 1996 “reports surfaced of Russian entities providing ballistic missile assis­tance to Iran, including training; testing and laser equipment; materials; guidance, rocket engine, and fuel technology; machine tools; and maintenance manuals (see CRS Report RL30551).” In 1998, George Tenet, director of Central Intelligence, testified to the Senate Intelligence Committee that Russian aid had, “brought Iran further along in ballistic missile development than previously estimated.”106

These revelations set Congress at odds with the White House, kicking Section 6 of the INA into action, threatening to cut off funding associated with the ISS, and leaving NASA’s largest program potentially dead in the water. Controversy ensued regarding what elements of ISS collaboration applied to the “crew safety” excep­tion of the INA, allowing for a minimum continuation of funds to the program in the interest of US astronaut safety. These discussions became all the more heated following the orbiter Columbia’s tragic accident in 2003, when NASA became completely dependent upon Soviet transport and again when President George H. W. Bush’s Vision for Space Exploration cancelled US plans for a Crew Return Vehicle, again, increasing dependence on the Soviets for access to the ISS.

Critics of the INA (including the CIA) questioned whether or not it was realis­tic to presume that the Russian Space Agency could be held accountable for prolif­eration activities that could take place among any number of firms, the Ministry of Defense, or the Ministry of Atomic Energy (which for all appearances had indeed committed proliferation “crimes” associated with Iran). INA compliance rested upon the apparently naive presumption that a carrot offered to the Russian Space Agency might (influence) behavior of the Russian government writ large. The Russian citizens responded with a range of improvisations including acquiescence and alignment as well as extortion, illusion, and outright noncompliance.

Foreign policy and national security considerations have always played lead­ing roles in the principles and guidelines of Soviet-American space projects. Yet from 1992 onward they were executed in very different manners. Before then, high-profile collaboration in space followed nonproliferation regimes such as the 1963 Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty (which made a joint lunar mission offer plausible) and the 1969 Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (which made the ASTP plausible). In both instances, abstinence from bilateral security regimes could thwart collaboration, but by no means was collaboration offered as an explicit incentive for enlistment in nonproliferation regimes.

Specifically because collaboration in space was linked to a multitude of other cultural, bureaucratic, and capitalistic linkages, enrollment in the ISS became a plausible reward ex post facto. Thus, into the 1990s, cooperation in space con­tinued to function (to varying degrees) as one of America’s tools for legitimating power, spreading democratic ideologies, reproducing cultures of regulation, and teaching the mores of liberalized trade. How successfully?

Given the near incomprehensibility and near catastrophic disorder of the for­mer Soviet military industrial complex, is it surprising that weapons technolo­gies did in fact leak out? Instead we might ask, parallel to the much-debated “achievements” of the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, to what degree did ISS and its associated attempts at post-Soviet order prompt at least a minority of Soviet representatives to “show their hand”—delineating industrial capabilities, iden­tifying the critical state of their R&D institutions, and ultimately, reappraising their own bureaucratic potency if only to increase their legibility to the West? While the entire exercise was a categorically unsuccessful replication of Western structures and ideals, it did present at least an extension of Western capitalist order into the post-Soviet world and, therefore, a useful glimpse into the logic of American international leadership as well.

The context of international cooperation changed importantly in the 1980s. In essence the technological gap between NASA and its traditional partners began to close in a variety of space sectors. At the same time the Soviet Union began to be more open to international collaboration. NASA had to find ways to retain leadership while collaborating with partners who were also competitors in many space sectors.

Launchers were at the cutting edge of this transformation. On Christmas Eve 1979 the European Space Agency (ESA) successfully tested its first Ariane rocket. After overcoming the normal teething troubles Ariane soon proved to be a spectac­ular success. Arianespace (the company that commercialized Ariane) had acquired about 50 percent of the commercial market for satellites by the end 1985, helped on by the lower-than-expected launch rate of the US space shuttle. A second major new player entered the field of rocketry in the late 1980s. Japan developed its H-series to replace the N-series built under American tutelage (see chapter 10). China’s Long March 3 placed a satellite in geostationary orbit in April 1984; the authorities imme­diately announced that they too were keen to find clients abroad. Finally the Soviet Union was showing a greater willingness to offer its previously closed and secretive launcher system for commercial use, and was even seeking a contract to launch a sat­ellite for the International Maritime Satellite Organization (INMARSAT), some­thing that was simply inconceivable several years before (see chapter 8).

