scale projects that Congress was no longer eager to support. While admitting that the financial aspect was an important consideration, the NASA representatives stated that both the U.S. and Europe would realize an important return on an investment in the kind of project proposed. But there was also suspicion that America was dangling the Jupiter probe in front of Europe to divert attention toward science and away from more practical projects like communications satellites.

More basic was European concern about dependence upon American technology. Both the European Space Research Organization and the European Launcher Development Organization had been formally established in March of 1964 after two years of intensive debate over the need of Europe to master the technology of space. 48 The principal purpose of these two organizations was to foster the development of technical know-how, ELDO especially to develop a sufficient launch capability to make Europe independent of the United States for a good number of its space missions. Europeans were, for example, convinced that the United States would not launch applications satellites for European countries if those satellites appeared to compete undesirably with U.S. industry-as communications satellites might do.

Only West Germany was interested in an expanded program with the United States, and out of these discussions came several cooperative projects, one of which was the solar probe Helios, intended to make magnetic field and other measurements within the orbit of Mercury. Costing Germany more than $100 million for the satellites, Helios was a sizable project, certainly well beyond the Explorer class in technological difficulty. As its share the United States provided the two launchings required and furnished some of the experiments. The first Helios probe was launched toward the sun in December 1974.49 Other than the German projects, little came of the 1966 overtures to Europe. The proposals had, however, started a serious train of thought toward larger, more demanding programs, so that when the third administrator of NASA, Thomas Paine, began to press for some sort of cooperation in the Space Shuttle project that was being debated in the United States, a more receptive climate prevailed.

The same questions had to be faced again that had arisen earlier, and those concerning communications satellites had acquired an even greater force because of intensified airing of differences in the communications satellite consortium, where European members felt that the United States was dominating the consortium to the disadvantage of Europe. But cooperation on a Space Shuttle project was of a different character from joining in a scientific project like sending a probe to Jupiter. The Shuttle offered the opportunity to join in the development of a whole new technology, which in the view of the promoters would completely revolutionize space operations of the future, outdating and supplanting most of the expendable boosters used in the 1960s and 1970s.

After a long-drawn-out, careful assessment of values and costs, European countries in the European Space Research Organization, soon to give way to a new organization called the European Space Agency, agreed in September 1973 to develop a manned laboratory-Spacelab, originally called a sortie module in the United States-to be carried aboard the Space Shuttle.50 In this fashion the increased cooperation with Western countries initially sought in 1966 came about. While the kind of cooperation on space experiments and satellite research that had gone on before would continue, it would be colored during the 1970s by Space Shuttle and Spacelab developments and was slated to be fundamentally modified when the new vehicles came into operational use in the 1980s.

On the Soviet side escalation came about in a different manner. In international circles the openness of the U.S. space program and America's readiness to enter into a variety of cooperative endeavors came in for a good deal of favorable comment. NASA people could sense a strong pressure on the Soviet scientists to do the same, a pressure that at times the Soviet delegates to international meetings seemed to find uncomfortable. Still, very little changed, except possibly some of the Eastern bloc countries found it a little easier to get assignments to support the Soviet program with ground-based observations. Also, in 1967 France, under de Gaulle's anti-U.S. leadership, managed to enter into a cooperation with the Soviet Union that went on for a number of years.51 But for the United States to accomplish more, once again a change in the political climate was a prerequisite. In the move toward detente, political overtures on the part of the Nixon administration set the stage for new agreements in the space field.

In April 1970, Administrator Paine talked in New York with Anatoly Blagonravov about the possibility of combined docking operations in space. The idea was picked up by President Handler of the U.S. Academy of Sciences and discussed in Moscow in June with Mstislav Keldysh, president of the Soviet Academy of Sciences. In a letter to Keldysh, 31 July 1970, Paine made the first formal proposal for exploration of the subject.52 Discussions were held in Moscow in October, and agreement was reached to work together to design compatible equipment for rendezvous and docking in space. Work got under way at once and, although the first plans did not specifically include actual missions, the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project to carry out a docking in space eventually emerged. 53

While the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, which was carried out in 1975, did include some scientific experiments, the project goes beyond the planned scope of this book. But in the climate established by the discussions on rendezvous and docking, it was possible to broaden the cooperative agreements arrived at between Dryden and Blagonravov a decade before. During January 1971, George Low, acting administrator of NASA after Paine resigned, met with Keldysh in Moscow to discuss further possi

bilities for cooperation. They agreed to exchange lunar surface samples and agreed on procedures for expanding earlier cooperative activities.54 These Low-Keldysh agreements, as they came to be called, established a basis for increased cooperation between the two countries in both space science and applications. It remained to be seen whether the agreements would lead to further integrated undertakings, such as Apollo-Soyuz, or would continue to produce coordinated programs like the lunar sample exchanges.

