Category NASA in the World

The term “software” was generally used for the program content of the satel­lite broadcast. An enormous amount of programming had to be produced for SITE as the satellite was available to India for approximately 1,400 hours of transmission.36 All India Radio, later Doordarshan, took the overall responsibil­ity for producing these programs. The educational programs were produced in three base production centers: Cuttack, Hyderabad, and Delhi. The production of such a large number of programs, keeping in view the basic objectives and the specific audience requirements, was a challenging task. Most of the studio facilities available to SITE were small, underequipped, and understaffed. This fact, coupled with the time pressure for production, created a continuing pres­sure toward easy-to-produce “entertainment” programming, even when audi­ence feedback indicated a preference for the so-called hard core instructional programs.37 Since the software part demanded a lot of attention from the Indian side Frutkin made every attempt to ensure that it was done properly. “When he visited India in January 1975, seven months before the experiment started, he insisted on a physical examination of television studios and programs.”38

Doordarshan formed separate committees to assist program production relat­ing to agriculture, health, and family planning. These committees were helped by institutions like the agricultural universities, teachers training colleges, the Indian Council of Agricultural Research, and so on.39 Other departments and agencies like the Film Division, the National Center for Educational Research and Training (NCERT) under the Department of Education, along with inde­pendent producers, contributed to making film material for the software con­tent of the SITE project. SITE broadcasts regularly reached over 2,300 villages. Their size varied from 600 to 3,000 people, with an average of 1,200 inhabit­ants. Thus, about 2.8 million people had daily access to SITE programming.40 The programs were available for some four hours a day and were telecast twice, morning and evening.

SITE ended on July 31, 1976. Seeing the success of the project the Indian offi­cials and policymakers requested an extension of the program for one more year, but the request was not granted and ATS-6 was pulled back to the American region.

Frutkin, who orchestrated the SITE project for NASA, said that the one-year experiment proved the possibilities of the use of advanced satellites for mass communication. And he clearly knew that it would bring monetary benefits. “We took the satellite back. What was the consequence? India contracted with Ford Aerospace for a commercial satellite to continue their programs. . . the

BROADCAST SATELLITE BRINGS

EDUCATION TO INDIAN VILLAGE

Figure 12.4 ATS receiver and SITE watchers. Source: NASA.

point is, this program not only was an educational lift to India and demonstrated what such a satellite could do, but it brought money back into the U. S. com­mercial contracts for satellites for a number of years.”41 Years earlier in a House Committee report on the implications of satellite communications, he expressed the same view: “I’m quite confident that by virtue of our participation in this experiment, India will look to the U. S. first for the commercial and launching assistance it requires for future programs. And I think this is a very important product of our relationship.”42

SITE was regarded by many as a landmark experiment in the rapid upgrading of education in a developing country (figure 12.4). It became the most innova­tive and potentially the most far-reaching effort to apply advanced Western tech­nologies to the traditional problems of the developing world. For the first time NASA and ISRO cooperated very closely in an effort to determine the feasibility of using experimental communication satellite technology to contribute to the solution of some of India’s major education and development needs.43 For NASA the experiment provided a proof that advanced technology could play a major part in solving the problems of less-developed countries. It was seen as an impor­tant expression of US policy to make the benefits of its space technology directly available to other peoples and also a valuable test of the technology and social mechanisms of community broadcasting. Seeing Indian states to be linguisti­cally divided, the US State Department hoped that the experiment offered India an important and useful domestic tool in the interests of national cohesion. The experiment also stimulated a domestic television manufacturing enterprise in India with important managerial, economic, and technological implications. It provided information and experience of value for future application of educa­tional programs elsewhere in the world.44

Frutkin was emphatic about the value of SITE for other developing countries. “The Indian experiment is, of course, of prime significance for developing coun­tries, those which have not been able to reach large segments of their population, those which have overriding social problems which might be ameliorated through communication and education and particularly those where visual techniques could help to bypass prevalent illiteracy.”45 The SITE experiment played a cru­cial role for India too. The results of the year-long SITE project were evaluated carefully by the Indian government. The data played a major role in determin­ing whether India should continue to develop her own communication satellite program (INSAT) or fall back on the use of more traditional, terrestrial forms of mass communication in order to transmit educational programs to the popu­lace.46 Thanks to SITE the first-generation Indian National Satellite (INSAT-1) series, four in total, was built by Ford Aerospace in the United States.47

The SITE project represented an important experimental step in the develop­ment of a national communications system and of the underlying technological, managerial, and social supporting elements. Following the proposal made by India, Brazil too initiated a proposal for a quite different educational broad­cast experiment utilizing the ATS-6 spacecraft. The project was intended to serve as the development prototype of a system that would broadcast television and radio instructional material to the entire country through a government – owned geostationary satellite.48 Frutkin saw the Indian project and the Brazilian experiment to be a model for other developing countries. In 1976 Indonesia became the first country in the developing world to have its own satellite system, the Palapa satellite system, manufactured by engineers at NASA and at Hughes Aerospace.49

SITE showed India that a high technology could be used for socioeconomic development. It became one justification for building a space program in a poor country—the question became “not whether India could afford a space program but can it afford not to have one”?50 “Modernization” through science and tech­nology was not new to the Indian subcontinent. In more than two centuries of British occupation India witnessed a huge incursion of technologies—railways, telegraph, telephone, radio, plastics, printing presses for “development” and extraction.51 The geosynchronous satellite in postcolonial India can be seen as an extension of the terrestrial technologies that the British used to civilize/ modernize a traditional society. In this case the United States replaced the erst­while imperial power to bring order, control, and “modernization” to the newly decolonized states through digital images using satellite technologies that were far removed from the territorial sovereignty of nation-states.52

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That’s one small step for man, one giant leap for mankind.” These “eternally famous words,” as James Hansen calls them in his biography of Neil Armstrong, expressed both a NASA and an American triumph.1 They also reached out to the millions watching the spectacle on television screens all over the world, allow­ing them to make it their own. About 30 minutes into the mission, and shortly after having been joined by Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong read the words on a plaque attached to one of the ladder legs of the lunar module. The Eagle—a name delib­erately chosen by the astronauts as the symbol of America—had no territorial ambitions: as Armstrong said, “We came in peace for all mankind.”2 “For one priceless moment in the history of man,” President Nixon told the astronauts as they explored the lunar surface, “all the people on this earth are truly one. . . ”3

The spectacles of the moon landing and the moonwalk are suffused with quintessentially American tropes: white, athletic males burst the grip of gravity to conquer a new frontier.4 All the same, we should not be overwhelmed by the political and ideological staging of Apollo 11 as an American-led achievement in the context of Cold War competition. For the mission also had genuine inter­national components. Beginning with Apollo 11, NASA astronauts collected over 840 pounds of moon rock, and distributed hundreds of samples for public viewing and scientific research all over the world.5 The first video images of Armstrong’s and Aldrin’s steps on the moon were picked up, not in the United States, but by antennae at Honeysuckle Creek and the Parkes Observatory near Canberra in Australia, a tribute to the vast global data and tracking network that supports NASA’s missions.6 And one of the few scientific experiments conducted on the lunar surface during Armstrong and Aldrin’s 160-odd minutes of surface activity on the night of July 20, 1969, had a foreign principal investigator.

During their brief sojourn on the moon the astronauts engaged in six scientific experiments, all chosen by a NASA scientific panel for their interest and excellence. Five of these were part of the Early Apollo Scientific Experiment Package. They included a passive seismometer to analyze lunar structure and detect moonquakes, and a device to measure precisely the distance between the moon and the earth. The sixth was an independent Solar Wind Composition Experiment submitted from

abroad. To perform this experiment the astronauts had to unroll a banner of thin aluminum metal foil about 12 inches wide by 55 inches long, and orient one side of it toward the sun. The foil trapped the ions of rare gases emitted from the fireball. It was brought back to earth in a teflon bag, sent to Europe, cleaned ultrasonically, and melted in an ultra-high vacuum, releasing the gases that were analyzed in a mass spectrometer.7 The results provided insights into the dynamics of the solar wind, the origin of the solar system, and the history of planetary atmospheres.

