NASA - W. European Collaboration in the Post-Apollo Program: Why it came down to Spacelab
- Paper number
IAC-11,E4,2,6,x10628
- Author
Prof. John Krige, Georgia Institute of Technology, United States
- Year
2011
- Abstract
This paper will describe the changing shape of NASA's offers to Western Europe to collaborate in the post-Apollo program in the late 1960s to the early 1970s. That offer originally comprised participation in building parts of the Shuttle, and full responsibility for a space tug to ferry men and equipment from LEO to the geostationary orbit. It was reduced in summer 1972 to building Spacelab, a shirt-sleeve research facility that fitted in the Shuttle's cargo bay. Why? For this paper, emphasis will be placed on the fear that a more substantial collaboration would lead to the leakage of important technology to Western Europe. The study is based on extensive primary research in NASA and European archives.
- Abstract document
- Manuscript document
(absent)