European Participation in the Post-Apollo. Program, 1971: The United States Begins to. Have Second Thoughts—And So. Do the Europeans

Bumps on the Road to Engaged Collaboration

On February 5, 1971, the Apollo XIV Lunar Module touched down on the surface of the moon. This was followed a few weeks later by the release of the President’s Report to Congress on Foreign Policy in the 1970s.1 The report used the successful completion of the Apollo XIV mission to reiterate that the achievement was not simply a reflection of American scientific and technological capability. “It is equally a measure of an older American tradition, the compul­sion to cross the next mountain chain. The pressurized space suit is, in a very real sense, today’s equivalent of the buckskin jacket and the buffalo robe. Apollo XIV is the latest packhorse, and its crew the most recent in a long line of American pioneers.” It ingeniously introduced the international dimension by stressing that “mutual help and cooperation” was “essential to life on the American fron­tier.” In a reference to the new climate of detente it noted that NASA and the State Department had been instructed to pursue broader collaborative projects with Moscow “with the utmost seriousness.“ Congress was also advised that while “substantial participation” was being sought in the post-Apollo program, “the result is uncertain, for there are very real difficulties to be solved.”2 Two of those concerned the scope of NASA’s international commitments.

White House staffer Tom Whitehead was particularly outspoken in this regard.3 In a memo to Peter Flanigan, who had oversight responsibilities for NASA’s budget, he wrote that the agency was failing to “make a transition from rapid razzle-dazzle growth and glamour to organizational maturity and more stable operations in the long-term.” Its overheads were too high. The agency lacked direction. Above all its pursuit of European funding for post-Apollo had not been thought through. The White House had not yet decided what the shape of the program would be, yet if the Europeans were to commit $1 billion to it, “the President and the Congress will have been locked into NASA’s grand plans because the political cost of reneging would be too high.” What is more,

“the kind of cooperation now being talked up will have the effect of giving away our space launch, space operations, and related know-how at 10 cents on the dollar,” to the disadvantage of US business. Whitehead, in fact, thought that it would be better to take space operations out of the political realm and anchor them more firmly in the commercial area, where they would be free from “inter­national bickering” and better serve the needs of American high-technology industry. What NASA needed now, he wrote, was “a new Administrator who will turn down NASA’s empire-building fervor,” and present the OMB and the White House with “broad but concrete alternatives.” “In short,” Whitehead wrote, “we need someone who will work with us rather than against us, [. . .] and will shape the program to reflect credit on the President rather than embarrass­ment.” The man eventually chosen for that job was James C. Fletcher, who took over as NASA’s administrator in April 1971.

Comsat leveled additional criticism of NASA and the State Department’s handling of European collaboration. In a sharply worded letter to U. Alexis Johnson dated December 29, 1970, Comsat president Joseph Charyk spelt out his concerns.4 Charyk noted that, in the negotiations over the definitive Intelsat agreements that were drawing to a close, “we had assumed that the United States would refuse to provide launch services for a separate regional system unless the Assembly of Parties, with the concurrence of the United States, found that the proposed system would be technically compatible with the Intelsat system and would not do significant economic harm to that system” (a positive finding, as explained in chapter 4). From what he had heard, however, it seemed that the United States would be prepared to launch regional satellites for Europe under a quite different set of conditions (a negative finding). Comsat’s entire strategy and, in particular, its willingness to retreat from its initial negotiating position— that no separate system should be tolerated at all—was being undermined by the kind of concessions Johnson was making to the Europeans (see table 5.1).

For Charyk the only condition under which the United States should launch a separate system would be if the Assembly of Parties, by the required two-thirds vote and with the concurrence of the United States, made a positive finding.5 Anything else would “appear to us to be indefensible” (table 5.1). He ended by asking the government “to clarify its intentions,” and to provide Comsat and the US delegation with the “clearest possible assurances” on the conditions for launcher availability. This would have a “direct bearing” on the US delegation’s willingness to accept the very diluted version of Article XIV(d) in the definitive agreements due to be signed soon. Put bluntly, what Comsat could not achieve at the negotiating table it wanted the State Department to achieve by exploiting the United States’ monopoly of access to space to deny launcher availability to regional comsat systems unless they could be shown to do no economic harm to the single global system.

Comsat’s “attack,” as Pollack called it, placed NASA and the State Department in an acutely difficult position.6 It took several weeks for Johnson to work out his position in discussion with Low, Charyk, Frutkin, and Whitehead. To draw closer to Charyk, Johnson decided to reverse the position he had discussed with Lefevre in October, and to align himself (partially) with Charyk (table 5.1). As Johnson explained, this meant that if earlier Intelsat had to prove that the sepa­rate system did do it economic harm (i. e., the presumption was that it did not),

now “the proponent(s) of a regional system [would] bear the burden of persuad­ing two-thirds of the Assembly that the proposal will not cause significant eco­nomic harm to Intelsat and will not prejudice the establishment of direct links to the global system.”7

Johnson would not go all the way with Charyk, however. He insisted that the international structure of Intelsat obliged the United States to accept an affirmative vote that achieved the required majority, even if the United States was in the minority position (table 5.1). Nor would the State Department yield on this point: a two-thirds positive finding, with or without US support, was “absolutely necessary in order to reach any agreement with the Europeans.”8 To reassure Charyk and the Comsat Board, Johnson pointed out that it was very unlikely that a regional system could achieve a two-thirds favorable finding if the United States was opposed to it.

NASA was not happy with this concession to Charyk. The Europeans would obviously be furious. Low feared that the reversal of the more flexible position previously suggested to Lefevre “will effectively kill the chances for post-Apollo participation by Europe.”9 The only way to “soften the blow,” he said, would be to make an advance commitment to launch Europe’s planned operational satel­lite system, Eurosat, foreseen for the early 1980s. This decision had to be taken before the next Lefevre mission to Washington, scheduled for early February. Low felt so strongly about this that, according to Frutkin, “if we could not arrive at a policy decision and so inform the Europeans, he would feel obliged to tell the President that he could not expect to carry out the President’s charge to NASA to develop post-Apollo participation.”

Eurosat, to be situated in a geostationary orbit at longitude 5°E, would have 3,000-5,000 circuits by 1980, and 8,000-20,000 circuits by 1990.10 It would carry part of the intra-European traffic in telephony, telegraphy, and telex of the CEPT (European Conference of Postal and Telecommunications Administrations) and Eurovision TV programs on behalf of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU). Coverage would include Western Europe and the Mediterranean basin, and extend to the five Nordic countries as well as Turkey. NASA concluded that Eurosat would do significant economic harm to Intelsat only if it provided televi­sion as well as voice, record and data services between all of these countries. If, however, it provided television to the Mediterranean basin exclusively, and a full range of services to the remaining countries, it would cause “measurable but not significant economic harm.”11 This was the configuration of the satellite that, in Low’s view, Johnson would have to launch for Europe if he did not want the rever­sal of his position to sabotage all hope for post-Apollo negotiation. Unfortunately, Johnson made no mention of Eurosat in his conciliatory letter to Charyk.12