Johannes Geiss, a leading Swiss scientist, was responsible for this experiment. The payload was manufactured at Geiss’s University of Bern and was paid for by the Swiss National Science Foundation.8 What is more, apart from Armstrong’s contingency collection of lunar samples immediately on emerging from the lunar module, this was the first experiment deployed by the astronauts. Indeed, to ensure that the foil was exposed to the sun for as long as possible, it was even deployed before Armstrong and Aldrin planted the American flag in the lunar surface and spoke to the president. Scientific need trumped political and ideological statement. NASA’s commitment to international cooperation could not be expressed by hav­ing the flags of many countries, or perhaps just the flag of the United Nations, left on the moon. Congress decided that this was an American project and that the astronauts would plant the US flag.9 Instead NASA’s international agenda fused seamlessly with the “universalism” of science to create a niche for flying an experi­ment built by a university group in a small, neutral European country.

It is striking that even though the Solar Wind Experiment is routinely men­tioned in writings on the Apollo 11 mission, the European source of the experi­ment is not.10 This is partly because of the iron grip human space flight has on the imagination, a mindset constructed by enthusiasts whose shrill voices and skillful marketing have capitalized on the frontier myth that is deeply ingrained in America’s sense of itself and its destiny, so playing down alternative, less glamorous visions of spaceflight using benign technologies.11 It is the challenges faced by the astronauts as they conquer new domains, not the scientific content of the Apollo missions, that resonate culturally, that entertain and inspire, that showcase American technological success and project American power abroad.

The foreign contribution to Apollo 11 is also ignored because so much space history in the United States—as in all space-faring nations—is nationalistic and celebratory, a symptom of the high value placed on technological achievement as a marker of national prowess. Today historians are increasingly aware of the need to situate national narratives in transnational or global frameworks, in rec­ognition of the interdependence and interconnectivity of the modern state. This focus is all the more important in the case of NASA since the Space Act of 1958 both mandated the new agency to secure American space leadership and to pursue an active program of international cooperation. An emphasis on purely national narratives occludes one of the agency’s core activities.

There have been many scholarly studies of various aspects of NASA’s inter­national relations. They have two dominant features. First, they concentrate on a single project or program (Germany’s Helios probe to the sun,12 the Satellite Instructional Television Experiment SITE developed with India, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the International Space Station13), like so much of space history itself. Second, they mostly treat the political and diplomatic context in which NASA engages in international collaboration as a taken-for-granted backdrop. NASA’s international activities are seen as subsidiary to its prime mission of building US space leadership. Its history is defined as a history of the agency’s ability to secure resources for that mission from Congress and the American people, and to bring its scientific and technological ambitions to fruition (or not, as the case may be).

This book takes a different approach. It covers 50 years of NASA’s interna­tional relations, and although it is necessarily mission-oriented—for it is around missions that NASA organizes collaboration—it selects from the vast panorama of these missions those that reveal the different scientific and technological but also political, industrial, and ideological rationales for embarking on particular space ventures with foreign partners (including the Soviet Union). This book treats NASA as an organization dedicated to the exploration of space that acts in a complex foreign policy context whose definition is itself fluid and contested both at home and abroad. The authors are not only interested in NASA as a national space agency, then, but in NASA as an actor in the world, in NASA as the bearer and defender of American interests on the world stage. They explore the articulation between the pursuit of scientific, technological, and industrial preeminence in space and the consolidation of American global leadership, the intersection between space science and technology and international relations.

One dominant thread runs through the analysis, and shapes some of the key questions we address. Simply put it is this: how did NASA reconcile America’s conquest of space with its collaborative activities? How did it harmonize the pur­suit of space leadership, premised on scientific and technological leadership, with the increasingly insistent demands of foreign partners to have meaningful access to American scientific, technological, and industrial know-how? Almost since its inception, the exploration and exploitation of space has not been a level playing field: the United States, despite some spectacular Soviet firsts, has always been the leading spacefaring nation on the globe. This means that NASA has had to devise policies to protect US industrial competitiveness and national security while, at the same time, engaging in suitably advanced levels of scientific, technological, and industrial cooperation to satisfy its partners. It had to strengthen the pro­grams of the free world, and sustain civil relationships with its communist rivals, without seriously undermining its position as the world’s leading space agency.

Harmonizing leadership with collaboration was an ongoing process: though certain general principles were quickly laid down by NASA to shape the engage­ment, their implementation in practice varied depending on the nature of the mission (science, applications, technology, especially launcher technology), the space strengths of the other (a threat but also a resource to draw on to enhance US capabilities), and the political and ideological stakes involved. American global leadership in any domain is not a given. It requires ongoing work, and an ability to adjust to the changing balance of power between the United States and its partners in all of the domains in which NASA was engaged.

Knowledge is the key site around which international collaboration is organized in much of this study. Knowledge, for our purposes, is not restricted to proposi­tional knowledge, of course, but is also embedded in multiple material substrates, including technology, and is embodied in diverse human skills, including project management. International collaboration involves the management of such flows across the interface between US entities and their partners. It also called for the transfer of knowledge embedded in environmental, capitalistic, and trade regimes that were deployed to restructure the ex-Soviet space system in the 1990s. The policies that NASA put in place to manage cross-border flows of knowledge of all kinds define the dynamic equilibrium between scientific and technological denial, on the one hand, and controlled assistance and collaboration on the other. They constitute the sinews of international collaboration in a domain as tightly bound up with national competitiveness and national security as is space, and they often provide the main leitmotif for the case studies explored in this book.

The intellectual orientation provided in this chapter extends beyond the frame­work of analysis just sketched to provide a quick survey of 50 years of NASA’s international activities in space. This overview gives one some idea of the extensive scope of NASA’s international activities, and of how its dynamic has changed over time. It is also a pocket guide to what follows in the rest of the book: the chapter introduces readers briefly to the collaborative missions and countries or regions that are described in more detail in the body of the work, and provides a rationale for focusing on them. Since 1960 NASA has embarked on something like four thousand international projects. It is extraordinary that so few people realize this or understand its place in the panorama of NASA’s, and the US government’s, activities. The authors hope that this book will fill a yawning gap in the under­standing of NASA, and transform it from being seen as a purely national agency into a global actor that embodies the highest ideals, and the internal contradic­tions, of American foreign policy at the “new frontier” that is space.

In February 1966 the British government circulated an aide-memoire to its part­ners in ELDO.40 It remarked that the organization was unlikely to produce any worthwhile result and that Her Majesty’s government saw little interest in continu­ing as a member of the organization and contributing financially to its program. Development costs of Europa had more than doubled from the initial estimate of about $200 million to over $400 million. The time to completion had slipped from five to seven-and-a-half years. The British first stage, Blue Streak, had been successfully commissioned in June 1965, while the French and German stages were still under development. The British were therefore effectively subsidizing continental industries to produce a launcher that, in fact, would be obsolete tech­nologically and commercially uncompetitive with American heavy launchers.41

The timing of this move was deemed most unfortunate in Washington. First, the European integration process was in a very brittle state at the time and even NATO seemed to be on the brink of fragmentation.42 The French had precipitated a crisis in the European Economic Community (EEC) by boycotting the EEC’s decision-making machinery so as to liberate the country from its “subordination” to community institutions and the dilution of sovereignty that that entailed.43 In this inauspicious climate, everything possible had to be done to sustain the momentum for European unity. As Undersecretary of State George Ball emphasized, European integration “is the most realistic means of achieving European political unity with all that that implies for our relations with Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union. . . and is the precondition for a Europe able to carry its proper share of responsibility for our common defense.”44 ELDO was not central to European integration. But just when France was challenging the momentum of European unity, the significance of the United Kingdom’s threat to leave ELDO risked being amplified by those who were increasingly hostile to supranational ventures on the continent.

