Disaster and Dissolution

To uncover technical problems prior to the upcoming test flights, ELDO con­tracted with Hawker Siddeley Dynamics to develop an electrical mockup of the Europa I and Europa II launchers at its facility in Stevenage. The company, in conjunction with engineers from other contractors, assembled complete stage mockups (sometimes without engines) prior to the F5 through F11 tests and flights. Hawker Siddeley ran several kinds of tests, including injection of faulty signals, electromagnetic interference, and flight sequence testing. These uncovered numerous design problems, which Hawker Siddeley then reported to the ELDO Secretariat and participating companies.52 Although Hawker Siddeley engineers found numerous problems, they did not find enough of them.

ELDO’s next major flight test, originally scheduled for 1965, mated France’s Coralie second stage with Britain’s Blue Streak first stage. After engineers aborted eight launch attempts because of various technical glitches and un­favorable weather, the ninth finally flew in August 1967, with the first stage operating properly. The second stage successfully separated, but its engines never fired, sending the stage crashing prematurely to Earth. Subsequent in­vestigations showed that the problem stemmed from an electrical ground fault in the second stage, which deenergized a relay in the first stage, leading to a failure of the second stage sequencer, which then failed to issue commands for the second stage to fire. In short, the launch failed because of an electrical interface problem between the first and second stages.53

The next attempt with Coralie came in December 1967. It failed just as the first flight had, with its engines ‘‘failing to light up.’’ In this case the failure occurred because of an electrical interface problem between the second stage and its connection to the ground system on the launch pad. Electromagnetic interference also hampered communication with the vehicle’s safety system, causing the loss of flight data and the potential of an inadvertent explosion.54

After the loss of the first Coralie in August, the French considered second stage problems to be minor. However, with another failure of French equip­ment, French authorities reacted with urgency. In a major internal reorganiza­tion, the French contracted with SEREB to manage the second stage program. SEREB had been involved with the program until 1963, performing feasibility studies and initial designs. After that time, authority rested with the military Laboratory for Ballistic and Aerodynamic Research (LRBA) and the Bureau Permanent Nord Vernon. The French Space Agency now interposed SEREB between itself and LRBA to ensure closer surveillance and management of the program.55

SEREB proposed a major vehicle redesign to improve reliability. The pro­posals involved performing more qualification tests on Coralie components and replacing several major components with others that SEREB used in its Diamant rocket design. ELDO’s technical group rejected the French propos­als because they were very costly and, more importantly, because they would disrupt the entire program, including designs for the first and third stages.56

ELDO engineers supported LRBA rather than SEREB, rejecting SEREB’s proposal to replace components. They stated, ‘‘The approach adopted by the French authorities is mainly due to the formation of a new technical di­rection team which is naturally anxious to use equipment with which it is familiar while being less familiar with the equipment it proposes to replace.’’ ELDO engineers chided SEREB: It ‘‘will have to make great efforts to be as familiar with the programme as the present team—which has ‘lived with’ the EUROPAI launcher for five years and is at present very experienced — not only in order to develop its equipment but also to take account of the specific con­tingencies of ELDO.’’ The member states rejected SEREB’s proposal in favor of ELDO’s proposal to upgrade and test existing second stage components.57

While the French regrouped, ELDO management assessed the impact of the project management reforms. The Secretariat divided its Project Manage­ment Directorate into two divisions, ‘‘one responsible for technical and time­scale aspects and the other for financial and contract aspects,’’ while other directorates provided support to them. Secretary-General Carrobio noted, ‘‘The principle is now acknowledged, inside and outside the Secretariat, that additional work or modifications to approved work require the prior agree­ment of the project management directors.’’ The coordination between mem­ber states and the Secretariat was improving, but still there were problems with schedule reporting (member states delivered PERT reports late) and cost control (member states did not thoroughly check contractor proposals). On Europa II, ELDO’s system of monthly progress reports and meetings worked smoothly.58

In the next Europa I flight, in December 1968, ELDO engineers felt vin­dicated in their earlier resistance to SEREB’s proposals because both Blue Streak and Coralie worked perfectly. Even though the German Astris exploded shortly after separation, ELDO and German engineers believed that they would isolate and repair the propulsion system problems they thought re­sponsible.59

Their confidence was unfounded, for on the next attempt, in July 1969, Astris failed precisely as before, with an explosion within one second of sepa­ration from the second stage. The Germans realized, just as the French had two years before, that they had major problems. The Germans formed four committees: a government committee to investigate the failure, a committee to investigate the rest of the design, an internal committee of the contractor ASAT, and a committee to oversee and coordinate the other three committees. Contrary to expectations, the investigators found that the explosions resulted not from a third stage propulsion problem but from an electrical failure in the interface between the third stage and the Italian test satellite that ignited the safety self-destruct system. The Italians had already noticed sensitivity in these German circuits during their tests, but neither they nor the Germans recognized the importance of the finding.60

German engineers fixed the electrical troubles, but the third stage showed new problems in the last flight of Europa I, in June 1970. This time, the result­ing investigation showed two third stage failures. First, an electrical connector disconnected prematurely, preventing separation of the Italian test satellite. Engineers traced this mechanical failure to the pressure between trapped air in the mechanism and the vacuum of space. Second, the third stage propul­sion feed system failed, probably because of contaminants that kept a pressure valve open. These failures led the ELDO Council to create a quality assurance organization in 1970, but because of a lack of staff, it could not cover all sites and processes.61

