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

42 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age
needed to establish and to maintain a major presence in space and, above all, to
acquire independent access to space.
that said, the situation has to be nuanced. Certainly Britain and France
embarked on space programs in the 1950s and 1960s that owed much to their
military ambitions (and, in the case of France, to a considerable infux of technical
personnel from ex-Nazi rocket programs). 5 Both countries were medium-sized,
technologically dynamic powers that sought to maintain their global infuence
as their empires withered. Both sought independent nuclear deterrents and their
appropriate delivery systems, and both were in a position to deploy engineering
skills, hardware, and production techniques acquired in laboratories, design
shops, testing grounds, and industries for both civilian and military purposes. It
is also true that the earliest experiments in the upper atmosphere with sounding
rockets were only possible due to the military infrastructure, be it at Woomera
in South australia for the British, at hammaguir in the Sahara for the French,
or in Sardinia for the Italians. 6
all the same, as the collaborative european space program began to take
shape, a distinct efort was made to distance it from the military. One of the
reasons for this was the personalities and priorities of the main protagonists
of a joint european efort. 7 these were not government ofcials but cosmic
ray physicists turned scientifc statesmen, one Italian (edoardi amaldi), the
other French (pierre auger). amaldi and auger were among the founders of
the european Organization for Nuclear research (CerN), a particle physics
laboratory established in geneva in 1954. Both frmly believed that the only
way that european “big” science and technology could compete with the
United States was if governments pooled their resources (fnancial, industrial,
and skilled) in collaborative eforts. Both men had strong support in the highest
level of national administrations where senior bureaucrats saw promising
careers in joint european scientifc and technological activities. Both deplored
the militarization of scientifc research in Cold War america, and both were
extremely concerned by the proposals, emanating from the newly-formed
NatO Science Committee directed by Fred Seitz, that NatO should take the
initiative and build a european satellite. In short, the frst push for a european
5. For Britain, see harrie Massey and M. O. robins, History of British Space Science (Cambridge:
Cambridge University press, 1997). For France, see France durand-de Jongh, De la fusée Véronique
au lanceur Ariane. Une histoire d’hommes, 1945-1979 (paris: Stock, 1998).
6. For the military signifcance of early sounding rocket work, see david h. de vorkin, Science
with a Vengeance. How the Military Created the US Space Sciences after World War II (New york,
Ny: Springer, 1992).
7. the story is told in detail in John Krige and arturo russo, A History of the European Space Agency,
1958–1987, vol. 1 The Story of ELDO and ESRO, 1958–1973 (Noordwijk: european Space
agency Special publication-1235, 2000). For the later period, John Krige, arturo russo, and
Lorenza Sebesta, A History of the European Space Agency, 1958–1987, vol. 2 The Story of ESA,
1973–1987 (Noordwijk: european Space agency Special publication-1235, 2000).