The international space cooperation in the early years of the French space activities: Political voluntarism and/or necessity?
- Paper number
IAC-06-E4.2.06
- Author
Mr. Jacques Villain, Institut Français d'Histoire de l'Espace, France
- Year
2006
- Abstract
To date, keeping in the general trend of the world globalization observed from the fall of the 80’s, space activities largely call to the international cooperation. Fifty years ago, they were born in a totally different geopolitical context, widely dominated by the West and East rivalry, banning all concrete cooperative initiative between United States and the Soviet Union. In such a context, where the nascent Europe was not within a real influence yet, at that time some rare countries were conscious of the strategic interest of the activities relating to Space. Belong them, France has rapidly got the measure of this importance and has been engaged in a space programme where the international cooperation took a large place. From our point of view, two main reasons could be advanced to explain the policy followed by France in this matter. One is the Political voluntarism expressed through the independence policy followed by general de Gaulle; another one, is based on a technological necessity. In this paper, we propose to discuss this thesis by examining the different forms of cooperation adopted by France in the early years of its space program.
- Abstract document