ESRO’s American Bridge. across the Management Gap

Firms have shown themselves anxious to collaborate with ESRO as a means of gaining useful experience of the newer management techniques which are indispensable for the effec­tive control of the financial as well as the technical aspects of large and complex projects.

— J. J. Beattie and J. de la Cruz, 1967

The European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) presented a welcome contrast to the ongoing embarrassments of the European Space Vehicle Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO). Created as a service organiza­tion for European space scientists, ESRO overcame its initial organizational difficulties and developed a successful series of scientific satellites. Its achieve­ments proved that effective European space cooperation was possible. Al­though ELDO had been the Europeans’ prime organization to develop space technology, its failure paved the way for ESRO to become the route of choice across the management gap between the United States and Europe.

ESRO’s success owed a great deal to its greater contractual authority (com­pared to ELDO) and to American assistance. While European industry and powerful interest groups focused on the military and economic significance of launchers, ESRO’s scientific satellites seemed insignificant. ESRO’s Conven­tion and procedures consequently had fewer provisions to protect national economic interests than did ELDO, giving ESRO authority that ELDO never had. In addition, whereas Americans did not want to aid Europeans in rock­etry or communications satellites, they cheerfully gave technical and financial assistance to European science.

These factors help explain ESRO’s rise from a small service organization

to the core of Europe’s integrated space organization. Through the authority of its Convention, the ability of its engineering and managerial staff, and the help of the United States, ESRO and its descendant, the European Space Agency (ESA), mastered the art of systems management.1