Negotiations for ‘N’ Upgrades

The original goal for the N rocket program was for the launcher to be capable of placing a 130-kilogram satellite in geostationary orbit. Japan soon began to negotiate an upgrade to their N-1. In late 1971 and again in 1972, NASDA director Hideo Shima, responding to demands from private corporations for heavier application satellite payloads, “informally indicated they were interested in upgrading their launch capability from the initial 130 kg geosynchronous N-1 to 300 kg by the late 1970s and 500 kg by the mid-1980s.” TAG was approached by the Office of Munitions Control in January 1972 to inquire if the model of Thor-Delta or other launch vehicles would help the Japanese in meeting their desired 300 kilograms to geosynchronous orbit goal. The TAG resorted to the baseline it had framed earlier and replied that the 300-kilogram limit could be achieved by a “change in configuration but not in the level of technology.” However, for the 500-kilogram goal TAG was skeptical if the target could be met by reconfiguring the baseline and it suggested that a “technical approach to such a target was premature at that time.” The OMC circulated the TAG memoran­dum to the concerned government agencies for information. Arnold Frutkin was emphatically opposed. He informed the State Department that “NASA would not want to concur in any escalation of Delta technology for the Japanese.” He also took steps to “make sure that our people on TAG would not be involved in anything that would appear to be a recommendation for any increase; they could give only a technical assessment of the increase in performance which would be required if the USG decided to meet Japanese program needs.”28

The Department of State, on behalf of the Japanese, raised the question of an N-1 upgrade again in October 1972. They asked for the provision of nine strap – ons to the first stage that could be achieved with the so-called Universal Boat Tail (UBT); an ablative cooling thrust chamber for the second-stage engine instead of regenerative cooling; an enlarged second-stage propellant tank; an eight-foot fairing to handle larger payloads; and a larger third-stage motor. The Japanese proposed to buy the hardware first, then move to “kit-type” assembly in Japan and finally to production under license. NASA replied to these Japanese requests in November 1972, limiting cooperation to hardware sales only: as one document put it, “since the US would benefit little if at all from the sale of technology in this field, we recommended that the requested items be provided on a hardware-only basis” (emphasis in the original). Frutkin emphasized that “the selling of hardware to Japan does not produce an independent launch capability for Japan beyond that available through launchings for Japan from the US.” It was also in line with overall US national interests, and was favored by contractors such as McDonnell Douglas. In sum Frutkin recommended that

we should go along with hardware sales of the items requested by Japan since they did not represent more advanced technology (larger fairing and third stage motor), or would be exceedingly hard to reverse engineer (thrust chamber), or could be easily developed in Japan without U. S. assistance (UBT) . . . and since the income to industry from continuing hardware sales could be substantial.29

Repeated requests from Japan, and pressure from the State Department, frequently undermined NASA’s preferred policy that, beginning in 1972, emphasized the sale of hardware rather than the licensing of technology. For example, NASA tried to resist Japan’s efforts to secure approval for the licensing of the technology of the solid-fueled CASTOR II strap-on rocket that was manufactured by Thiokol and used on the Thor-Delta 58 that served as the baseline for the 1969 agreement. The agency tried to persuade Japan to purchase the CASTOR II rockets directly from Thiokol, rather than develop the capability to manufacture them in Japan. The State Department objected, suggesting that it had “considerable difficulty with the proposition that Japan must engage in debate in order to secure benefits to which it is entitled under an existing agreement.”30 Bowing to pressure, NASA informed the State Department that although it continued to prefer that Japan buy the rockets from Thiokol, it would no longer object to the licensing of the relevant technology, as long as there was added to the price of licensing “an additional rea­sonable recoupment fee to compensate the U. S. for the R&D costs incurred.”31 After an extended interagency review the United States, by the end of 1973, had agreed to sell Japan hardware to allow for the upgrade of the N rocket to a geostationary capability of 250 kilograms. That done, in 1974 NASA dug in its heels. The agency would “fully support the original agreement which provides a synchronous orbit capability of either 130 or 150 kg, depending on how the base­line is interpreted.” But NASA officials unambiguously stated that “any changes to the baseline vehicle which has the capability of improving the synchronous orbit payload capability becomes the subject of a new policy decision.”32

TAG was disbanded in mid-1974, and subsequent consideration of Japanese requests for launch-related technology was handled through normal interagency procedures.33 NASA became directly involved in the approval of anything related to the transfer of N1-SLV technology to Japan. When Tsuyoshi Amishima, deputy chairman of Japanese Space Activities Commission, visited NASA in April 1974 to further discuss raising the level of technical assistance, NASA’s negative stance was clear. NASA knew that it had to assist Japan to satisfy the Department of State, but beyond those obligations it had “no real interest” in doing so. NASA had helped Japan on its N-1 launch vehicle, not out of conviction, but only to play a “purely” technical advisory role.34 Now, as Deputy Administrator George Low put it,

