Europe’s Response

By May 1970 the ELDO Council had voted $500,000 for conceptual studies of the tug, while the ESRO Council had voted a similar sum for a modular element of the space station.29 The full-time ELDO and ESRO representatives to NASA in Washington had been nominated. Industries on both sides of the Atlantic were exploring ways of working together. It was being suggested that Europe would contribute up to about $1 billion over the next decade to a $10-billion post-Apollo program by providing both discrete elements such as the space tug and highly integrated elements such as parts of the shuttle.

In response to European requests, NASA arranged for briefings on the station and shuttle in Europe in the summer 1970. Speaking in Paris and in Bonn early in June, Frutkin once again emphasized the agency’s enthusiasm for European participation, and identified five basic principles that would underpin it: “(1) self-funding of participation, (2) management integrity, (3) adequate exchange of technical information, (4) equivalent access to space facilities, and (5) the broadest possible participation.”30 Participation could take four forms—studies and R and D; developing a separate element like the tug; developing an integral part, element, or subsystem of the shuttle itself; and utilization by foreign experi­ments or foreign astronauts. Frutkin stressed that the sooner Europeans became engaged in the program, the greater would be the scope for participation.

Europeans could not act fast, however. Their own internal uncertainties and divisions over the future directions of the European space program were amplified by the need for certain assurances from the US authorities regarding the space transportation systems and the space shuttle. On the industrial side they hoped for “technical access to the space shuttle and space station projects,” along with a “European role in the production as well as the development phase of any items Europe undertake.” On the political side, they wanted guaranteed, reimburs­able access to American launchers and launch facilities both before and after the shuttle was operational. Both of these requests—for meaningful technological collaboration, and for guaranteed access to the shuttle—raised serious policy issues. It will be remembered that NSAM 294 specifically excluded foreign access to ballistic missile technology. What guarantee was there that STS technology, and above all the development of the technologically advanced tug, would not leak into national missile programs? As for the question of shuttle availability, this was poten­tially subject to the restrictions imposed by NSAM 338. NSAM 338 specifically disallowed NASA to launch telecommunications satellites that could undermine the single global telecommunications system being put in place by Intelsat (to be described in detail shortly). As a major NASA policy statement explained in May 1970, “in its ‘worst case’ form,” the demand for launch guarantees “raises the question of whether Europe should in principle be permitted to buy US STS launch services to establish commercial communications satellite systems which the United States might regard as competitive with Intelsat. The European view,” it went on, “is that Europe cannot be expected to contribute to the development of a key Space Transportation System whose use would be subject to U. S. ‘whims.’”

To sum up. In the months after Paine had enthusiastically promoted NASA’s new vision and program for space in Europe, the negotiations over European participation had become intertwined with a number of other related issues that complicated the decision-making processes enormously. Europe’s resources were limited. They were willing to invest more in space. But they faced a stark choice. Paine summed up the alternatives in a letter to Nixon. Europe “must choose either an independent European space effort of a limited and retrograde char­acter or commit to a much bolder joint program that will be dominated by the United States.”31 The NASA administrator had gone to the heart of the dilemma as seen by many abroad: independence along with technological obsolescence, or cooperation at the risk of domination.