Abstract
The negotiations over European contributions to the post-Apollo program concerned the biggest single attempt to integrate a foreign nation or region into the technological core of the American space program during the first decades of NASA’s existence.1 These discussions were carried on for about three years, and engaged several NASA administrators: Thomas Paine, from October 1969 until he left NASA in September 1970; George Low, who temporarily led the organization while a successor was found; and then James C. Fletcher. They also engaged multiple arms of the administration: NASA of course, as the lead agency, but also the State Department, the Department of Defense, the Office of Telecommunications Policy, the National Security Council, and, hovering in the wings, the Office of Management and Budget (OMB), which assumed extensive powers in the Nixon administration.2 They were of deep concern to industry. And they were dominated by issues of technology transfer and launcher policy, here embedded in a framework that touched on matters of international diplomacy, national security, and American technological, commercial, and political leadership of the free world.
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Notes
The post-Apollo program was dealt with briefly by John Logsdon, Together into Orbit. The Origins of International Participation in the Space Station (Honolulu: University Press of the Pacific, 2005); and by
Howard E. McCurdy, The Space Station Decision. Incremental Politics and Technological Choice (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990). There is some crucial primary source material reproduced in
John M. Logsdon, ed., Exploring the Unknown. Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program. Vol. II. External Relationships (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4407, 1996). Excellent work using European archives has been done by
Lorenza Sebesta, e.g., “U.S.-European Relations and the Decision to Build Ariane, the European launch Vehicle,” in Andrew J. Butrica (ed.), Beyond the Ionosphere. Fifty Years of Satellite Communication (Washington, DC: NASASP–4217, 1997), 137–156;
Lorenza Sebesta, “The Availability of American Launchers and Europe’s Decision ‘To Go it Alone’,” in John Krige and Arturo Russo, A History of the European Space Agency, Vol. II, ESA, 1973–1987 (Noordwijk: ESA-SP1235, 2000), Chapter 10; “The Politics of Technological Cooperation in Space: US-European Negotiations on the Post-Apollo Programme,” History and Technology 11 (1994), 317–341.
See Joan Hoff, “The Presidency, Congress, and the Deceleration of the U.S. Space Program in the 1970s,” in Roger D. Launius and Howard E. McCurdy, Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership (Champagne, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1997), 92–132.
Hoff, in Launius and McCurdy, Spaceflight and the Myth, 98. See also John Logsdon, From Apollo to Shuttle: Policy Making in the Post-Apollo Era, Document HHR-46, Spring 1983, NHRC.
John Logsdon, “The Decision to Develop the Space Shuttle,” Space Policy 2 (May 1986), 101–119; “The Space Shuttle Program: A Policy Failure?” Science 232:4654 (May 30, 1986), 1099–1105.
Arnold W. Frutkin, “Memorandum to the File,” November 12, 1969, Record Group NASA 255, Box 17, Folder VI.D.2 WNRC.
Arnold W. Frutkin, “Memorandum to Escalation File (Organization Section), Reference: Discussion with Causse, Feb. 12,” March 5, 1970, Record Group NASA
George M. Low, “Memorandum for the Record. Space Shuttle Discussions with Secretary Seamans,” January 28, 1970, Record Group NASA 255, Box 17, Folder VII.A, WNRC.
Frutkin, “Memorandum for Dr. Mueller” and Arnold W. Frutkin, “Note s on European Trip—October 1969. Items for Discussion,” October 29, 1969, Record Group NASA 255, Box 17, Folder IX, WNRC.
Cited in Alvin S. Bass (Office of General Counsel, NASA), Dissemination of Scientific and Technical Information Abroad, June 4, 1970, Record Group NASA 255, Box 14, Folder I.G, WNRC.
Frutkin, “Purpose of Discussion with Dr. Kissinger,” July 7, 1970.
Frutkin, “Draft Paper Expressing President’s Wish for Positive Solution to Technical Exchange Problems,” July 8, 1970, Record Group NASA 255, Box 14, Folder II.B, WNRC.
A. Frutkin, “Notes for Discussion with Dr. Kissinger,” June 10, 1970, Record Group NASA 255, Box 14, Folder I.F, WNRC.
Frutkin “Draft” memo, June 26, 1970, Record Group NASA 255, Box 14, Folder I.F, WNRC. This argument was frequently used to justify a generous policy on scientific and technological sharing. See John Krige, American Hegemony and the Postwar Reconstruction of Science in Europe (Cambridge: MIT Press, 2006), Chapter 1.
Frutkin, “The Case for Establishing a Procedure,” July 8, 1970.
Memo, “Technology Transfer in the post-Apollo Program,” unsigned, undated, but clearly around July 1970, Record Group NASA 255, Box 14, Folder I.G, WNRC.
Arnold W. Frutkin, Memo for Dr. T. O. Paine, “First Report of the NSDM 72 Ad Hoc Interagency Group,” July 31, 1970, and Attachment, Record no. 12573, Federal Agencies-Presidents, Nixon administration, Folder International Cooperation (1970), NHRC.