The fact remains that when the original agreement was reached with the Japanese the baseline Thor Delta (Vehicle No. 58) had a capability of 130 kg to synchronous orbit. Over the years this has been upgraded by various means to a 250 kg capabil­ity, whereas the United States has upgraded its vehicle to 315 kg. In other words, the Japanese have received the benefit of a high proportion of all of the upgrad­ing activities. With these results in mind, I have no alternative but to require that either Dr. Fletcher or I approve all (emphasis in the original) future changes in U. S. activities having to do with the Japanese “N” vehicle.35

In particular, as far as NASA was concerned, any changes to the baseline vehicle that further improved its geostationary orbit capability would be the subject of a new policy decision taken by Fletcher or Low themselves.36

This response led to extended discussions between the United States and Japan for close on two years after the visit of the Japanese team in 1974. NASA’s position was that the requested assistance for the upgrade of the N-1 vehicle was technically beyond the terms of the 1969 agreement and the agency did not wish to amend or supplement that earlier agreement. The United States proposed an exchange of letters between the Department of State and the Japanese Scientific and Technological Agency to establish sufficient understanding by both gov­ernments as to the level of technology and hardware assistance the United States could make available for the N-1 through normal export channels.37 The United States agreed to provide Japan with the capability it desired but primarily through the export of already manufactured hardware systems and subsystems. Japan disagreed with this position, believing that the upgrades it was request­ing were indeed covered by the 1969 agreement and that the licensing of the desired technologies should be allowed to proceed. The US line prevailed and in August 1976 the Space Activities Commission (SAC) announced that Japan would purchase from the United States the hardware required to upgrade the N-1 launcher. This was embodied in a 1976 exchange of diplomatic notes that constituted a new US-Japan space cooperation agreement. Because of the hard­ware-only limits set by the United States, all stages of what came to be known as the N-2 vehicle were of US design and manufacture (see table 10.2).

In 1971 the US assistant secretary of the East Asia Bureau, Marshall Green, gave his unequivocal support to space collaboration with Japan, defending it as a valuable nonproliferation strategy. As he put it,

The key reasons why we originally supported the Space Cooperation Agreement with Japan were: to provide Japan with the means of satisfying requirements for national prestige that would not involve nuclear weapons; and, to get the U. S. in on the ground floor of the Japanese space program to assure an American orienta­tion. Other related objectives were to demonstrate the value of cooperation with the U. S. to broaden our bilateral relationship in areas less contentious than secu­rity, to spur the sale of U. S technology and hardware, and to shape and influence Japanese policy in areas that hopefully will involve only the peaceful application of space technology.38

Green was emphatic that those same objectives were still valid in 1971, and that space cooperation provided an opportunity to bolster US-Japanese relationships that were suffering “temporary strains” in the political and economic fields.39

NASA took a different tack. In the Intelsat agreements, the agency was par­ticularly concerned about the commercial implications of helping Japan develop access to the geostationary orbit. It had little option but to yield to pressures from the State Department and Japan and went along, albeit reluctantly, with the 1969 agreement. Subsequent negotiations with Japan over sharing Thor-Delta technol­ogy took place in parallel with negotiations with Western Europe over its participa­tion in the post-Apollo program, discussions that had been dominated by concerns of technology transfer. By 1974, after stretching the interpretation of initial agree­ment to accommodate requests for an escalation of payload capability to the geo­stationary orbit to 250 kilograms, and allowing the sale of hardware to achieve that end, the agency took control of the situation and cried halt. It had been an uphill struggle. As Frutkin put it in a memo to Low that year, working through the TAG, NASA had “consistently and successfully slowed down the outflow of produc­tion know-how and technology with potential commercial implications. We have tried especially to limit the number of Japanese assigned to U. S. plants (GE and Hughes),” he went on, “and also to provide that only results of tests, design, review etc. would be provided to the Japanese, rather than give them access to the process of exercising know-how. In all of this,” Frutkin concluded with exasperation, “we are working up-hill against the fait-accompli of the State Department.”40

The Japanese authorities, for their part, became increasingly resentful. As the head of the National Space Development Agency (NASDA), Hideo Shima, put it in 1976,

The philosophy of the U. S.-Japan agreement was that the United States would help Japan until Japan would become a colleague. . . Up to now we have made efforts in line with this philosophy. Hereafter, however, the United States is saying that, although it will sell manufactured hardware related to large launch vehicles beyond the technical level of the U. S.-Japan agreement and will also provide launching services, it will not teach Japan how to manufacture hardware. Japan’s position is, that is OK, and we will develop it for ourselves from now on, building on what we have learned.41