Launch technology was not the only area where American leadership was being challenged. Advanced communications satellites and remote sensing satel­lites with technologies more sophisticated than those available in the civil sector in the United States were being built in Europe, Japan, and Canada. The French had taken the lead in commercializing images from SPOT, an earth remote sens­ing satellite that technologically outstripped the earlier NASA Landsat system, then bogged down in negotiations over privatization. Australia as well as a num­ber of rapidly industrializing countries—Brazil, China, India—had constructed solid national space programs, and many Third World countries, along with the Soviet Union (in a reversal of its historic policy), were clamoring for a greater say in international bodies such as Intelsat, which governed the global satellite tele­communications system. Summing up the situation, a special task force of the NASA Advisory Council reported in November 1987 “that there is in process an accelerating equalization of competence in launching capability, satellite manu­facturing and management for communications, remote sensing and scientific activity, and in the prospective use of space for commercial purposes.”41 For Pedersen writing in 1986 this meant that for NASA now “‘power’ is much more likely to mean the power to persuade than the power to prescribe.”42

On October 13-15, 1969, Paine met with the ministers of science and senior space program officials of France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. He also described to a distinguished committee of senior officials of the European Space Conference (ESC) the details of what he called the “President’s new space pro­gram,” which would be presented to Congress for funding in FY1971.18

The ESC was a gathering of ministers or their delegates in the several coun­tries in Europe interested in defining a European space policy for the 1970s. It first met in 1966. The national representatives got together when needed, and very frequently in times of crisis. The ESC was superseded when the European Space Agency (ESA) came into being in 1975, when its key functions passed to the ESA Council.

Paine spelt out the STG proposals in considerable detail to his European audience (as well as to authorities in Australia, Canada, and Japan).19 He sug­gested that NASA could achieve its goals within its then-current levels of fund­ing ($4-6 billion annually). And he welcomed European participation. He had come to Europe, he said, to “personally make it as clear as I can that it is the desire of America not only to continue but indeed to expand the cooperation which from our standpoint has proved so fruitful and which we hope, from your standpoint, has also been significant.”

It is important to realize how radical Paine’s proposals were. Space was no longer being defined primarily as a strategic resource to be deployed in a com­petitive struggle for global technological supremacy with the Soviet Union. It was rather being seen as a new frontier to be explored and colonized, a place to live and work. “For us in America,” Paine said, “which has been called the new world, we feel that space may represent another new world, a seventh continent, which is now opening to mankind in the region 100 miles above the surface of the globe.”20 Europeans realized the revolutionary implications. A report to a committee of the ESC written by Jean-Pierre Causse (of ELDO) and Jean Dinkespiler (of ESRO) noted that “ [t]his really does mean a total metamorphosis of space activity” (emphasis in the original).21 The delegates to the ESC meeting “expressed the hope that European countries would soon have the necessary data to enable them to give as positive an answer as possible to the offers of cooperation made by the American authorities.”22

Paine was careful not to oversell cooperation. He avoided giving definitive schedules or firm commitments, talking instead in general terms of program directions, plans, hopes. This was not simply because the program was still some­what schematic, and would surely be implemented piecemeal, as Congressional and presidential approval was forthcoming. The most significant reason was that NASA did not want to steer Europeans down particular paths at the outset. Participation was not to be imposed from above but something that bubbled up from below because the Europeans wanted it. As Frutkin put it,

We would not wish to constrain imaginative European thinking and initiative regarding the structuring of participation, i. e., we want to give the fullest and fre­est reign to European proposals. [. . . ] Europeans must determine for themselves whether they are interested in participation and what is the nature of their interest.

It would then be a short and logical step for them to give thought to how that inter­est should be pursued and structured. (Emphasis in the original)23

To improve communications, it was agreed in February 1970 that ESRO and ELDO would together station a representative in Washington on a permanent basis. An ELDO team, headed by Causse, would make periodic visits to NASA and its contractors to keep abreast of developments in both the space shuttle and station. They would be invited to regular NASA “internal” three-month brief­ings, and NASA would provide for “full observation and participation opportuni­ties in the planned summer study activities on the space station in 1970-71.”24 Classification was another important obstacle that was quickly removed. Deputy Administrator George Low and Robert Seamans agreed at once “that the space shuttle program should be conducted on a generally unclassified basis” in the same sense that the Apollo program was unclassified, bearing in mind “the international flavor of the program.”25 In mid-February 1970 Paine and Seamans signed an official agreement between NASA and the Air Force estab­lishing a joint NASA/USAF committee whose task was to ensure that the shut­tle “be designed and developed to fulfill the objectives of both the NASA and the DOD” and confirmed that it “will be generally unclassified.”26

