[AR] Ariane history (was Re: clustering big rockets)
- From: Henry Spencer <hspencer@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- To: Arocket List <arocket@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
- Date: Mon, 28 Dec 2015 17:44:06 -0500 (EST)
On Mon, 28 Dec 2015, John Dom wrote:
...for some years the US had been saying "no need to develop your own
launchers, we'll launch your satellites for you", but when the
Franco-German Symphonie project asked, the response was "um, er, we
didn't mean *commercial* satellites"...
What did the Franco-French response AKA, ESA mean by non-"commercial"
satellite activities then which the State Dept. found unacceptable?
... spy sats? Spaceplanes (future IXV spinoffs)? Or?
No, it was *commercial* activities that were unacceptable. Government
research satellites were fine. Commercial satellites that might compete
with those built by US suppliers, well, that was a different matter. The
two Symphonie satellites did eventually (1974-75) go up on Deltas, but
only after France and Germany reluctantly agreed to use them only for
experimental work, not for profit-making commercial service.
And from that moment on, it was ironclad French policy that an independent
European launch capability for comsats was an urgent priority. The
predecessors to ESA had been dabbling with building European launchers
(and the Symphonies had in fact been meant to go up on the abandoned
Europa launcher); now it was time for ESA to get serious and build
something reliable and operational, soon. The result was Ariane 1.
Henry
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