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

46 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age
fragmented, NaSa’s ofer was a godsend. Indeed, French space scientists are
unstinting in their praise for NaSa’s generosity and support in these early days
and recognize that without it their own program could never have taken root
and been as successful as quickly as it was. But it had a downside from a european
collaborative perspective. Space science was a fragile platform for integration
since so much frst had to be done through bilateral arrangements with the
United States.
the lukewarm enthusiasm in the 1960s for major collaborative space science
projects had tangible efects. the european Space research Organization
(eSrO), established along with eLdO, had a pitifully small budget and had
great difculty in developing any major scientifc satellite program of its own.
the attempt to build a Large astronomical Satellite that was sufciently costly
and complex to serve as an integrative glue collapsed ignominiously. 12 the point
of having a european-based science program at all was vigorously contested
by the French in the early 1970s when the future of eSrO, or at least its
mission, hung in the balance. It was only saved by reorienting the organization
towards application satellites (to the dismay of the scientifc founding fathers)
and at the insistence of the British, who demanded that science be made a
mandatory component in the new eSa that emerged in 1975. this was a sign
of the vulnerability of the collaborative science program, not of its strength. at
the time it was feared that, if science was made optional like all the other major
programs then being agreed on for eSa, it would simply collapse for lack of
political and fnancial support.
One reason for the assault on science in the early 1970s was a determination
in europe, led by the French, to make launchers and application satellites the
backbone of the european space efort. the rationale in paris combined a gaullist
determination to become independent of the United States with a recognition
that space not only had important commercial possibilities, but was a crucial
domain in which one could hope to close the technological and managerial gap
that has opened up between the two sides of the atlantic. however, France did
not entirely get its way. germany insisted on building Spacelab in collaboration
with the United States, and the science program actually became one of eSa’s
outstanding domains of activity. the fact remains, though, that european
foreign and industrial policy are central drivers of the regional space efort,
a point that is so important (and which makes europe so diferent from the
United States) that it deserves further elaboration.
12. John Krige,“the rise and Fall of eSrO’s First Major Scientifc project:the Large astronomical
Satellite (LaS),” in John Krige, ed., Choosing Big Technologies (Chur: harwood, 1993), pp. 1-26.