In November 1971 Europa II flew for the first and last time. This vehicle, which included a new Perigee-Apogee stage, blew up two and one-half min­utes into the flight because of an electrical malfunction caused by a failure of the third stage guidance computer. This too was an interface problem; the computer had been manufactured in Great Britain and delivered to Ger­man contractor ASAT, which took no responsibility for proper integration. At last, ELDO member states reacted strongly. As stated by General Aubi – niere, ELDO’s new secretary-general, ‘‘The failure of F11 in November 1971 brought home to the member states — and this was indeed the only positive point it achieved — the necessity for a complete overhaul of the programme management methods.’’62

The ELDO Council appointed a committee to review every aspect of the program. The committee, which included senior engineers and executives from government and industry in the United States and Europe,63 issued a devastating indictment of ELDO’s organization and management, finding nu­merous technical problems that resulted from the lack of authority and inade­quate communications. Poor electrical integration in the third stage was the immediate problem, having caused the failures of flights F7-F11. This was a function both of the poor management of the German company ASAT and of the contracting of the Secretariat, which did not assign integration authority to any of the contractors working on third stage components. Failures resulted from interface problems with components delivered by foreign contractors to ASAT, and between ASAT’s two partners, MBB and ERNO.

Communications between ASAT and its two partners were extremely poor. ASAT was a small organization created by the German government solely to coordinate the large companies MBB and ERNO on the ELDO third stage. Communications between ASAT and other firms supplying third stage com­ponents were even worse, leading to a design that obeyed ‘‘none of the most elementary rules concerning separation of high and low level signals, separa­tion of signals and electrical power supply, screening, earthing, bonding, etc.’’ This made the British guidance computer and sequencer extraordinarily sen­sitive to noise and minor voltage variations, which in turn caused it to fail in the F11 flight.64

By far the most significant recommendations were to abolish indirect con­tracting and to ensure the definition of clear responsibilities for interfaces. Member states at last gave the Secretariat the authority to place contracts. Now desperate for solutions, ELDO adopted a number of American tech­niques, including the full adoption of phased planning, work breakdown con­tractual structures, and preliminary and final design reviews for the Europa III program, ELDO’s hoped-for improvement to Europa II.65

General Aubiniere, the new secretary-general and former director of the French Space Agency, hoped that stronger project management would turn ELDO around. Unfortunately, ELDO never got another chance. After the British withdrew financial support in 1971, the remaining partners had to de­velop a new first stage or purchase Blue Streak stages. Disillusioned after the F11 failure, the Germans threatened to withdraw. With continuing political disagreements over launch vehicles and over cooperation with the United States space shuttle program, ELDO’s support evaporated. The member states eliminated Europa II while the F12 launch vehicle was on its way to Kourou in April 1973. ELDO bid for a part in the American shuttle program, but when the Americans withdrew its proposed Space Tug, a vehicle to boost payloads to higher orbits, ELDO’s time was up. The member states dissolved it in Feb­ruary 1974.66 Twelve years of negotiation, compromises, and struggle came to an end.

Conclusion

Political and industrial interests drove the formation of ELDO, Europe’s larg­est cooperative space project. All of the major powers preserved national interests through indirect contracting, by which national governments main­tained authority. Even after being strengthened in 1966 by adding a Project Management Directorate and an integrating organization, SETIS, the Secre­tariat was limited to collecting information and distributing it through the Technical Directorate to the ELDO Council. Member states compounded the Secretariat’s weakness by changing objectives, as British support weakened and French leaders lobbied to create a more powerful rocket that could boost communications satellites to geostationary orbit.

ELDO’s weakness resulted in a series of failures caused by interface prob­lems. The ELDO Secretariat could neither create nor enforce consistent docu­mentation, processes, or quality. Nor could it force contractors to commu­nicate with each other. These problems resulted in badly designed electrical circuitry between the British, French, and German stages as well as internal to the German third stage because of the poor management and attitude of Ger­man and British contractors. Six consecutive failures were the result, all but one because of interface failures traceable to poor communications between member countries and contractors.

While rocket and space programs in the United States and the Soviet Union all confronted numerous failures in the process of learning how to build these complex technologies, inadequate organizational structures and processes compounded ELDO’s problems. Like James Burke, the Jet Propulsion Labo­ratory’s first Ranger project manager, Europa I project managers had no con­trol over major elements of the project. ELDO’s unbroken series of failures mirrored Ranger’s early problems, showing the criticality of organizational issues. Europeans had the capability to build rockets, as shown by successes with Nazi Germany’s A-4 in World War II, and the postwar British Blue Streak and French Veronique and Diamant. However, all of these projects benefited from strong, centralized organizations and close working relationships be­tween government and contractors to ensure better communication. The ill – fated Europa launchers had none of these advantages.

ELDO combined many of the worst management ideas into a single, piti­ful organization. Its engineers, managers, and directors struggled against a fatally flawed management structure that was almost the exact antithesis of systems management in the United States. Where systems management pro­moted strong authority for the project manager, in ELDO the manager’s au­thority was virtually nil. Systems management required critical attention to interfaces, but ELDO initially ignored them; no single individual or group ever analyzed both sides of the interface to ensure compatibility. Compo­nent quality assurance-through inspections, testing, and documentation — was standard in the United States but only randomly present in ELDO. ELDO’s hapless record and defective structure was a warning to European leaders that cooperative technology development required true cooperation. Europeans would begin launcher development again, but this time on a much sounder basis. The new effort would build upon Europe’s successful science satellite group, ESRO.

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