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

BUILdINg SpaCe CapaBILIty thrOUgh
eUrOpeaN regIONaL COLLaBOratION
space efort was made precisely by people who were determined that it should
be free from military control and independent of military funding.
these ambitions dovetailed with those of the potential member states
of any future european space organization. Collaborative programs in the
military sphere were politically impossible. For the British, to do so would
mean jeopardizing their special relationship with the United States and the
privileged access to military technology that that gave them. For the French,
it would mean diluting sovereignty at the very moment when president de
gaulle was in no mood to be tied by obligations to european partners that
might restrict his development of France’s independent strike force (or force de
frappe). For its part, germany had to tread with extreme caution in all areas of
potential military signifcance. the memories of two world wars and the role of
germany in provoking them were still fresh. Indeed, the “double containment”
of Soviet communism and german nationalism and militarism was another
important reason why Washington and its continental allies strongly supported
the emergence of a supranational, integrated europe. a european space efort
was not and could not be dictated by military considerations. Its rationale would
need to lie elsewhere.
the history of european launchers confrms this point. amaldi and auger
originally envisioned an organization similar to NaSa for Western europe—an
organization responsible for developing both launchers and scientifc satellites.
this plan was rejected by many countries that, while happy to be part of a
collaborative scientifc research efort, were not willing to work together to
build a launcher (baptized europa and built under the auspices of the european
Launcher development Organization [eLdO]). this was partly due to cost,
but it was also because small countries like Switzerland, whose global weight
was intimately associated with its posture of neutrality, deemed launchers as
being too close to the military end of the civilian-military spectrum for their
government to participate in developing such technology.
the military signifcance of launchers also partly explains the disastrous
failure of the europa program. this is generally, and rightly, put down to the
lack of project management in eLdO and the failure to integrate the three
stages of the rocket being built separately in Britain, France, and germany. 8
however, even if europe had had the requisite project management skills—
which it did not—the mutual mistrust between the partners and the reluctance
of government and industry to let engineers from other countries have access
to domestic missile and rocket technology (believed to be a national strategic
asset) sabotaged any serious efort at technological integration. europe learned
the lesson. the successful ariane launcher was not only built under French
industrial and management leadership. It was also a product of the civilian
8. Stephen B. Johnson, The Secret of Apollo. Systems Management in American and European Space
Systems (Baltimore, Md: Johns hopkins University press, 2002).
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