Remembering the Space Age. - Black Vault Radio Network (BVRN)

BUILdINg SpaCe CapaBILIty thrOUgh
eUrOpeaN regIONaL COLLaBOratION
program and, in so doing, contributed to the building of a regional european
identity.
In the remainder of this paper, I want to fesh out these claims in more
detail and lay bare the poles around which the european space program has been
built. In addition, I want to emphasize the very diferent shape the program has
assumed as compared to the american program. the Space age, as I insisted
earlier, is not all of a piece, and is certainly not to be collapsed into those highly
visible and exotic features that so often dominate the public debate and the
public face of the american space program.
the reLatION OF the CIvIL aNd the MILItary
Walter Mcdougall has claimed that, when NaSa was launched, the
separation of military and civilian activities was increasingly artifcial in the
age of scientifc warfare and total Cold War. even scientifc programs, under
a civilian agency, were tools of competition in so far as an image of technical
dynamism was as important as actual weapons. the space program was a
paramilitary operation in the Cold War, no matter who ran it. all aspects of
national activity were becoming increasingly politicized, if not militarized. 2
Mcdougall was of course deeply aware of the technological, political,
industrial, and cultural dimensions of superpower rivalry, In addition, he was
disturbed by what he saw as the corresponding militarization of every facet of
american life in an age of what eisenhower called “total cold war.” 3 But even
if we insist on drawing the distinction between the civilian and the military
more fnely than he did, there is no doubt that space was and is fundamental to
national security, notably during the Cold War. as paul Stares pointed out in
1985, about two-thirds of all satellites launched in the frst 25-odd years after
Sputnik by the United States and the Soviet Union were for military purposes.
the fscal year (Fy) 1984 U.S. military space budget alone was about $10.5
billion in current dollars—about half of the total american space budget. 4 the
apparatus of the national security state will ensure the future of spacefight in
the United States for multiple forms of reconnaissance whether or not there is
a moonbase or a mission to Mars. In fact, one may go so far as to say that all
major space programs are, to some extent or another, parasitic on governments
recognizing the military potential of space. Without that military dimension,
they would never be willing to invest the billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money
2. Walter a. Mcdougall, . . . the Heavens and the Earth.A Political History of the Space Age (Baltimore,
Md: Johns hopkins University press, 1985), p.174.
3. Kenneth Osgood’s Total Cold War. Eisenhower’s Secret Propaganda Battle at Home and Abroad
(Lawrence, KS: University press of Kansas, 2006) described the many dimensions of this phrase.
4. paul B. Stares, The Militarization of Space. U.S. Policy, 1945-1984 (Ithaca, Ny: Cornell University
press, 1985), p. 14.
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