474 



188 Walter A. McDovgall 



still relied heavily on imported American teclinoloiry. Forty percent of 

 the FR-1 satellite, for instance, consisted of U.S. -made components. 

 But once in possession of such subsystems, French technicians repli- 

 cated them at home and gained an advantage over other Europeans. 

 One result of this "competition through coopeiation" was the almost 

 total European dominance enjoyed bv France in solar-cell systems in 

 the late 1960s." 



Space technology was to be a force for global unitv. said the 

 academics. But the new age, in de Gaulle's intuition, would be one of 

 heightened self-sufficiency and competition, even neomercantilism. 

 for any state considering itself a Great Power. The cost and complexitv 

 of space-age technologies rendered the free market obsolete — capital- 

 ism at home was no longer "competitive" in the global arena. French 

 policy on space, in sum, amounted to statist cooperation in science and 

 statist comf^etition in engineering. This was the France that sat down 

 with the other European states in 1962 to build a joint European space 

 program. 



Suddenly, after Sputnik, the airy zealots of the British Interplanetary 

 Society no longer appeared to be candidates for Bedlam. For a half- 

 century they had predicted the coming of spaceflight, and now their 

 pleas for a Bridsh space policy resounded in Parliament itself. David 

 Price, a Tory backbencher, intoned, "We are now in the space age, 

 whether we like it or not. All public policy must be shaped to accommo- 

 date this sudden change in the human environment. . . . Viewed his- 

 torically, Europe dare not stand apart from the space race." But Euro- 

 pean states could not compete by themselves, said Price, or be content 

 to lean on the superpowers, or expect a United Nations space program. 

 The only solution was a pooling of resources — and they need not even 

 start from scratch, for the British Blue Streak intermediate-range 



"On French competitive strategy for the European market, see Aubini^re, "Realisa- 

 tions et projets de la recherche spatiale fran^aise," Revue de defense nationale, November 

 1967, pp. 17.'^6-49. On the strategy and execution of the French space program in the 

 1960s, see: U.S. Congress, World Wide Space Programs, pp. 1 39-70; Georges L. Thomson, 

 La Politique spatiale de I'Europe, 2 vols. (Dijon, 1976), vol. 1 , Les Actions natwnales, chap. 1 ; 

 Michiel Schwartz, "European Policies on Space Science and Technology 1960-1978," 

 Research Policy 8 (1979): 204-43; "Programme spatiale fran^ais jusqu'en 1965," Figaro, 

 July 28, 1961; "Le Debat sur le centre deludes spatiales,"L<'A/orirf«', October 19, 1961; 

 "More French Satellites after 'Diamond,'" Dai/vr^/fgrapA, June 1, 1962; Kenneth Owen, 

 "France's Space Programme: The Reasons Why," Flight International, |uly 12, 1962; 

 L. Germain, "Le Recherche spatiale en France," Revue militaire d'lnfonnatwn, January 

 1963; Charles Cristofini (president of SEREB), "Planned Cooperation Is France's Aim," 

 Firuincial Times, ]une 10, 1963. 