The British challenge to ELDO also came at the very moment when her part­ners were becoming increasingly vocal about the putative “technological gap” that had opened up between the two sides of the Atlantic.45 President Johnson took this matter so seriously that in November 1966 he personally signed NSAM357, instructing his science adviser, Donald Hornig, to set up an interdepartmental committee to look into “the increasing concern in Western Europe over possible disparities in advanced technology between the United States and Europe.”46 In its preliminary report, the committee concluded that “the Technological Gap [was] mainly a political and psychological problem” but that it did have “some basis in actual disparities.” These included “the demonstrated American superiority in sophisticated electronics, military technology and space systems.” Particularly important were “the ‘very high technology industries’ (particularly computers, space communications, and aircraft) which provide a much greater military capability, are nationally prestigious, and are believed to be far-reaching in their economic, political and social implications.”47 For the Johnson admin­istration, then, the technological gap, even if inflated in Europe, was a prob­lem that had to be addressed, and the mutual development of space technology through an organization like ELDO was one way of doing so.

Finally, NASA again emphasized that enhanced international collaboration in space would aid nonproliferation. Quoting James Webb this time, it would be “a means whereby foreign nations might be increasingly involved in space technology and diverted from the technology of nuclear weapons delivery.”48 The United States could use the carrot of technological sharing with ELDO to redirect limited human and material resources away from national programs that were more difficult to con­trol and which might encourage the proliferation of weapons delivery systems.

The continued and spectacular success of the French space program gave this argument for saving ELDO an added urgency. On November 26, 1965, France had become the third space power by launching its own satellite with its own launcher, Diamant-A, from Hammaguir in Algeria. The feat was repeated in February 1966. This three-stage launcher combined “militarily significant solid and storable liq­uid fueled systems”—just the kind of technology the United States did not want it to develop—in a highly successful vehicle derived from the national missile pro­gram.49 In the light of these achievements and de Gaulle’s growing determination to affirm his independence of the EEC and the Atlantic alliance, “[t]he US is concerned that, if ELDO were to be dissolved, France might devote more of its resources to a national, military-related program or that it might establish undesir­able bilateral relationships [with the Soviet Union] for the construction of satellite launch vehicles.”50 The United States had to contain this threat and ensure that European institutions emerged “from the present crisis with their prestige, power and potential for building a united Europe as little impaired as possible.”51

The Johnson administration took two steps to address this situation. First, they let Britain know that they were deeply concerned about the implications of its pos­sible withdrawal from ELDO. In addition, the administration formally undertook to provide technological support to ELDO. On July 29, 1966, Walt W. Rostow, one of LBJ’s two national security advisers, signed off on National Security Action Memorandum 354.52 NSAM354 was a response to a request from the Department of State that the United States “clarify and define” its policy concerning collabora­tion with the “present and future programs” of ELDO. The document affirmed that it was “in the U. S. interest to encourage the continued development of ELDO through U. S. cooperation.” It referred to the results of an ad hoc working group, established by the State Department and chaired by Herman Pollack, that had pre­pared a statement “defining the nature and extent of U. S. cooperation with ELDO which the U. S. government is now prepared to extend.” This statement was to be “continually reviewed by the responsible agencies,” above all, the Department of Defense and the State Department, along with NASA, “to ensure that it is current and responsive in terms of developing strategies.”

The help that Pollack’s working group proposed was extensive. It was divided into three categories: general, and short-range and long-range assistance.53 The first contained some standard items—training in technical management, facilitat­ing export licenses, use of NASA test facilities—but also suggested that a tech­nical office be established within NASA “specifically to serve in an expediting and assisting role for ELDO.” Short-range help included “technical advice and assistance” in items such as vehicle integration, stage separation, and synchronous orbit injection techniques, as well as the provision of unclassified flight hard­ware, notably the strapped-down “guidance” package used on the Scout that had already been exported to Japan. Long-range assistance was focused on helping with a high-energy cryogenic upper stage of the rocket, as had been requested by Stephens on behalf of ELDO the year before. It was proposed that Europeans be given access to technological documentation and experience available in the Atlas-Centaur systems, that ELDO technical personnel “have intimate touch with the problems of systems design, integration, and program management of a high-energy upper [sic] such as the Centaur,” and even that the United States consider “joint use of a high-energy upper stage developed in Europe.”54 In short, in mid-1966, the United States was considering making a substantial effort to help ELDO develop a powerful launcher with geosynchronous orbit capability by sharing state-of-the-art knowledge and experience and by facilitating the export of hardware. This support—it should be added—would not normally be available on a bilateral basis to European national launcher programs.

None of this would have been thinkable as long as NSAM294 (denying tech­nology that might help the French military program) and NSAM338 (denying technology that might subvert a single global comsat system) were not revised. Indeed in spring 1966 it was evident that NSAM294 was due for review. European booster technology was advancing rapidly without external help. A blanket denial of export licenses now would unnecessarily harm both US business and foreign policy interests. Even worse, it might encourage a request to a non-US supplier, most obviously the Soviet Union with whom de Gaulle was fostering technological collaboration as an expression of French autonomy. Reiterating NASA’s demand that policy for technology transfer should make “detailed and fine distinctions,” Richard Barnes, the director of Frutkin’s Cooperative Projects Division, insisted (and Webb concurred) that the interpretation of restrictions on technology trans­fer determined by NASM294 had to be more specific. The guidelines, he wrote the chairman of the NSAM 294 Review Group in the State Department, should deny to a foreign power “only those few critical items which are clearly intended for use in a national program, would significantly and directly benefit that pro­gram in terms of time and quality or cost, and are unavailable in comparable sub­stitute form elsewhere than the US” (emphasis in the original).55 Correlatively, it should share items that were “of only marginal benefit to the national program” or “were available elsewhere than the US without undue difficulty or delay.” This was happening already in sensitive areas. The release of inertial guidance technol­ogy to Germany had been officially sanctioned in July 1964 on condition that it was not employed “for ballistic missile use or development.”56 A strapped-down “guidance” package had been offered to Japan. By contrast, and foolishly in Barnes’s view,57 an American company had recently been refused a license to assist France with the development of gyro technology even though gyros of comparable weight and performance were already available in France. In short US policy should take into account the kind of technology at issue, its likely uses in practice, the global state of the market for the technology, and the importance of collaboration from a foreign policy perspective.

While Barnes was putting NASA’s case to the State Department, Webb was doing what he could to get the Department of Defense to support NASA’s approach. Writing to Defense Secretary McNamara in April 1966, Webb pointed out that although high-energy, cryogenic, or “non-storable” upper stages might conceivably be employed for military purposes, in practice they would probably not be deployed in that way. He argued that anyway the risks of technological leakage into the military program were outweighed by the benefits of promot­ing a civilian rocket. As he put it, “Even in the case of France it seems likely that encouragement to proceed with upper stage hydrogen/oxygen systems now under development might divert money and people from a nuclear delivery pro­gram rather than contribute to that which is already under way using quite dif­ferent technology.” Here, and in general, wrote Webb to McNamara, rather than a blanket restriction, “we might be better off were we to concentrate on a few very essential restrictions, such as advanced guidance and reentry systems” (my emphasis). In a supportive reply McNamara reassured the NASA administra­tor that he strongly favored international cooperation in space and that he had directed the DoD staff “to be as liberal as possible regarding the release of space technology for payloads and other support items.”58

