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1 84 Walter A . McDougall 



De Gaulle also announced plans for an orbital space program in 

 1959. The Hammaguir proving ground, home for France's share of 

 captured V-2s since 1947, became the most active rocket range outside 

 the United States and the USSR. In 1 96 1 , the state combined its various 

 research groups, and CNES emerged as a full-fledged space agency 

 and joined forces with SEREB to build a space-launch capacity. Unlike 

 the American NASA, CNES made no artificial distinction between 

 military and civilian rocketry. Its launchers were developed under 

 military aegis, and its director-general, Robert Aubiniere, was an air 

 force general and an advocate of the military uses of space. In the early 

 1 960s the SEREB crept up on orbital capacity with a series of ever more 

 precious stones: the Agate, Topaze, and Rubis solid-fueled stages, the 

 Emeraude liquid-fueled first stage, the Saphir two-stage configuration, 

 and finally the Diamant-A.'^ 



Why a French space program? First, if prestige were a primary aim 

 of Gaullist policy, then space beckoned irresistibly. Second, orbital 

 flight could be pursued relatively cheaply as an offshoot of the planned 

 military missile program. Third, a mature nuclear strike force would 

 itself someday require satellite support systems for geodesy, targeting, 

 surveillance, communications, and meteorology. Indeed, French mili- 

 tary theorists such as Aubiniere, Pierre Gaullois, and Colonel Petkov- 

 sek argued the inevitability of space militarization in the missile age 

 more candidly than American officials (who treated the military space 

 program as a public relations albatross).' But the fourth and fun- 

 damental reason for a French space program was the apparent central- 

 ity of space-related technologies in the Gaullist drive for permanent 

 technological revolution. 



The traditional "stalemate society" that was France had never ade- 

 quately adjusted even to the industrial age.'' But the advent of elec- 



often without official blessing. In 1954 the cabinet of Pierre Mendes-France approved 

 continuation of work leading to a bomb test. By that time French strategists already 

 justified "going nuclear" as an economy move, "more force for the franc," in imitation of 

 Eisenhower's New Look (see, e.g., Charles Ailleret, "L'Arme atomique, arme a bon 

 mar che," Revue de defense national 10 [1954): 31.5-25). Hence, when de (iaulle took over 

 in 1958 he had only to make public France's intention of building its own nuclear force 

 and vastly increase the funding. 



•"On French rocket development, see U.S. Congress, Committee on Science and Tech- 

 nology, World Wide Space Programs, 95th Cong., 2d sess. (1977), pp. 142-57. 



'See, e.g., Petkovsek, "L'Utilisation militaire des engins spaliaux," Revue mihtnire gene- 

 rale, ]u\y 1961. 



*A "stalemate society" (the evocative phrase is Stanley Honman's) is one in which 

 conflicting socioeconomic interest groups are strong enough to bloc k implementalion of 

 the programs of others but not strong enough to reali/e their own ihiough a weak, 

 fragmented parliamentary svsiem. Such a society is incapable oi major reforms. One 



