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

48 reMeMBerINg the SpaCe age
and Cultural Organization (UNeSCO) meeting in Florence, Italy, that a new
european physics laboratory built around big equipment be established and that
germany be included in this venture. this meeting happened just after the West
german state had been formed but before it was admitted to UNeSCO, when
the odor of opprobrium still hung over the german physicists who had stayed
behind and worked in Nazi germany and when research with accelerators was
highly restricted by the occupying powers. this change of approach refected
a larger change of tack in U.S. foreign policy. germany was no longer to be
treated as an occupied state and a threat to stability in Western europe, but as a
scientifc, technological, industrial, and economic force to be reintegrated back
into europe if its potential for the growth and security of the region and the
free world were to be realized. rabi was party to those debates. For germany,
membership of CerN gave a new legitimacy to its physics community and
to research with particle accelerators, in addition to opening the way for its
reacceptance into the international scientifc community. 15
ten years later, germany’s national interests in the space sector were
served in precisely the same way when it was admitted to eSrO and eLdO.
the allies imposed tight constraints on german rocketry after the war. Many of
her rocket scientists and engineers fed the country for fear of reprisals, leaving
a demoralized, isolated, and restricted community at home. Some hoped to
return one day to build up their national space efort: von Braun and his team
are not to be taken as typical of the german engineering community. 16 the
regional european option provided a way back for a nation that had been
efectively barred from space pursuits for more than a decade. By allowing the
german space program to grow under the auspices of a supranational regime,
government, industry, engineers, and scientists could once again embark on
building the infrastructure for a major space efort at the national, regional, and
international levels.
Space policy is not only a matter of foreign policy in europe; it is also
a matter of industrial policy. european nations are not shy in admitting that
they work together in space to build a shared industrial infrastructure and the
pool of scientifc and engineering skills that will enable them better to position
themselves competitively in the global market, notably vis-à-vis the world leader,
the United States. It must be said that this consideration also has some weight
in the United States, even though it is given far less prominence both in the
media and in scholarship. Indeed, as the Cold War moved from confrontation
to détente, and the two superpowers sought stability in their separate blocs,
arguments other than superpower rivalry had to be found to maintain a major
space program that could ensure the future of NaSa after the apollo Moon
15. Krige, American Hegemony, chapter 3.
16. Michael J. Neufeld, Von Braun. Dreamer of Space. Engineer of War (New york:alfred Knopf, 2007).