It was fairly easy to revise the restrictions embodied in NSAM294 to accom­modate the changing balance of technological power between the United States and France, particularly once the French had shown that they had mastered launcher technology sufficiently to place their own satellite in orbit. The con­straints imposed on sharing booster technology in NSAM 338 were less easily dislodged, and were a serious irritant to US-European relations. Frutkin wrote with some exasperation that the Europeans were persuaded that the United States was “seeking by all means, fair or foul, to maintain political and technical control of Intelsat.”59 Barnes was equally frustrated by “European fixation on comsats and launch vehicles.”60 Of course people in France and Germany may have been exaggerating the situation, but the administration itself recognized that they had some cause to complain. Charles Johnson admitted in an exchange with Walt Rostow that the odds were so heavily stacked in the United States’ favor in the (interim) Intelsat agreements that it was “difficult to maintain international cooperation on this basis.”61 Barnes agreed. There had been a “deterioration of ‘climate for cooperation’ caused by (1) US policies and actions within the Intelsat, and (2) US export policies in support of the ‘single global system.’”62

NASA’s view was that, unless they acted fast, and softened the restrictions in NASM338, the United States would lose all control over the direction of the European communications satellite system, as well as support for American poli­cies in Intelsat. Frutkin was convinced that the United States had to be prepared to provide launch services on a reimbursable basis for (experimental) foreign communication satellites. This would “extend the market for American vehicles, remove some incentive for independent foreign development of boosters, and assure that we could continue to exercise critical leverage in foreign comsat activities rather than lose such leverage.” An (anonymous) internal memoran­dum argued, along similar lines, that technological sharing was the best way to enroll foreign firms and their governments in American comsat policy. By allowing “United States firms to enter cooperative arrangements with the com­munications and electronics manufacturing industry in other countries,” notably in Western Europe, industries in these countries would develop the technical know-how needed for them “to compete effectively for contracts for the space segment of the global communications system.” This would “remove a current irritant, primarily expressed by the French but also shared by the British, Italians and Germans, about their inability to supply hardware for the Intelsat space seg­ment.” And even if such technological sharing did not irreversibly lock these European countries into the single global system favored by the United States, one could expect them to have a “greater incentive” to collaborate with America in developing that global system. They were also likely to be more cooperative and sympathetic to the US position during the renegotiation of the interim Intelsat agreements scheduled for 1969. Anyway, if the United States did nothing to help these nations, they would eventually develop the technology on their own, with­out American help, and would be quite capable of establishing separate, regional communications satellite systems in due course.63 As Frutkin explained,

(a) We do need to improve our situation in Intelsat with specific reference to the 1969 negotiations. (b) We already have a strong technical lead in the comsat field.

(c) We already have an adequate voting majority in Intelsat. (d) We can rely upon our technical, moral and financial strength to assure continuing leadership—with­out seeking to deny technology to our partners in Intelsat.64

The proposal from Pollack’s working group to help ELDO develop or acquire the kick-stage and propulsion technology needed to place a communications satellite in geosynchronous orbit was entirely coherent with this attitude.

On September 1, 1971, Undersecretary of State U. Alexis Johnson replied to the letter that he had received six months earlier from Theo Lefevre.60 He plunged directly into the launcher issue. The United States, said Johnson, had reviewed its position in an attempt to meet European concerns. He noted at once that that new position was “not conditioned on European participation in post – Apollo programs,” and he hoped that it would provide “a basis for confidence in Europe in the availability of U. S. launch assistance.” Johnson reaffirmed that, of course, American launch assistance would still only be for satellites that were for peaceful purposes and consistent with its obligations under relevant international agreements and arrangements. However, it would be available both from American territory, and “from foreign launch sites (by purchase of an appropriate U. S. launch vehicle).” As regards the interpretation of the thorny Article XIV(d) of the Intelsat agreements that had been signed on May 21, 1971, Johnson proposed three possible scenarios, presented in table 5.2.

Johnson went on to say that to avoid Europe investing heavily in a satellite system only to find that the United States would not launch it, the American

authorities would consult with the European Space Conference in advance of it embarking on any major program to evaluate its consistency with the Intelsat agreements. A concrete example of such a system had been suggested by the Europeans earlier in the year (the Eurosat system, see earlier). The United States judged that this system would do measurable, but not significant economic harm to Intelsat. If it were officially presented to the organization, “we would expect to support it in Intelsat.”

It is clear that the State Department had been persuaded that it should be as flexible as possible over the launcher question now that the definitive Intelsat agreements had been signed. Certainly, the cornerstone of US policy remained the same: that it would launch a separate communications satellite system if two-thirds of those voting in Intelsat agreed that that system did not do significant economic harm to the global system (and this whether or not the United States had been one of those voting in favor). What was new, however, was that now Johnson was prepared to take the Intelsat vote as a “finding” or “recommendation,” and not as a legally binding directive. In other words, if the requisite two-thirds majority was not obtained he was willing to consider launching a separate system. Such will­ingness was further nuanced depending on whether the United States had been in favor of the system or not. By accepting to launch absent a two-thirds positive finding on a system that the United States favored, Johnson was effectively willing to risk criticism of the American position in Intelsat to placate European fears. He was suggesting that the US authorities would take upon themselves the responsi­bility of demanding changes which, in the view of their their experts, would make the separate system acceptable, without having recourse again to Intelsat. This was a major reorientation indeed. It was also no longer conditional on European space agencies making a major commitment to post-Apollo participation: launcher policy was now completely distinct from whatever framework for US-European space collaboration was jointly adopted for the 1970s.

James Fletcher, too, was coping with a weakened national economy and like­wise anticipated that the ASTP might function as a public relations windfall. In the years of ASTP planning, Fletcher’s personal papers reveal a time of intense reflection on the operation and direction of NASA in the long run. ASTP held a crucial role in Fletcher’s NASA and his vision for a long-term balanced space pro­gram. Communicating with President Nixon in 1973, Fletcher identified ASTP as one of several long-lead time “major visible space accomplishments” such as Skylab, Viking, and the Space Shuttle.68 He suggested the programmatic comple­ment to this would be a collection of short-lead time projects with “earlier practi­cal return” such as remote sensing for earth resources, agricultural yield, forest preserves, hydrology, and minerals. Weather satellites, which “must be an inter­national endeavor,” may “in the long run have the biggest impact of any direct application satellite,” he postulated. Regarding the environment and pollution studies, Fletcher observed a “growing interest both in this country and abroad for a move” in the direction of a global environmental monitoring system.69

Due to what Fletcher perceived as temporary budget shortages, he trusted that remote sensing and robotic exploration would sustain NASA (and the public’s need for “a morale boost and an increased confidence in themselves”) until the long – lead time Shuttle was operational and the federal budget had recovered. ASTP, the Shuttle, and Europe’s Spacelab (see chapter 6) were crucial investments in the future of human exploration and Fletcher opined that “we should leave open the option of returning to the moon to establish permanent bases or to pursue further scientific investigations” or even a manned exploration of Mars.70

Thus, 1973 was something of a crossroads. Writing Roy Ash, director of the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), Fletcher indicated an understanding of the logic behind the mid-1960s budget cuts that accompanied the phasedown of heavy Apollo requirements. Yet, the trends that concerned Fletcher were tem­porary spending cuts turned permanent. NASA had made “major programmatic reductions” for FY1973 and 1974, but OMB and NASA were both aware that these cuts were made on the assumption that they were “temporary and that future budgets would again approach the ‘constant budget’ level” set in 1971 as $3.4 billion.71 FY1975 “will become decisive,” Fletcher predicted, explaining that at that point, it would be in NASA’s best interest to forego the Shuttle, sci­ence, exploration, applications, or aeronautics, since cuts across the board were no longer tenable. At one point, using the term “balanced program” five times on one page, Fletcher asserted that there was a great deal of support for the cur­rent balanced program, but that “without this balance we would lose support for the remaining program in Congress, by the public, and by the scientific and user communities.”72

In an economic climate that had cut the post-Apollo program short and post­poned Shuttle development, ASTP functioned to help preserve the engineering know-how and managerial expertise of the Apollo program into the dawning Shuttle years. ASTP and Skylab might be taken as evidence of Apollo’s sustained “vitality” in the US space program, a notion supported by Ezell and Ezell who asserted that in the closing days of ASTP, most staff transferred directly to the Shuttle program.73