NASA was emphatic that collaboration would be pointless if Europe did not reciprocate, above all by increasing its space budgets. In 1969 ESRO’s annual budget was slightly over $50 million, ELDO’s was about $90 million, and the entire European effort, including that of individual nations, was about $300 mil­lion.27 Frutkin was quite blunt about it in his briefing for Paine before the admin­istrator’s trip to Europe in October. It was imperative, he wrote, for Europe to increase its level of financing several-fold if it had “substantial space ambitions and wishes to take hold of the opportunities of the future.” In any event, “signifi­cant participation in planning for future space exploration and use cannot really be considered, and would even be a waste of time,” he added, “if there is not an intention to seek much larger funding.”28

By the end of February 1972 Frutkin was persuaded that NASA should strongly discourage European participation in the shuttle. He was deeply concerned by the management difficulties, cost overruns on the European side, and the risk of delays involved in having Europeans subcontractors build integral parts of the main orbiter.14 His sentiments were confirmed at the meeting of an interagency group on March 17, 1972, reported on by Pollack to Secretary of State Rogers.15 Pollack noted that “Kissinger, Flanigan and David each had representatives on this group, and they were unanimous in reflecting the prevailing spirit in their home offices as one of deep skepticism as to the desirability of European par­ticipation in the development of the hardware for the space shuttle or other ele­ments of the post-Apollo space transportation system.” Their underlying reasons for this attitude, Pollack added, centered on “protecting the technological posi­tion of the U. S., maximizing balance of payments and employment benefits for the U. S., and avoiding managerial difficulties that may be encountered in inter­national cooperation in technological activities.” In their view, the only reason to continue with the Europeans now was that “we have gone so long and so far in our discussions with the Europeans as to be ‘stuck’ with their participation.” Ten days later, on March 27, Deputy Administrator George Low confirmed that, in his view, only pressing foreign policy concerns could now keep Europe in the post-Apollo program. In a memo to Fletcher that was transmitted to Flanigan in the White House Low wrote that

our position is that from a programmatic point of view we would like to develop the Shuttle and all of its ancillary equipments domestically. It would be NASA’s view to seek foreign participation in the use of the Shuttle, but not in its develop­ment. (When I say Shuttle, I also mean tug, sortie module, etc.). However, it is also NASA’s position that if there are overriding international reasons to invite foreign participation into the development of the Shuttle, we would be willing to do so provided certain conditions are met [to be specified in separate paper].16

By the end of March 1972, then, it was clear that NASA was no longer willing to fight for direct European participation in the STS system, notably the shuttle. Throughout 1971 it had struggled valiantly against those who argued that there would be a serious leakage of technology to Europe. It had devised managerial schemes that, it thought, would both contain technology transfer and be practi­cable and efficient. It had never persuaded David, Flanigan, or Whitehead of the merits of its case and, now that the shuttle had been authorized, it did not have the will to go on. Only the State Department, by appealing strongly to foreign policy concerns, could save significant post-Apollo cooperation. Johnson was persuaded that such participation “would be damn useful and valuable from a foreign policy and public-relations point of view.”17 Low implied that NASA would be cooperative. Fletcher concurred. “NASA is a service,” he told U. Alexis Johnson in January 1972. “We’ll do whatever the people want us to do.”18 But which “people”? Whose voice would prevail? Was a consensus possible?

On April 29, 1972, Secretary of State Rogers turned once again to his president detailing the foreign policy situation.19 Summarizing the history of US-European exchanges he pointed out that until recently the American authorities had “provided the Europeans every reason to believe that the U. S. was seriously interested in having them participate in the development of cer­tain parts of the Shuttle, in one or more of the RAMs and especially in the Tug.” In response Europeans had spent or committed $11.5 million on pre­liminary technical studies. Now all this was in jeopardy. He repeated the argu­ments that Pollack had reported to him as regards participation in the shuttle. He noted that there were objections that the tug was too difficult technically for the Europeans. That left the RAM. To reduce European involvement to one or two RAMs, however, would be “judged by them as a clear reversal of our previous policy,” and would “buy more trouble with the Europeans than can be justified by the ephemeral domestic advantages that we may gain by denying them participation.” America must not be seen to change tack now. Rogers sug­gested that the United States “accept, but not encourage” European participa­tion in the five shuttle tasks identified by NASA—on condition that they made a “prior commitment” to “undertake the subsequent development of one or more RAMs.” He also insisted that there was no need for the United States to reverse its position on the tug, since it would require several more years of design study. Instead, what the United States should do was to create an exit strategy for itself, in the event that one was needed, by bringing “the Europeans to agree that consideration of their undertaking of the development of the Tug will be deferred pending further study.”

