NASA and the Politics of Delta Launch Vehicle Technology Transfer to Japan

Abstract

As described in the previous chapter, Japan’s quest for the development of an indigenous launch capability began with the pioneering efforts of Itokawa and his team at IIS in the 1950s and at ISAS in the 1960s. Their program to develop solid propellant vehicles (Kappa, Lambda, Mu) for launching mini satellites to low earth orbit was thwarted in the late 1960s by three consecutive technological failures along with ongoing internal problems. These setbacks left the field open for the rival solid- and liquid-fuel program being undertaken by the NSDC, which progressed from developing a three-stage Q rocket in the 1960s to an N series constructed with American help in the 1970s. This was established with an intergovernmental agreement in which Washington undertook “to provide to the Japanese Government or to Japanese industry under contract with the Japanese Government, unclassified technology and equipment […] for the development of Japanese Q and N launch vehicles and communications and other satellites for peaceful purposes.”¹ This chapter focuses on the circumstances leading up to this arrangement, which was strongly promoted by the State Department, and the difficulties that NASA faced in interpreting its scope, and in cooperating with its implementation. That experience, in turn, enabled Japan to develop a “homegrown” H series of rockets in the 1980s, the latest being H-IIA capable of placing application satellites weighing more than two tons in geosynchronous orbit.²