The shared resources and expenditures implicit to international cooperation rendered it both diplomatically and fiscally attractive. NASA was entering a “new generation of space activity when we are called upon to do much more with considerably less money.”74 Whereas the Apollo program had cost $25 billion, the Shuttle was a mere $5.5 billion. “We are going to have to do more for less,”

Fletcher observed and again, ASTP was an important factor in years to come. To Fletcher, ASTP was

an important step toward long-term, large-scale cooperation with the Soviet Union and other countries, such cooperation is, in my opinion, the only likely hope in this cen­tury for large future steps in space, such as establishing a base on the Moon or landing men on Mars. If we had to go it alone, my guess is that we would have to wait until the 21st century.75

However history and hindsight render a very different—and oftentimes far more critical—narrative of what ASTP has wrought. Through the course of ASTP, George Low and Soviet Academy of Sciences’ academician Keldysh consulted one another on possible expansion of cooperation. They wrote of a joint Shuttle – Salyut mission (which used the last Apollo and last Soyuz craft that orbited the earth, and therefore posed no great risk of technology transfer) that would offer a much more meaningful and possibly sustained collaboration. They dis­cussed a joint robotic mission to the Moon, retrieving soil samples from the far side. In 1977, the two nations signed an agreement for cooperation in human spaceflight, designating 1981 as a target year for a Shuttle-Salyut mission and establishing a joint task force studying the possibility of a joint space station.76 Neither of these ever happened, only augmenting the accusations of some that the joint ASTP mission was, from an engineering and diplomatic standpoint, a dead end.

Even Walter McDougall, otherwise relentlessly pragmatic and eloquent in his assessment of the respective space programs, takes pause to observe of ASTP and contemporary manifestations of detente: “None of this did much to hobble Soviet technocracy,” he groused. Rather, he asserts, the program “gave Soviet technicians the chance to traipse through US space facilities and study the hard­ware and flight operations first hand” (paralleling the visits of US engineers to Moscow and Star City). In conclusion, for McDougall, cooperation such as ASTP was nothing more than a “double boon” to the Soviets, appearing to restore their space program to an equal of the United States and “also provided access to American technology.”77

In light of these plans that came to naught, a critic with an eye on human spaceflight alone (and not biosatellites or the rich field of remote sensing) might otherwise look to the years following ASTP as a “lapse” in cooperation alto­gether. While ASTP had debatable long-term positive influence on the American end (from the perspective of funding, follow-on projects, or perhaps even public relations) it does to some degree function as a foreshadowing of a warming and loosening of relations at personal and middle-managerial levels. These notions are explored in the pages that follow, under the 1982-1984 “lapse” in cooperation.

The first half of 1994 proved a rocky period in which both the RSA and NPO Energia tested the authority of NASA over the Russian space program. Through the course of negotiations—and renegotiations—NASA used the SSF structures dictating US leadership to legitimate authority over the ISS.

NASA reported that in this period the RSA (1) attempted to coerce NASA into fully funding all Phase II contributions, in spite of agreements to the con­trary (outlined earlier in the $305 million/$95 million split); (2) expected to command and control their FGB cargo module and then, after the arrival of other segments, enjoy “joint control”; (3) wanted to be recognized as coequals with the United States: the Russians refused to sign an interim agreement on the ISS hinting that the Space Station Freedom power relations were inapplicable to them; (4) refused to sign up to the barter system, which tried to minimize the exchange of funds among partners; (5) denied the notion of a unified interna­tional crew, expecting to pilot “their” modules as they saw fit and be compen­sated for the transport of all crew to and from the station on their vehicles.76

In the ensuing negotiations, NASA officials were emphatic the Russians had been invited to participate in a preexisting managerial structure in which “NASA has always taken the lead role in the Space Station program and had final authority to resolve conflict.” As had been the case in the original Space Station Freedom plans and Space Station Alpha, the facility would operate as a single integrated vehicle, commanded and controlled by the United States, which had by far invested the most energy and resources into the venture.77

As a result, by electing to join the former Space Station Freedom partners, Russian officials not only committed to providing specific modules to the station, heavy lift capability, and auxiliary command and control centers, they also placed their technologies and workforce within preexisting structures of authority, designating NASA the “lead partner” on the International Space Station. Yet Russian Space Agency officials demonstrated obvious reluctance in submitting to American authority.

At a meeting on June 16, 1994, NASA and the RSA addressed a number of con­cerns centering on interpretations of what constituted “Russian territory” and the jurisdiction of Russian law over Americans. Initially, the RSA had intended to oper­ate its ISS modules independent of the rest of the craft, staffed by cosmonauts using Russian as the operating language. It took considerable work for the Americans to convince their partners that enlistment in ISS presumed that it would function as a unified and integrated craft as SSF plans had dictated. Communication regarding safety and critical operations would be in English. This included labels, displays, placards, onboard flowcharts, schematics, and printed procedures.

Policymakers were equally concerned with legal jurisdiction back on earth.

US officials took a keen interest in the allocation and use of American dollars, since funding for space cooperation was intended to aid the recovery of research and manufacturing (read: “nonprogrammatic concerns”). The fact that Russian contributions to the space station were being bankrolled increasingly by NASA led to a situation in which Americans sought a degree of authority over relations between the Russian government and industry. Initially, this was troublesome.

In 1994 NASA officials expressed concern over the awarding of American dollars to Russian subcontractors. Expressing a desire to preserve/contain the Russian R&D infrastructure, one official reported that the RSA had refused to farm out work to institutions that NASA had deemed “key subcontractors” in the Russian research community. Instead, the RSA maintained that they held absolute authority over subcontract allocation.78 Moreover, the RSA refused to report back to NASA on subcontracting procedures. What NASA requested were characterized as “minimal information on research subcontractors” and even those reports were in a simplified and reduced format of “just a few pages.”

This situation was troubling to NASA representatives, considering the fact that such information was needed to ensure that the Russian research commu­nity was being “properly supported by NASA funds” at a particularly precarious point in time. According to a 1994 briefing book, the Russian Space Agency was “generously paid” for such line items as subcontractor reports. Some officials went so far as to speculate that this evasion of responsibility was an expression of NPO Energia’s influence over the RSA.79 Whereas it was acceptable for NASA to provide advance notice of inspection prior to arriving at manufacturing facili­ties, the RSA’s notion that “Russian law will apply to all aspects of the con­tract performance within Russia” was simply untenable. What resulted appears to have been a three-way competition for authority among NASA, the RSA, and NPO Energia. If the RSA insisted on being an equal to NASA, complete with final decision-making authority over its own subcontractors, then NPO Energia might exercise a higher degree of authority over itself and subcontrac­tors. Administrator Goldin’s briefing book explained:

Since the signing of the 15 Dec Accord we have experienced a consistent effort by the Russians to alter the principles of the 1 Nov Addendum. The Russians consider themselves an equal partner and they wish to alter the IGA, MOU and JMP to reflect this concept. They expect to be paid for any services that are not needed for their ‘core segment’ which is basically the MIR II. They do not accept the concept of [the ISS being] a single integrated vehicle orchestrated by NASA.80

This tension among NASA, the RSA, and Energia was exacerbated by change orders to contracts, demanding extra funds from NASA for goods and services NASA believed were already settled. Internally, NASA officials characterized this as an “unacceptable” move on the part of NPO Energia that was “trying to control dollars” over which the space agencies ought to have had jurisdiction. NASA suspected that the Russian Space Agency had more or less been put up to requesting redundant contracts for research program support. Similarly, the two were charging “exorbitant” fees for cosmonaut time on American projects, even charging “multiple times in and out of the central contract.”81 Table 8.3 reflects what the Russian space program attempted to charge, not necessarily what the United States agreed to pay.82

Perhaps, too, high expectations for autonomy stemmed from conditions in the (still unfolding) Shuttle-Mir agreements. As guests of the Russian-built and operated Mir space station, astronauts and NASA officials reported that they could agree to RSA authority on the operation of the Mir. Indeed, “no one in NASA would want to challenge that RSA authority.” However, ISS agreements

dictated that the Russian modules on the ISS were a very different matter and there “we cannot accept that Russian law will apply co-equal to US law on the ISS.”83 In spite of these agreements, Russian Space Agency officials viewed their autonomy on Mir as a precedent for Russian-built modules on the ISS.

