Technology Transfer with Western. Europe: NASA-ELDO Relations in the 1960s

The previous chapter described the initiatives taken by NASA to promote sci­entific collaboration through bilateral agreements with friendly states in Europe, and with ESA. It was stressed that this form of collaboration, while not with­out its tensions, was not bedeviled by the dilemmas that accompany technology transfer. This chapter explores those dilemmas in some detail, discussing the early attempts made by NASA, in consultation with other agencies in the admin­istration, to define and implement a policy for technology transfer. Satellite­launching technology, be that with expendable or reusable systems, was the key issue around which these debates took place both within the administration, and between NASA and Western Europe.

The issue of technology transfer with Western Europe was not on NASA’s agenda until the early 1960s. A survey written by Arnold Frutkin in October 1960 projecting the scope of NASA’s international activities over the next decade focused exclusively on space science and the supporting infrastructure (such as the construction of tracking stations).1

The terms of the debate began to change when the possibilities of using space for commercial purposes began to emerge—and missiles became standard delivery sys­tems for nuclear warheads. On the one hand the Europeans, prodded by the British, began to think about building together a multistage satellite launcher funded and developed through a new supranational organization called ELDO (European Launcher Development Organization). The intergovernmental agreement that was signed in 1962 and ratified by national governments in 1964 provided for the shared development of a three-stage heavy launcher for civilian purposes.2

Telecommunications satellites provided the key rationale for developing this European rocket. As early as fall 1960 the British approached NASA to learn of its plans regarding an “active” communications satellite program.3 A col­laborative venture was quickly formalized in which the British, the French, and other friendly countries (e. g., Brazil) agreed to build ground terminals on their soil so as to participate in the testing of NASA’s Relay, Telstar, and Echo II satellites.4 These experiments were followed by the spectacular success of Early Bird launched into geostationary orbit in April 1965. Early Bird, which began commercial service on June 1, 1965, had 240 voice channels—all existing

transatlantic telephone cables had just 317. And it was far cheaper: the most up – to-date underwater telephone cable cost about ten times as much.5

West European governments and their telecommunication operators had an immense stake in these issues. They agreed to invest heavily in space, above all in the development of an independent launch capability, because they looked to a future in which telecommunications and other applications (meteorology, naviga­tion, etc.) were an integral part of their national and international technological strategies. They saw the 1960s as the period in which they would develop their industrial capabilities so as to position themselves internationally in the 1970s and beyond. They were not driven by Cold War rivalry with the Soviet Union, and they did not seek to establish a human presence in space—this would be left to the superpowers. What they sought was (eventually) to reap the practical benefits of space (along with the possibilities for new scientific discoveries that it offered).6 In their eyes, the meaning of (civilian) space was transformed from a domain of esoteric scientific investigation (with multiple military implications) into a sector of immense commercial and political importance. Communications satellites, in particular, not only created new opportunities for the transmission of radio, television, and telephone signals. They also promised to be an important platform for promoting and projecting images of national culture and of national prowess to the remotest regions of the globe. In other words by the mid-1960s the Europeans were seeking to become less technologically dependent on the United States and to expand their activity in space to include both science and applications, along with an “autonomous” launch capability.

NASA and the Department of State welcomed these developments. NASA’s objective was to promote the peaceful use of space. The State Department strongly favored European integration and the creation of an Atlantic community: only a united Europe, under American leadership, could contain the threat of Soviet expansion on the front lines of the Cold War. Support for an organization like ELDO, which was supranational and civilian, was compatible with these goals. To quote an early position paper on the issue, technological assistance to ELDO was coherent with “our objective of an economically and politically integrated European Community with increasingly close ties to this country within an Atlantic community.” In addition, by working with a multinational organization rather than making bilateral arrangements with separate states, one could hope to discourage the proliferation “of independent national medium – and long-range nuclear delivery systems.”7 Technological collaboration, unlike scientific coop­eration, was thus firmly embedded in the broader strategic and foreign policy concerns of the US administration in the European theater.

American willingness to assist Europe develop its aerospace technology was also linked to concerns about a supposed “technological gap” that had opened up between the two sides of the Atlantic. These concerns were widely aired in the media and were given an important impetus with the publication of Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber’s Le deft americain (The American Challenge) in 1967.8 Some American commentators placed the blame for Europe’s relative “backwardness” squarely on the continent’s own shoulders (as indeed did Servan-Schreiber).9 Others, including NASA and the State Department, took a broader view and saw the “technological gap” as a threat to the stability of the free world. For them, European scientific and technological strength was essential if capitalism was to compete successfully with the Soviet system, and if America’s partners across the Atlantic were to share the burden of the defense of the West. Space was particularly important in this regard, not because of the content and goals of the space program, but because such programs were seen to be key drivers of scientific and technological innovation.

Frutkin forcefully made this point at a meeting of the American Academy of Political and Social Science in Philadelphia in April 1966. The American space program, he said, pushed established scientific and technical disciplines to probe new frontiers, be it in fields such as physics, astronomy, and geodesy, or in materials, structures, and fuels. “In fact,” he insisted, “we may with increas­ing confidence say that the peculiar quality of space science and technology is its forcing function, its acceleration of joint progress in a wide range of disciplines.”10 Frutkin claimed that space research and development had contributed “signifi­cantly to the fundamental strength and viability of the United States in a world where economic and military security increasingly rest[ed] upon technology.” The Soviet Union had absorbed the lesson, “matching and outmatching” the United States in space expenditure, notwithstanding the people’s dire need for consumer goods. Western Europe, by contrast, was spending only about one-thirtieth as much as the United States on space technology. Their relative lack of interest in space could “lead only to political and economic strains and to weakness” he insisted. It was in America’s interest, therefore, that the technological gap in the space sector should be narrowed: “What has stimulated, energized and advanced us, may well stimulate, energize and advance them,” Frutkin suggested.11

This Cold War agenda, and the relatively paltry investment in space in Western Europe, obliged NASA to step in if it could. As the author of a 1964 CIA report put it, whatever measures the Europeans took to build their capability, “the assis­tance of the US—both officially and through unofficial commercial channels— has been, is, and will probably remain the critical factor in the success of any European space program in this decade.”12 This was the thinking that lay behind President Johnson’s and NASA’s support for Germany’s $100 million Helios pro­gram described in the previous chapter. It also informed the administration’s interest in assisting ELDO, though here the thrust to technological cooperation had to contend with a far more complex and contested policy agenda.