“Memorandum for Record, Ad Hoc Interagency Group on NSDM-72” August 19, 1970; Frutkin, Draft Airgram on “Release of Technical In formation for pre-Agreement Phase, Post-Apollo Program,” July 22, 1970, Record Group NASA 255, Box 14, Folder I.G, WNRC. 51. This section is based on Richard R. Colino, The Intelsat Definitive Arrangements: Ushering in a New Era in Satellite Telecommunications. EBU Legal and Administrative Series, Monograph No. 9 (Geneva: European Broadcasting Union, 1973);
Jonathan F. Galloway, The Politics and Technology of Satellite Communications (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1972);
Pascal Griset, “Fondation et Empire: L’Hégémonie Américaine dans les Communications Internationales 1919–1980,” Reseaux. Communication, Technologie, Société No 49 (September–October 1991), 73–89;
William E. Lee, The Shaping of an American Empire: Negotiating the Interim Intelsat Agreements, paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism (60th, Madison, Wisconsin, 1977), Report ED151783, available at www.eric.ed.gov/ERICWebPortal/, accessed on May 15, 2009;
David J. Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications, 1945–1965 (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2002).
Galloway, The Politics and Technology of Satellite Communications, 143–144. It is difficult to know what to make of these figures, quoted by Galloway as indicative of a state subsidy to Comsat. Whalen remarks that NASA was barred by Congress in 1963 from research in communications satellites. The Agency got around this restriction by funding a generation of “applications” satellites (the ATS program), without however any technological advantage to the commercial domain, in Whalen’s view (Whalen, The Origins of Satellite Communications, 162–163). See also Whalen in Butrica (ed.), Beyond the Ionosphere. On the distribution of Comsat’s funds between in-house research and external contracts, see
Stephen A. Levy, “Intelsat: Technology, Politics and the Transformation of a Regime,” International Organization 29:3 (Summer 1975), 55–680. Much of the money was spent in-house, until it was agreed in 1972 that the ratio should be 50: 50. This was another thorn in the side of the United States’ partners in Comsat. The DOD developed its own, independent comsat system. (Summer 1975), 55–680. Much of the money was spent in-house, until it was agreed in 1972 that the ratio should be 50: 50. This was another thorn in the side of the United States’ partners in Comsat. The DOD developed its own, independent comsat system.
Marcellus S. Snow, International Commercial Satellite Communications. Economic and Political Issues of the First Decade of Intelsat (New York: Praeger, 1976), 123–124. BAC (British Aircraft Corporation) was the major subcontractor on Intelsat I V, News Item, BAC Build World’s Largest Commercial Satellite, January 1971, Record Group NASA 255, Box 16, Folder VI.C, WNRC.
Joshua Barker, “Engineers and Political Dreams. Indonesia in the Satellite Age,” Current Anthropology 46:5 (December 2005), 703–727, at 713.
R. Sueur, “The Symphonie Project and its Application,” Fourth Eurospace US-European Conference, September 22–25, 1970, Venice Italy, Record Group NASA 255, Box 15, Folder V.B, WNRC. Herman Bondi also gave an account of Symphonie at this meeting. It seemed to suggest that the regional program was a greater threat to Intelsat than Sueur implied: we will deal with Bondi’s Symphonie in the next chapter.
Memorandum, Frank R. Hammill, Jr. to George P. Miller, “Trip Report—International Cooperation in Space,” August 5, 1970, Record Group NASA 255, Box 14, Folder II.E.1, WNRC.
(Draft) State Department Report, Discussion with the European Space Conference of Eventual European Participation, September 11, 1970.
Telegram, Amembassy Brussels to the State Department, November 6, 1970. Donald Fink, “British Reject Post-Apollo Participation,” Aviation Week and Space Technology, November, 9 1970; “Britain Rejects Post-Apollo Role,” New York Times, November 5, 1970.
The most important other major program was Skylab, a space station derived from a modified third stage of a Saturn V moon rocket. Skylab was a product of NASA’s Apollo Applications program that was called on to find long-term uses for Apollo program hardware. It was placed in orbit in May 1973, and was inhabited three times (for 28, 59, and 84 days) over the next nine months. See T. A. Heppenheimer, The Space Shuttle Decision, NASA’s Search for a Reusable Space Vehicle (Washington, DC: NASA SP-4221, 1991).
Concluding remarks by Paine at a NASA long-range planning conference held at Wallops Island on June 14, 1970, as quoted by Howard E. McCurdy, Space and the American Imagination (Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institute Press, 1997), 50.
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© 2013 John Krige, Angelina Long Callahan, and Ashok Maharaj
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Krige, J., Callahan, A.L., Maharaj, A. (2013). European Participation in the Post-Apollo Program, 1969–1970: The Paine Years. In: NASA in the World. Palgrave Studies in the History of Science and Technology. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137340931_4
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