19

Space Science and Practical Applications

In many ways space science contributed to the realization of important space applications-which may be defined as the use of space knowledge and techniques to attain practical objectives. Indeed, at the start of the program numerous potential applications required much advance research, including some space science, before their development could begin. Moreover, to many persons the development of applications appeared as the ultimate payoff of investments in the space program. Although the scientists would probably not have put it so strongly, nevertheless they could appreciate that point of view. As a consequence space scientists often pointed to potential applications of their work as one of the justifications for giving strong support to science in the space program.

Yet, in pointing to ultimate applications as one of the benefits to expect from their research, the scientists encountered a strange paradox. Although not appreciated for most of the 1960s, it finally became clear that in many respects applications-the "bread-and-butter work" of the space program—found it more difficult to gain support, especially on the executive side of government, than did space science.

Most space applications depend on or are affected in some way by properties of the atmosphere or conditions of space, which are subjects of the investigations of space science. For example, weather forecasting and the prediction of climatic trends depend on a knowledge of atmospheric behavior. The atmosphere is an exceedingly complex mechanism, a heat engine that receives solar heat which it reradiates into space. In the interval between receiving the energy and returning it to space, the atmosphere displays a bewildering variety of phenomena. The energy is converted into mechanical energy of winds and giant circulations that transport the excess energy received at the equator toward the polar regions. Clouds form and dissipate, storms are generated, water is taken up into the atmosphere from oceans, lakes, and rivers and released again in some form of precipitation. Interactions between the atmosphere and the land and oceans account for

much of the complexity of weather phenomena. Weather forecasting consists of deducing from current data on the state of the atmosphere, and an imperfect knowledge of how the atmosphere behaves, the state of the atmosphere at a chosen time in the future. To do this requires knowing how long certain circulation patterns may be expected to persist, the ways in which energy exchanges are likely to occur within the atmosphere and between the atmosphere and the land and sea, and how all these are influenced by the continuous input of energy from the sun.

As a consequence meteorology assumes a dual aspect, the practical one of forecasting weather and climate and the scientific aspect of research on the atmosphere. Thus, when meteorological satellites were sent aloft to obtain pictures and other atmospheric data from around the globe-filling in tremendous gaps that had previously existed in weather data—the purpose was both practical and scientific. Because of its importance to both civilian and military needs, the practical aspect naturally stood out, and much progress in this phase of meteorology was achieved during the 1960s.

But exceedingly difficult scientific problems remained. The groundbased studies of decades had not unraveled the complexities of the longterm predictability of large-scale atmospheric circulations, of severe storm phenomena, of the puzzles of tropical meteorology, or of the causes of climatic change. It was hoped-expected-that space science and groundbased research together could move faster than ground-based studies alone.

When in the 1970s detailed study of other planets became possible, atmospheric scientists sought from the planetary atmospheres new insights into the difficult problems of the terrestrial atmosphere with which they were wrestling.1

Navigation satellites have great military and economic importance.2 The principle of operation is quite simple. The artificial satellite substitutes as a reference point for the moon, sun, or stars; but since the satellite can be tracked by radio day or night, in fair weather or cloudy, it is available to the navigator whenever it is above the horizon. As in using the natural celestial bodies, if the navigator knows accurately the position of the artificial satellite, radio sightings of it permit him to locate his position on the earth. But, just as the celestial navigator has a problem with refraction of light by the atmosphere, for which he has to make corrections, so the satellite navigator must worry about refraction of radio signals. For him, the ionosphere produces the major effects, which are large enough to render the navigation system useless were it not possible to make correction. Here is where the ionospheric physicist's knowledge of the spatial and temporal variations of both the normal and disturbed ionosphere are essential. Again, the tie between space science and an important practical application is close.