NASA administrator Fletcher wrote to Kissinger a few days later comment­ing on Rogers’s memo. He took a harder line than did the secretary of state. As regards the shuttle work packages, “we continue to feel such European partici­pation is highly undesirable and that it would complicate our shuttle manage­ment problems.” These concerns could be overridden if the president insisted, but only on condition that the Europeans were responsible for both estimated costs and overruns and also built a sortie module. Fletcher also confirmed to Kissinger that, even if further studies established that a tug was feasible in Europe, NASA wanted “to reserve the right to escape from an agreement,” and did not anticipate “technical support of the European study” unless directed by the president to do otherwise. “For all of these reasons,” Fletcher wrote, NASA did “not recommend European involvement in the tug.”20

And then the president’s science adviser, Ed David, stepped in.21 He insisted that the Europeans understood American reservations about technology flow and management difficulties, and were pragmatic enough not to let these con­cerns in Washington drive them to abandon cooperation. He claimed that the French were going to propose anyway that Europeans give priority to Sortie or RAM modules to be carried in the shuttle payload bay, and that they may abandon plans to develop the tug or contribute to subsystems of the shuttle. In short the United States could drastically reduce the scale of its offer of post – Apollo cooperation without creating the foreign policy blowback that the State

Department feared. With that fear removed, David insisted that negotiations on participation in the orbiter and discussions of the tug should be terminated at once on the grounds that the United States now believed that “they would lead to excessive additional costs and managements complications that the U. S. is unwilling to accept.” The United States could accept European participation in the shuttle program, he added, but only “if limited to RAM and Sortie payload modules.”

David’s view prevailed. Pollack conveyed what was now official policy to a high-level ESC delegation that had come to Washington on June 16 to discuss post-Apollo cooperation. He informed his visitors that European participation in the development of the shuttle “can no longer be encouraged by us even on the limited scale we are still discussing.” He also killed “consideration of mutual development of the Tug,” which, he said, had “of necessity been set aside.” European participation in the development of Sortie modules and in the use of the shuttle system were, by contrast, warmly welcomed.22

NASA funding is very important to the Russian space program.

—US Congress, U. S. Soviet Cooperation in Space, 1985103

The possible eradication of NASA’s clean interface mode of cooperation with Russia raised a number of difficult quandaries for program officials regarding the relationships among private enterprise, the state, and the tenets of free mar­ket capitalism. Between 1990 and 1992, even as debates raged in newspaper editorial columns and on Capitol Hill on whether or not Americans ought to collaborate (more) with the Russians in space, policymakers questioned with whom, precisely, they ought to be negotiating. Often more than one bureau claimed ownership of hardware or intellectual property. NASA officials had dif­ficulty deciphering who precisely was in charge, what Soviet priorities were, and even which assets were up for sale. One report, released in October 1991, illus­trates the tenuous situation:

In his diminished leadership role, Mikhail Gorbachev has had little to say about the future of the Soviet space program. . . A reorganization has begun involving the major Soviet space design bureaus and installations, some of which will be transferred to new private industries. Yet to be sorted out is the degree of influ­ence and authority key personnel within the reconstituted bureaus, agencies, and industries will have.104

As indicated here, it was not merely the floundering Soviet state that the American government sought to regulate—it was the engineers who might defect, scientists who may market technical knowledge, or industrialists who might withdraw from weapons compliance. Table 7.3 illustrates the range of fields supported by collaborative work. 105

Chapter 8 describes how the pursuits of national and collective security figured prominently in a number of US federal agencies and departments. Deliberations regarding the purchase or lease of Russian aerospace equipment (much but not all of it factoring in to the ISS) took place in a variety of US state bodies includ­ing NASA, the National Space Council, the CIA, and the Departments of State, Commerce, Defense, and Transportation. Each exercised responsibility over its own corner of national—and international—security.

