The Hesitant 1970s

Although the ambitious post-Apollo initiative by Thomas Paine did not bear fruit, there were ongoing if sporadic talks between the two parties in the early 1970s.35 A meeting between President Nixon and Prime Minister Tanaka in 1973 led to the creation of a high-level binational panel to explore avenues for coop­eration. The panel identified “space science and applications as a promising area for expanded cooperation with Japan.”36 Specifically, NASA promoted the “uti­lization of the space shuttle/Spacelab system by Japanese scientists and facilitat­ing Japanese funding construction of a Landsat ground station.”37 A team from NASA visited Japan in October 1976 “to promote opportunities for Japanese uti­lization of the space shuttle for both scientific experiments and launching com­mercial payloads. [. . . ].”38 Logsdon suggests that little progress may have been made due to Arnold Frutkin’s known antipathy to working with Japan, perhaps because of his experience in the Pacific theater in World War II. In any event after President Jimmy Carter entered the White House in January 1977, a new team of NASA managers took over. Norman Terrell replaced Arnold Frutkin as the director of international affairs (Frutkin in fact left NASA soon thereaf­ter). Terrell encouraged NASA administrator Robert Frosch and his deputy Alan Lovelace to take up an offer to visit Japan in July 1978, to stimulate a more con­crete discussion of Japan’s plans for STS (shuttle) use. He also suggested that the visit could provide “the opportunity to offer ideas for planning more of Japan’s international cooperation with the United States.”39 This visit led to the estab­lishment of a joint study group that first met in December 1978. Its US chairman was Anthony Calio, deputy associate administrator of the NASA office of Space Science and Applications; Shozo Shimosato of the Space Activities Commission (SAC) led the Japanese participants. By June 1979 they had identified 17 areas in which US-Japanese cooperation might be initiated relatively quickly, respecting Frutkin’s now-classic principles (chapter 1). After a permanent Senior Standing Liaison Group meeting on a regular basis had taken up the baton, another round of cooperative agreements were signed that provided the basis for effective part­nership in space science and applications between Japan and the United States.40