Implementing the 1969 Agreement

When the 1969 Agreement was signed there were no less than 24 pending requests for the transfer of launcher technology from the United States to the Japanese fledgling N-program. Here is a typical example of one such case that was pending in June 1969. It indicates how difficult it was to decide what could reasonably be passed on to Japan, and the importance that NASA officials attached to the final terms of any agreement between the two nations21:

Case No Company

64-69 TRW

a. Commodity: Assistance in performing a “Sizing Study” of the Japanese N launch vehicle, including computer simulations.

b. Comments: NASA finds it difficult to evaluate the significance of this case. It recommends that a final decision should be left in abeyance until after the agree­ment. DOD, in an interim reply on the case, said it would not object to those parts of the assistance that are within the scope of the agreement. ACDA gave an unqualified no objection.

The agreement itself authorized American industry, with US government per­mission, to provide “unclassified technology and equipment [ . . . ] for the devel­opment of Japanese Q and N launch vehicles and communications and other satellites for peaceful applications.” As regards launchers, an attachment speci­fied that the agreement would hold “up to the level of the Thor-Delta vehicle systems, exclusive of reentry and related technology.”22

This was fine as far as it went, but it did not specify just which Thor-Delta con­figuration was to serve as a benchmark. Successful implementation, in the view of a State-DOD-NASA team, thus required the formulation of “a package guideline that a) would enable the Japanese to reach their objective of placing a synchro­nous satellite into orbit, b) would not raise any security problems for the U. S. and c) more importantly would serve as a yardstick to measure specific cases, as to whether they are within the scope of the agreement and therefore approvable.”23 The task of setting that yardstick was entrusted to a multibody group called the Technology Advisory Group (TAG). It was composed of representatives from the DOD, NASA, the State Department, and the OMC (Office of Munitions Control).24 First chaired by Mr. Vincent Johnson, deputy associate administrator of NASA for Space Science and Applications, the TAG broadly acted as a control mechanism for limiting the technology that was transferred and made sure that the equipment that was offered to Japan provided the bare minimum configura­tion to place a satellite in geostationary orbit.25

The immediate task before TAG was to clarify the wording of the agreement that was signed in 1969. This baseline would be used by the OMC to evaluate the licenses for exporting technology and equipment. However, as Vincent Johnson

put it, “[T]he task of generating an explicit, single faceted and easy to administer definition of the level of technology authorized and/or intended under the U. S./ Japanese Space agreement [was] not a simple one.” He pointed to the agreement providing “reasonable latitude in interpretation” notably as regards the “level” of the Thor-Delta technology that could be shared.26 Since the level could be interpreted differently depending on the specific set of conditions surrounding a particular situation, the TAG wanted to have an unambiguous baseline to use as a yardstick against which to evaluate specific requests for release. The TAG provided OMC with such a detailed Thor-Delta definition on October 30, 1970 (see table 10.1).

The TAG chose Thor-Delta 58 as the baseline launcher for collaborative pur­poses. This was the model that provided the first two stages of Thor-Delta 71, the vehicle in use when the US/Japan space cooperation Agreement was signed in July 1969, and it had a geosynchronous capability of 156 kilograms. Thor-Delta 58 was the least sophisticated launcher capable of achieving the geosynchronous target of 120-130 kilograms the Japanese had set for their first experimental test satellites. It had also been used in May 1969 to place an Intelsat III communi­cations satellite weighing about 145 kilograms into geostationary orbit. To the above baseline TAG inserted this caveat:

It should be clearly recognized that such a definition cannot be used as the sole criteria for approval or rejection of a given request. Many cases will arise where it is either impractical, undesirable, or not in our own best interest to provide the specific hardware and/or technology defined in the base line system. In these instances the judgment must be exercised as to the need, suitability and relation­ship to the general Thor-delta “level” or “class” of hardware and/or technology.

In these instances, a rationale should be provided setting forth the reasons for departure from the base line system.27