Indeed, ISS planners still operated under a number of uncertainties through the mid – and late 1990s. Between 1993 and 1997, Russian capabilities of meet­ing deliverables and deadlines slipped steadily. In 1994 NASA decided to pur­chase the FGB module outright in order to assure the RSA’s receipt of funds as well as timely completion of the project. In 1995 the United States agreed to extend Shuttle-Mir operations in order to funnel more funds into the ailing aerospace infrastructure to help cover expenses in logistics support.84 In 1996 the Russians acknowledged that the Service module would be eight months late, due to funding shortages suffered by the RSA, leading NASA to pur­sue backup plans, such as funding the Naval Research Laboratory’s Interim Control Module (a 1980s project designed by the NRL’s Naval Center for Space Technology).85

This spectrum of projects entailed a number of challenging obligations for Russians. Though a much-welcomed windfall, the money was not by any means to be seen as foreign “aid.” NASA and the White House officials agreed that funds being sent overseas would help preserve Russia’s aerospace infrastructure, but US law demanded concrete products and definable services in exchange—a docking mechanism, metallurgical data, technical training, and the like. During negotiations in November 1993, the Russians stated explicitly that they were prepared to adopt the expense of responsibilities beyond the $95 million “as a matter of national pride.”86 However, as time passed, missed deadlines, shortage of funds, and general noncompliance on the part of Russia began to complicate matters. To the consternation of many, the United States began to shoulder an increasing share of the financial burden.

The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 was signed into law by President Eisenhower on July 29, 1958. 14 It distinguished between the civilian and defense – oriented aspects of aeronautical and space activities, and called for the establishment of a new agency to provide for the former in parallel to the Department of Defense (and—although this was not specified in the Act—to the Central Intelligence Agency and later to a highly secret covert agency, the National Reconnaissance Office, established in September 196115). The primary mission of the resulting National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), which formally came into being on October 1, 1958, reflected the dynamics of superpower rivalry with the Soviet Union in the wake of the Sputnik shocks the year before. The Space Act called on the new agency to ensure “the role of the United States as a leader in aeronautical and space science and technology and in the application thereof to the conduct of peaceful activities within and outside the atmosphere (Sec. 2 (c) 5).”

Other countries, above all from the free world, were to be enrolled in this endeavor. To this end the Space Act also included among NASA’s missions “Cooperation by the United States with other nations and groups of nations [. . .] (Sec. 2 (c) 7).” This objective was developed in a short, separate section headed “International Cooperation.” Here it was specified that “[t]he Administration, under the foreign policy guidance of the President, may engage in a program of international cooperation in work done pursuant to the Act, and in the peaceful application of the results thereof, pursuant to agreements made by the President with the advice and consent of the Senate (Sec. 205).” International collabora­tion thus went hand in hand with foreign policy: NASA was to be an arm of American diplomacy.

Eisenhower stressed from the outset that this clause was not intended to engage presidential authority for all bilateral or multilateral programs undertaken by NASA. Its aim, rather, was to allow for the rare occasions when cooperation engaged such important questions of foreign policy that it had to be underpinned by interna­tional treaties. The Final Report of the Senate Special Committee on Space and Aeronautics, dated March 11, 1959, confirmed this interpretation.16 As a result, as Arnold Frutkin has put it, the pace of the cooperative program “was to be faster and its procedures far simpler than would have otherwise been the case.” In par­ticular, “NASA’s international program was thus immediately distinguished from that of the Atomic Energy Commission which, under its legislation, was required to obtain approval of its international efforts from the Congress.”17 The Space Act thus gave NASA considerable latitude to engage in international collaboration as its officers saw fit, and to handle the diplomatic dimensions of its policies and practices through interagency consultation, above all with the State Department.

A commitment to the “peaceful use” of outer space was essential to the suc­cessful exploitation of space for civilian scientific and applications programs on both a national and international collaborative level. As Eilene Galloway, who was involved in drafting the Space Act, has put it, the emphasis on peaceful use was intended to preserve space “as a dependable orderly place for beneficial pursuits.”18 To that end the United States moved rapidly to set up an interna­tional regime forbidding the militarization of space. In the face of considerable Soviet hostility and suspicion the United States took the lead in establishing an ad hoc Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), which became a regular committee of the UN General Assembly in December 1959.19

No clear definition of “peaceful use” was laid down by COPUOS, nor has one been established since. This is because of the immense importance of military space programs, and above all of the role that intelligence and reconnaissance satellites have played since the dawn of the space age. As one scholar puts it, from the get go “[t]he term ‘peaceful’ in relation to outer space activities was interpreted by the United States to mean ‘non-aggressive’ rather than ‘non-military.’” In international law this entails that all military uses are permitted and lawful as long as they do not engage the threat or the use of force. This interpretation has been essential to the preservation of both international stability and the national security of the space powers.20 It is now a central plank of the military’s expanding reliance on space.

In September 1966 NASA administrator Webb traveled to Europe to discuss space collaboration with Germany and other potential partners. Frutkin briefed him shortly before his departure. While the “general atmosphere for space coop­eration with the United States may have improved slightly,” wrote Frutkin, the steps taken to date had done little more than “clear the air somewhat.” The Europeans, he told Webb, “know of no progress in easing US restrictions upon communications satellite technology,” and “it may be sometime” before the progress that had been made in Washington could be divulged to them. Webb was therefore to repeat the standard answer to the usual request for comsat launch assistance: “that we could certainly give consideration to such a proposi­tion on the assumption that the European countries take their Intelsat commit­ment to a single global system as seriously as we do.”65

The damage caused by this reticence was amplified by President’s Johnson official offer of support to Germany just before Christmas in 1965. It will be

remembered (see previous chapter) that in an exchange of toasts with Chancellor Ludwig Erhard at a state banquet, LBJ suggested that existing scientific coop­eration should be extended to embrace “an even more ambitious plan to permit us to do together what we cannot do alone.” The president gave two examples of “demanding” and “quite complex” collaborative projects, which would “con­tribute vastly to our mutual knowledge and to our mutual skills”: a solar probe and a Jupiter probe.66

This gesture was driven by political concerns: collaboration in space science was being instrumentalized by the State Department not only to recognize Erhard’s support for the United States in Vietnam, but to drive a wedge between French and German policies in Europe. Indeed, Erhard was forced to relinquish his post in November 1966, accused of mismanaging the economy and of being too pro-American and anti-French. In addition, LBJ’s offer was interpreted by some as a strategy to divert scarce European resources into science and away from applications, notably telecommunications, that is, as a clumsy effort to secure American preponderance in Intelsat. “All in all,” wrote Frutkin to Webb in August 1966, “we must say the President’s proposal got off to a poor start due to misunderstandings which are inevitable when a proposition of this sort is made in the headlines without preparation of the ground.”67 Barnes put it pithily: because of European “suspicion and distrust,” aggravated by President Johnson’s spectacular overtures to Chancellor Erhard, there was “no prospect for escalating cooperation with Europe unless (1) US is willing to modify its present export control policies, and (2) we could offer other possibilities for cooperation in areas of interest to them (i. e., comsats and vehicles).”68

The opportunity for the United States to shape the European program was, however, slipping away. By September 1966 ELDO had temporarily resolved its crisis: the British had agreed not to withdraw in return for their contribution to the budget being reduced from 38 percent to 27 percent.69 The organization had also reoriented its program unambiguously in favor of developing Europa II that achieved geostationary capability by adding a fourth, French-built solid-fuel stage to the previous rocket. In parallel, France and Germany decided to fuse their national comsat projects in a joint experimental telecommunications satel­lite called Symphonie. Symphonie would be launched by Europa II from a new base near the equator in Kourou, French Guiana.70 ELDO had moved from an artificial political construct to an organization that was working to improve its management structure and that now had a well-defined technical mission. For the moment at least, the Europeans would blaze their own trail into space. They would do so under a new regime led by a Republican president who was sworn into office in January 1969.

