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

BUILdINg SpaCe CapaBILIty thrOUgh
eUrOpeaN regIONaL COLLaBOratION
French National Space agency Centre Nationale des Études Spatiales (CNeS)
and so fnancially and formally independent of the French missile program. 9
I could provide multiple examples, but the point is, I hope, clear: space in
europe was predominantly civil, and whenever that boundary risked being
blurred, above all in industry, some countries simply did not participate in that
particular aspect of space activities.
SCIeNCe aNd appLICatIONS
Science has been a preferred site for international collaboration, at least in
times of peace and between traditional allies. yet, contrary to what one might
think, science could not directly bear the weight of building a strong european
regional capability in the early years of their space program.
One of the main reasons for this was that bilateral programs with the
United States were very attractive and even essential alternatives to multilateral
programs with european partners. at the Committee on Space research
(COSpar) meeting in the hague in March 1959, the american delegate
announced that NaSa was willing to fy experiments by foreign scientists on
U.S. satellites, even going so far as to help scientists in other countries build an
entire scientifc payload for launching on american Scout rockets. Several
factors informed NaSa’s policy. It was a tangible expression of the requirement
specifed in the Space act of 1958 that NaSa foster international collaboration.
It could trade on the longstanding tradition of international scientifc exchange
and mobilize networks and institutions already in place that were familiar with
working outside national frameworks. It raised no obvious risks to national
security, nor of technological exchange—useful work could be done with
relatively simple and inexpensive instruments that perfectly embodied the
strategy of “clean interfaces” and “no exchange of funds” that quickly became
the hallmark of NaSa’s international programs. 10 Finally, NaSa was particularly
interested in seeing that a country from the Western bloc be the frst to launch
a satellite after the superpowers had done so, a position consistent with the allpervasive
logic of Cold War rivalry that marked every aspect of U.S.–Soviet
relations in space contained in the earlier Mcdougall reference. 11 Seen from
europe, where the space science community was small, inexperienced, and
9. emmanuel Chadeau, ed., L’Ambition technologique: naissance d’Ariane (paris: rive droite, 1995);
Claude Carlier et Marcel gilli,Les trente premières années du CNES.L’agence Française de lespace,
1962 – 1992 (paris: CNeS, 1994).
10. arnold Wolfe Frutkin, International Cooperation in Space (englewood Clifs, NJ: prenticehall,
1965).
11. John Krige,“Building a third Space power:Western european reactions to Sputnik at the dawn
of the Space age,” in roger d. Launius, John M. Logsdon, and robert W. Smith, Reconsidering
Sputnik. Forty Years Since the Soviet Satellite (Chur: harwood, 2000), pp. 289-307.
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