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200 Walter A. McDougall 



about $1 billion. Could not the United States continue to compete with 

 its reliable "old-fashioned" rockets? To be sure, but the United States 

 had such a stake in the Shuttle that it cut back production of disposable 

 boosters in the expectation that Shuttle would revolutionize the indus- 

 try. The Reagan administration, by contrast, has encouraged a renais- 

 sance of disposable launchers, but preferably through private 

 enterprise. ^^ Even as the United States pushes space technology for- 

 ward into a new era, therefore, it is losing its hold on the only commer- 

 cial rewards of this expensive and vital field.'" 



Yet launchers are not the only arena of competition; nor are France 

 and ESA the only challengers in space technology. Seeking niches for 

 themselves in these and other space markets of the future, the British, 

 Canadians, and Japanese have forged ahead of the U.S. civilian space 

 program in the research necessary to the next age of satellite com- 

 munications, the 30/20 gigahertz or Ka band of the radio spectrum. 

 Satellites using this broad, high-frequency band will vastly expand 

 overall capacity, alleviate the growing shortage in geosynchronous 

 orbital slots over the equator, and facilitate sophisticated services such 

 as data transmission and conference calling. Meanwhile, France has 

 shown no appreciable decline in technocratic vigor. Indeed, in matters 

 of international technological competition, Francois Mitterand and the 

 Socialists seem more Gaullist than de Gaulle, pledging to revivify 

 national R&D and realize the old Gaullist vision of "France in the Year 

 2000." The French space agency CNES has promised "to consolidate 

 our position in the principal means of applications (telecommunica- 

 tions, television, earth observation), to construct a solid space industry, 

 and enlarge our penetration of the international market for launchers. 



^''Current U.S. policy options in civilian spaceflight are detailed in: U.S. Congress, 

 United States Civilian Space Programs 1958-1978, pp. 5-28; Office of Technology Assess- 

 ment, Civilian Space Policy and Applications (Washington, D.C., 1981), pp. 3-77; and the 

 Office of Technology Assessment's new study. Competition and Cooperation in Outer Space 

 (Washington, D.C., 1984). 



■"'Can the market for satellite launches really be worth the effort Europe has made to 

 break the American monopoly.' In strictly commercial tcrtns, the answer depends on 

 how many scientific and commercial satellites will be orbited in coming decades. Euro- 

 pean analysts expect 170 missions into geosynchronous orbits alone by 1995: 1 10 for 

 communications, fifty for television, and ten for meteorology. Even NASA estimates 

 between 103 and 163 payloadsby 1998 for which U.S. launchers and Ariane will compete 

 (Battelle Columbus Laboratories, Outside Users Payload Model [NASw-338, June 1983]). 

 Other analysts, however, predict a glut in communications circuits in the near future 

 resulting from a decline in the rate of increase of demand or improvement in the capacity 

 and durability of satellites or indeed from competition from earthbound fiber-optic 

 circuits. But the "success" of Ariane or satellite systems is not strictly a commercial matter. 

 Their inspiration was largely political. 