While the International Space Station figures most prominently among these projects between FY1993 and 1997 the Bion 11 and 12 spaceflights accounted for $16 million.106 Meanwhile, the space sciences writ large accounted roughly 14.5 percent of all program costs, as detailed earlier. The 1995 Office of Technology Assessment frankly assessed the situation. In his foreword to this report, the director Roger Herdman notes that “much of the motivation for the expansion of cooperation with Russia lies beyond programmatic considerations.” In particular, their report points out that continued cooperation, including large payments for Russian space goods and services, might help stabilize Russia’s economy and provide incentive for some of Russia’s technological elite to stay in Russia.

Often representatives of Glavkosmos used the justification of sunk costs to rationalize continued investment. (Glavkosmos was the Ministry of General Machine Building’s Main Directorate for the Development and Use of Space Technology for the National Economy and Science Research, known as the commercial arm of the Soviet space program.)107 Thus they carried on the hope that the sale of various elements and subassemblies already developed by the

Soviet space programs might provide foreign currency to the withering program. NASA officials likewise highlighted the thrift of collaboration, but with some important differences. In explaining these expenditures, OTA officials likened Bion to the ISS docking mechanism “and other minor goods and services” that “involve the use of unique Russian capabilities by NASA at a low cost compared with the cost of developing them indigenously.” Some believed themselves to be buying or selling products; others believed themselves to be initiating a long­term commitment, a process. These individuals sought to build relationships as buyers and sellers, scientific collaborators, or in preserving formerly Soviet resources.

Many individuals expressed a desire to not simply denude the Soviet space infrastructure of all its useful persons and ideas, but to preserve the organiza­tions and institutional memory within. Regardless of whether or not one views this monumental shift in NASA policy—the decision to pay the Russian space program for hardware and services—as an investment in the Russian space program or bargain for the United States, the OTA leaves us with one final thought-provoking observation. “[N]o other executive branch agency is trans­ferring funds to Russia at anything approaching this rate. US government funds obligated for assistance to Russia through September 30, 1994, total something over $3B, but over a third of that total is for in-kind goods (food shipments, principally in FY 1993).”108 While foreign policy, environmental, and national security considerations had always played roles in the principles and guidelines of joint projects, the next chapter describes how they were expressed in very dif­ferent manners. In years past, national security concerns centered primarily upon fears of technology transfer. Following this, notions of “national security” came to be characterized as “international security” as the United States attempted to control the flows of former Soviet researchers and engineers to potential bel­ligerent nations.

A bird’s eye view of Japan’s space history since World War II reveals the grad­ual and difficult emergence of the country as a major space power that, with US assistance—but also to bypass US restrictions on the transfer of sensitive tech­nology—fruitfully channeled its quest for independence into a robust national program that enabled it to collaborate successfully with its erstwhile mentor and other partners.1 The United States, through NASA and private industrial corporations, supported Japan’s fledgling program early on, but deep internal divisions in the country made it difficult to build a durable arrangement. What little cooperation existed between Japan and NASA during the early 1960s was limited to small space science experiments using sounding rockets and data col­lection from ground stations. A 1969 agreement to provide launcher technology to Japan, strongly promoted by the State Department, was a major stimulus to the ongoing rationalization of a national space program, though this came too late for Japan to participate actively in the post-Apollo program. In fact NASA’s relations with Japan began to achieve significance only during the late 1970s and grew extensively in the later years to include a variety of cooperative space projects that benefited both countries, including human space flight and partici­pation in the International Space Station.2

This contribution traces the broad outlines of these developments with partic­ular emphasis on three of the most significant phases of US-Japanese collaboration in space: (1) the frustrations of the 1960s caused by internal rivalries and a strongly nationalist agenda in some sectors of the Japanese space science community that hampered international collaboration and that eventually crippled Japan’s ability to participate meaningfully in the post-Apollo program; (2) the transformations precipitated by the 1969 agreement to provide Japan with Thor-Delta technology that not only provided the country with much of the hardware needed to reach the geostationary orbit but also, by restricting the scope of technology transfer, accelerated the country’s independence and self-confidence in launcher develop­ment as the 1970s wore on (treated separately in the next chapter); and, finally (3) the contribution of Japan to the International Space Station in the 1980s.