International Cooperation

Cold War Era Competition and Cooperation

The early years of human spaceflight activities were marked by Cold War competition between the United States and the Soviet Union. Even though U.S. President John F. Kennedy suggested several times that the two countries should cooperate in sending men to the Moon, the Soviet Union never accepted his suggestion. It was only after the United States won the race to the Moon in 1969 that cooperation in human spaceflight between the two space superpowers, and between each of them and their allies, became possible.

Since then, there has been substantial cooperation in human spaceflight, with the focus being the activities in Earth orbit carried out by the United States and the Soviet Union. There is general agreement that when human exploration beyond Earth orbit resumes with trips back to the Moon, to Mars, or to some other destination, international cooperation will be essential for success. The experience of cooperation to date will provide the foundation for future journeys beyond Earth orbit.

As it planned its space activities to follow the Apollo program, the United States decided to invite other countries to participate in its human spaceflight efforts. In response, several countries in Europe, working through a newly-formed European Space Agency in 1973, agreed to develop and provide to the United States a laboratory called Spacelab to be carried in the payload bay of the new space shuttle, and Canada the same year agreed to provide a robotic arm for use with the shuttle. In return, the United States agreed to assist these countries in developing technologies associated with human spaceflight and, perhaps more important, to fly astronauts from cooperating countries on the space shuttle once it became operational in the 1980s.

The Soviet Union in the 1970s and 1980s concentrated on developing a series of Salyut orbiting space stations and, after 1986, the Mir station. It did not invite its allies to cooperate in developing these orbital outposts, but it did offer to fly guest cosmonauts for short stays on them. Also, the United States and the Soviet Union in 1972 agreed to a cooperative mission in which the U.S. Apollo spacecraft and the Soviet Soyuz spacecraft would rendezvous in orbit, dock to each other, and carry out joint experiments. The Apollo-Soyuz Test Project took place in July 1975.^* The project was intended to lead to increased U.S.-Soviet cooperation in human spaceflight, but political difficulties between the two countries blocked subsequent cooperation for almost twenty years.

The International Space Station

In 1984 U.S. President Ronald Reagan announced that he had approved development of a space station, and he invited U.S. allies to participate in that development. This time, both the European Space Agency and Japan agreed to contribute fully equipped laboratories to the station, and Canada agreed to provide an advanced robotic arm. Because the planned cooperation would extend over more than a decade, including the development, operation, and utilization of the space station, the cooperating governments negotiated a complex agreement that spelled out their rights and responsibilities with respect to the station and set up the legal and management framework for it. The United States was the major contributor to, and managing partner of, the space station, and its partners were often frustrated by U.S. redesigns and schedule delays over which they had little control.

Then in 1993, after the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union, the United States decided, for a mixture of political and technical reasons, to invite Russia to join a redesigned space station program. The station, which had been christened "Freedom" during the 1980s, was renamed the International Space Station. It was necessary to renegotiate the existing intergovernmental agreement to bring Russia into the partnership, and the station design was adjusted once again, making Russian contributions essential to its operation. This decision added more delays and costs to the program, as economic problems in Russia made it difficult for that nation to meet its commitments. In 2001, the United States deferred completion of the agreed-upon space station capable of hosting a seven-person crew because of budget and management problems, creating stresses between it and its international partners.

Achieving Goals through Cooperation

Governments choose to cooperate in human spaceflight when they believe that such cooperation is the best, and sometimes the only, way to achieve their space goals. Since different countries have differing goals in space, an agreement to cooperate in a particular space mission, or in a long-term program such as the International Space Station, is best understood as a "deal" or a "bargain" between partner countries. Each country tries to achieve as many of its objectives as possible, while recognizing that it must compromise with its partners on some issues important to them. Success in cooperation comes from providing enough benefits to each participating country so that each is satisfied with its involvement.

The Benefits and Risks of Cooperation

The benefits of cooperation include spreading the costs of space missions among several participants, bringing the technical capabilities of various partners together to achieve a common objective, and strengthening broader technical and political relations among cooperating nations. For leading space countries, cooperation is a way of demonstrating leadership and increasing prestige. For other countries, cooperation may be the only way to become involved in ambitious missions that they could not afford on their own, and it provides a way to gain experience in the organization and conduct of complex space activities. Since only the United States and Russia currently have the capability to send humans into space, cooperating with them is essential for any other country desiring to have astronauts of its own. (China has announced plans to develop a human spaceflight capability.)

There are also risks associated with international space cooperation. Cooperation means that each partner loses some freedom of action and becomes to some degree dependent on others. Cooperation increases the overall costs of a project, because it increases managerial complexity. Technical and political problems can appear if one partner does not honor its commitments. There is a possibility of unwanted technology transfer and a leading country can create future competitors by involving them in cooperative projects.

All of these benefits and risks have appeared in the International Space Station program. It is the largest and most complex peacetime example of international technological cooperation in history. It may well be a precedent for international cooperation in future large-scale human activities in space, but its lessons underline the obstacles to, as well as the promise of, such cooperation.

SEE ALSO INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION (VOLUMES 1 AND 3).

John M. Logsdon

Bibliography

Burrough, Bryan. Dragonfly: NASA and the Crisis Aboard Mir. New York: Harper Perennial, 2000.

Johnson-Freese, Joan. Changing Patterns of International Cooperation in Space. Malabar, FL: Orbit Book Company, 1990.

Exploring the Unknown: Selected Documents in the History of the U.S. Civil Space Program, Volume II: External Relationships, eds. John M. Logsdon, Dwayne A. Day, and Roger Launius. Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1996.

Internet Resources

NASA Office of External Relations. <http://www.hq.nasa.gov/office/codei/>.

United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs. <http://www.oosa.unvienna.org>.