In his letter to Lefevre Johnson suggested that a technical working group led by Charles W. (“Chuck”) Matthews, the deputy associate administrator in NASA’s Office of Manned Space Flight, should soon meet with Europeans to discuss both participation in the Space Transportation System and other possible modes of collaboration (as required by Kissinger). Fletcher was determined to focus the discussions on the orbiter, however. At a high-level meeting on October 6 he insisted that the “ensuing technical discussions [with the Europeans] should concentrate initially on defining tasks and working relationships for the space transportation system project, since time is catching up with us.” NASA would define the concepts and the configuration of the shuttle in the next two or three months, and select a prime contractor by spring 1972: it would be “imperative to know the extent of European participation by that time.”61 Thus Matthews’s objectives were clear when he came to Paris later in the month. The American delegation was to engage in “technical discussions aimed at a definition of candi­date areas for possible European participation in the space transportation system, viewed in the broader context of program requirements for the 1980s,” includ­ing payloads in which Europe may like to participate. Political, managerial, and contractor-to-contractor arrangements would be temporarily bracketed.62 After a successful meeting on October 22, 1971 with about 40 space officials it was agreed that a joint group of experts meet in Washington at the end of November to study detailed proposals from NASA.63

Charles Donlan, assistant director on the Space Shuttle Program, visited a number of European aerospace companies before the expert meeting to vali­date again the technological capability of major European aerospace contractors in Britain, France, and Germany (see figure 5.2). He ended his trip persuaded that European firms could carry out any part of the post-Apollo program that was contracted to them, and realized that they had more experience than their American counterparts in working in different languages across technical inter – faces.64 There was not going to be one-way flow of technology from the United States to Europe in the post-Apollo program.

The first “Technical Conference on US/European Cooperation in Future Space Programs” opened in Washington on November 30, 1971. Four main areas were identified and disaggregated into separate work packages where needed. These were the space shuttle itself, the space tug, orbital systems, which included Sortie Cans, Pallets, and RAMs, and general technology development (which will not be dealt with here). It was assumed that the shuttle would have an American prime contractor, so here the work packages had to reflect elements that could be subcontracted. The tug was different, in that if Europe under­took the project the US role would probably be limited to minor contributions such as furnishing some components and providing data on shuttle interfaces. Various scenarios of US-European collaboration were foreseen for the orbital systems and for technology development.65

The discussions were held in the context of an ongoing battle between NASA and the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) over the agen­cy’s budget for FY1973, and the configuration of the shuttle that could be afforded. Indeed as late as September 1971 Low and Fletcher seriously considered whether they should forgo a shuttle altogether for something less expensive like a reusable glider.66 By November, however, the Europeans were assured that the most attractive design for the shuttle that was emerging fea­tured a delta-wing orbiter with an external hydrogen/oxygen tank fueling its main engines along with two reusable boosters to provide sufficient thrust for lift-off. The fuel system for the boosters was still under discussion but would be settled when the call for proposals for shuttle development was
issued in spring 1972. The selection of candidate work packages for collabo­ration was thus restricted to the orbiter and its main engines. The orbiter was disaggregated into separate parts (see figure 5.5), and a corresponding list of work packages was drawn up; this excluded components already devel­oped in the Apollo program, which would be transferred to the shuttle. This list fell into four main areas—airframe, propulsion, instrumentation, and aerodynamic testing—for which a total of 14 individual work packages were identified “along with their general description, schedule and approximate costs.” They were essentially illustrative, and ranged from small elements that could be accomplished by a single firm to larger elements that would engage a European consortium.

The airframe attracted most attention. It was believed to “provide an oppor­tunity for European participation because of the ability to identify areas that have relatively simple interfaces and therefore would prove to be more straight-for­ward to manage and integrate into the total vehicle.”67 The nine work packages discussed here were tail assembly ($20-30 million), main wing ($65-75 mil­lion), elevon ($20-25 million), center fuselage, forward and aft ($100-125 mil­lion), cargo bay door ($30-40 million), radiator ($10-15 million), landing

MANUFACTURING MAJOR ASSEMBLY
MODULE BREAKDOWN

Figure 5.5 Disaggregated orbiter, showing subsystems that were potential candidates for collaborative projects, as proposed by McDonnell Douglas.

Source: Presentation made by the firm on May 7, 1971, attached to memo from Sh (Sam Hubbard) dated May 19, 1971. Record Group NASA 255, Box 17, Folder VI. D.3, WNRC. Permission: NASA.

gear and door ($20-30 million), nose section ($3-5 million), and ejection seat ($10-12 million).

The tail assembly package consisted of the orbiter fin and rudder/speedbrake (see figure 5.6), and could easily be integrated into the vehicle by the prime contractor. NASA was careful to exclude from possible consideration the leading edge and thermal system. Sharing technology here risked upgrading European capabilities in domains with a commercial impact, for example, high performance aircraft. The pattern was repeated with the offer for technological collaboration with the main wing, which was somewhat more difficult to integrate than the tail. Like the tail, the wing had a beam and rib arrangement with an aluminum skin. Again the work package on offer included the design, fabrication, testing, and certification of the primary structure. Yet as with the tail, the leading edge and thermal protection system installation was excluded.

Four propulsion packages were identified: the orbital maneuvering sys­tem (OMS) pods ($40-50 million), the reaction control system pods, the air-breathing engine pods ($20-30 million), and the auxiliary power unit. This list deliberately excluded engines because of the criticality of integration and the considerable development experience already available in the United States.

Not much detail was provided on the instrumentation work packages, where it was thought that Europe might be able to contribute $20-30 million. NASA officials were wary of encouraging close technological collaboration here because

Source: Technology Transfer in the Post Apollo Program. NASA HQ MF71-6399, 7-27-71, Record Group NASA 255, Box 14 Folder II. H, WNRC. Permission: NASA.

of the “multiple interfaces involved and the critical interdependency with other systems.” Subcontracting out parts of the instrumentation would “prove too costly and difficult to integrate and manage.”68 Table 5.3 summarizes the work packages on the orbiter that NASA thought might be suitable for international cooperation.

The second major element in the post-Apollo package was the space tug, which would transfer payloads from the shuttle’s low-earth orbit to higher orbits, most notably the geostationary orbit (see figure 5.1). As we saw earlier, at this time the tug was a central feature of the shuttle system and “a key element of the system economics.”69 In April 1970 the European Space Conference voted 500,000 MU (1 MU or monetary unit, was about $1) for pre-Phase A studies (i. e., con­ceptual studies) of the tug, and early in 1971 two lead European contractors, Hawker Siddeley Dynamics (HSD) and Messerschmitt-Bolkow-Blohm (MBB), presented their findings to NASA. Further impetus toward European engage­ment in the tug came toward the end of 1970, when NASA decided that it could not afford to develop the tug concurrently with the shuttle, and began to look at the possibility of using existing Agena and Centaur upper stages in its stead as a stopgap measure. In February 1971 another 400,000 MU were allocated to HSD and MBB to further study the tug in the light of changes to the shuttle configuration. They presented the results of their new studies in Huntsville, Houston, and Washington, DC, in October.70 Thus, when the experts met on November 30, 1971, considerable progress had already been made in Europe on the definition of a tug.

