481 



Space-Age Europe 195 



slammed shut. \\\c Italian government called for a "technological 

 Marshall ])lan" and British Prime Minister Harold Wilson for a "Kuro- 

 pean tec hnological connnunity" to supplement the Clonnnon Market.^' 



Americans at the tiuie, entering the home stretch in the race for the 

 moon, naturally believed their own ad\ ei tising about the superiority of 

 the American system for generating high technology. The Atlantic 

 Institute, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Develop- 

 ment, and other Euro-American institutions earnestly inquired into 

 how to bi idge the technology gap. Robert McNamara and James Webb 

 argued that the real gaj) was not in hardware but in management 

 lechni(jues and systems analysis as practiced in the United States. 

 Zbigniew Brzezinski emphasized the importance of scale: "All inven- 

 tions for a long time will be made in the U.S. because we are moving so 

 fast in technology and large-scale efforts produce inventions."" 



Dismay and discouragement made 1968-72 years of confusion and 

 cautious rebirth for space-age Europe. The Europa-2 booster failed 

 lour times to launch a satellite, and ELDO finalh collapsed.-" The 

 Nixon administration, absorbed in planning for the post-.Apollo 

 period, invited the Europeans to collaborate in the proposed Space 



'^'EUROSPACIE, Towards a European Space Program (Fontenay-s-bois, 1966). On the 

 technology gap generally, see: Jean-Jacques Servan-Schreiber, Le Defi amencam (Paris, 

 1967); Norman Vig, Science and Technology m British Politics (Oxiord, 1968); Pierre V'eijas, 

 L'Europe face a la revolution technologique americaine (Paris, 1969); Klaus-Heinrich Standke, 

 Europdische Forschungspolitik im Wettbewerb (Baden-Baden, 1970). 



"Atlantic Institute, The Technology Gap: United States and Europe (London, 1970); 

 Richard R. Nelson, The Technology Gap: Analysis and Appraual, RAND P-3694-1 (1967); 

 Roger Williams, European Technology: The Politics of Collaboration (London, 1973). McNa- 

 mara cited by Williams, p. 2.5; Brzezinski cited by James Webb, memo to Arnold Frutkin, 

 June 22, 1967, NASA History Office. 



'^''Events in Britain determined the final fate of ELDO. Despite the role of Price, 

 Massic, Thorncycroft, and other Britons in the founding of the oiganizalion, British 

 cabinets exhibited a lasting confusion about space and icthiiolog) polic ) Ilistoiic.tily, 

 the United Kingdom had the third-highest R&D budget in the world, while its industrial 

 decline periodically raised alarms about the need for new technology. Nevertheless, 

 budgetary pressures and bungling seemed always to prevent a coherent policy on the 

 French model. Officials responsible for space suffered from a bureaucratic minuet that 

 shifted them among nine different ministries over the space of a decade. Having 

 canceled its national missile programs, the British government revived scientific roc ket 

 research in 1964 and finally laimched a single, homemade satellite on the Blac k Knight 

 booster in 1971. After 1957 the British depended on the United Stales for strategic 

 missiles and among the Europeans weie the most willing to rely on NASA for access to 

 s[)ate, earning tlicm in European space councils the epithet "the dcli-gales from .Amer- 

 ica." In April 1968, Anthony Wedgewood-Benn declared on behalf <;f the Labour 

 government that Britain would make no further commitment to ELDO beyond her 

 current obligations: "The effort of the (iovernment should be directed to reinforcing the 

 iiitffKtrial potential which Fairopc already possesses." 