The experts meeting in November strongly endorsed this work. They were persuaded that the tug was “a logical area for European participation in the post-Apollo activities since it is an easily ‘separable’ item with a relatively clean set of interfaces. In addition,” the Report on the meeting went on, it provided “significant technology challenges in a number of areas and represents a key element of the Space Transportation System.”71 Encouraged, on January 5, 1972, ELDO issued requests for proposals for two Phase A space tug studies costing $1.4 million. Additional funds would be sought later that month for what Causse told NASA was Europe’s “main area of interest” in post-Apollo.72

Table 5.3 Work packages on the orbiter proposed to Western Europe for collaboration in November 1971

1. Tail assembly (fin, perhaps rudder/speedbrake) NOT leading edge and thermal protection

2. Main wing NOT leading edge and thermal protection

3. Elevon

4. Central fuselage, fore and aft

5. Cargo bay door

6. Radiator

7. Landing gear and door

8. Nose section

9. Ejection seat

10-13. Propulsion (without engines)

14. Instrumentation (difficult to integrate)

TOTAL COST ~ $400 million

The Europeans liked the tug. NASA now estimated that it be would be needed on 40-50 percent of the foreseen 60-odd annual shuttle flights. If each reusable tug could be used ten times, this implied a production rate of three-five new tugs annually over a ten-year period. This was a rate of industrial production higher than that foreseen for the anticipated European rocket program. A reusable tug, in particular, was also technologically challenging. As one European report put it, it represented “a new type of space vehicle partaking both of the launcher, by its propulsion and structure, and also to a great extent of the satellite, by reason of its launching in the orbiter, its life in orbit and its intelligent systems (atti­tude control, rendezvous, docking).”73 For Europe the tug prefigured the kind of space vehicle that would be common after the 1980s. It also gave Europeans direct access to the heart of NASA’s space flight planning and operations.

The variety of orbiting systems under discussion exploited various possible uses of the shuttle as a platform for short observations and experiments in space. This idea evolved as the funding for a possible space station was pushed into the 1980s. It was inspired by the use of a converted Convair 990 airplane as an airborne laboratory that scientists were using to make astronomical experiments and earth observations. If an aircraft cargo bay could be transformed into a useful scientific platform for space research, why not use the shuttle in a similar way?74 On one variation, called a Sortie Can or Sortie Module, a shirt-sleeve experimental environment was lodged in the Shuttle’s cargo bay and connected to the orbiter crew compartment by an access tunnel. It could be combined with various external pallets attached to the back end of the Sortie Module (and could also be replaced entirely by such pallets). The pallets would only be humanly accessible by EVA (extravehicular activity) and could serve as platforms for large instruments such as telescopes. In a second variation, called a RAM (Research and Application Module), the entire module would be tailored to a specific dis­cipline or human activity, such as materials science and space manufacturing.75 When the experts met on November 30, 1971, NASA had not committed itself to going further than Phase B studies (Definition) of a RAM, and was think­ing of beginning an in-house Phase B study of a Sortie Can six months hence. Both were candidates for European participation, being reasonably autonomous systems that could be used by both parties. NASA also stressed that in the field of payloads to be carried by these systems, all areas were open for European cooperation. It was concluded that Europe should start at once on a Phase A study on the sortie can and pallet, in close cooperation with NASA, so as to be up to speed when NASA began its in-house Phase B effort in about May 1972. Steps would also be taken to define jointly a candidate experiment program for European researchers on the two systems.

The position of the European delegates to the Washington meeting was an unenviable one. The European space program had been dealt a serious blow between the exploratory meeting with NASA in October and the more exten­sive gathering to define work packages at the end of November. On November 5, 1971, the much-awaited F11 test flight of the Europa II rocket failed catastrophically when the rocket exploded three minutes after lift-off.76 ELDO immediately established a committee of enquiry, and requested American participation in the seven working groups set up to investigate the accident: Frutkin responded positively, if somewhat gingerly.77 With their technological

and managerial confidence shattered, the attraction of working closely with the United States in a post-Apollo program, no matter what the cost, had an increas­ing appeal in European capitals.

In 1974, Moscow’s Institute of Biomedical Problems (MIBP) demonstrated a rare show of Soviet initiative in cooperation, inviting NASA’s Ames Research Center (ARC) scientists to fly experiments on their 1975 Cosmos Biosatellite 782. Over the next several years, the Soviet Academy of Sciences launched these satellites at roughly two-year intervals, leading to a total of nine satellites carrying over one hundred US-led investigations into the effects of the space environment on biol­ogy and medicine. Principle investigators represented a number of research institu­tions and space programs from the United States, and East and West Europe.

In the interest of streamlining red tape and simplifying technological inter­faces, US and Soviet space program officials maintained their policy regarding one another’s hardware. This meant that American experiments operated on independent platforms. Sticking to the doctrine of clean interfaces, neither elec­tricity nor data-recording were supplied by Soviet hardware.

Additionally, the two parties exchanged no funds through the course of experimentation: the MIBP would fund and command all activities associated with launch and reentry whereas the Americans would pay for all hardware and development costs for their biomedical experiments. These conditions changed in 1992-1993 following the organization of a Russian civil space program when Moscow asked NASA to cover half the expenses of launch—roughly $16 million (see chapter 8).

The Soviet Union began launching these satellites in 1973, identifying them by either their Cosmos nomenclature or their Bion number as laid out in table 7.2 . Bion (a contraction of Biological Photon) satellite payloads were designed by the MIBP and carried an estimated design life of approximately 30 days in orbit. Being recoverable spacecraft, the Bions were a derivative of the Zenit reconnaissance satellite (used since 1961) and before that, the Vostok recoverable spacecraft (in use since 1960).

The Intercosmos space council invited participation of East European scien­tists from the beginning, but until November 1974 had not included the United States. At the fifth meeting of the Soviet-American Joint Working Group on Biomedicine, representatives of Moscow’s Institute for Biomedical Problems shocked Ames researchers by inviting experiments from the United States. Following procedures drafted in the 1971 Agreement on Space Sciences and Applications (which was renewed in 1974 and 1977), Ames Research Center functioned as the manager of American participation.

Until the Cosmos 782 mission, cooperation between the two had been lim­ited to sharing data, joint conferences, and publications. After Cosmos 782 landed in December 1975, it supplied data and specimens to researchers in Czechoslovakia, France, Hungary, Poland, Romania, the United States, and the Soviet Union.78 In 1977 Cosmos 936 carried an impressive array of instruments sent from two more nations: Bulgaria and the German Democratic Republic.

Kristen Edwards points out that the Soviet Academy of Science’s offer came at a fortuitous time for American biomedical researchers, in light of the fact that in 1969 NASA cancelled all biosatellite research.79 Following the disappoint­ment of an aborted program on Skylab, NASA bioscientists would otherwise have had to wait until the Shuttle was operational for space access.

Joint work on biosatellites stipulated that Americans design and build their instruments within the predesignated specifications of the Cosmos biosatellite, ship all materials, and when necessary train their Soviet counterparts in the use of such devices.80 Edwards explains that the first invitation for US proposals placed NASA scientists on a tight schedule: experiment descriptions due to the USSR by December 1974, experiment hardware due by August 1975. In the

meantime, NASA life scientists engineered and constructed experiment hard­ware. Edwards points out that these machines were passive specimen modules fitted within containers measuring half a cubic foot. These “passive” modules functioned autonomously from the Soviet spacecraft, neither drawing electrical current nor making use of the Soviet data recording systems. Circumventing Soviet hardware and personnel hinged on matters of security and the fact that communications regarding Bion “were not always sufficiently open due to security concerns in both countries.” Perhaps most important, the use of passive experiment modules eased anxieties regarding technology transfer—for Soviets and Americans alike.81

After payload elements were developed and tested, Soviet engineers took responsibility for system integration and testing of the overall spacecraft. As of 1992 (and likely before) persons in the USSR took charge of all animal training and biocompatibility testing. Soviet mission personnel took complete charge of launch activities. Following reentry, they coordinated the post-flight proce­dures between recovery sites and mission headquarters in Moscow.82 Only when specimens were back in Moscow did NASA’s ARC personnel take over their experiments.