International cooperation in space still viable, panel says
BY JEFF FOUST
SPACEFLIGHT NOW
Posted: June 25, 2002

Despite the ongoing trials and tribulations of the International Space Station project, there is still a role for international cooperation in it and other space projects, a multinational panel concluded last week.

Representatives of the United States, Europe, Japan, and India, speaking in a panel discussion in Washington DC last Thursday organized by Women in Aerospace, said that cooperation among nations works for most, but not all, space projects.

"International cooperation is not intrinsically good," said Ian Pryke, head of the Washington office of the European Space Agency. "It's how you apply it and what you apply it to."

Panel
Panel discussion on international cooperation in space. Photo: Jeff Foust
 
A common perception in the space community has been that the problems with ISS, from delays on the Russian side in the late 1990s to recent unilateral American decisions to eliminate a habitation module and crew return vehicle, had soured many nations on working together on space endeavors. However, those in attendance believe that the ISS partnership has largely been a success.

"In spite of all the problems, this is a partnership that works," said Lynn Cline, NASA deputy assistant administrator for external affairs. "It's been hard, it's been protracted, but it works."

Pryke said that one lesson of the ISS experience is the need for international partnerships to be able to react to and accommodate changes in political situations among the partner nations. The ISS partnership, for example, was restructured in the early 1990s to incorporate Russia, and later adjusted as the abilities of the member nations to shoulder their burden of the task changed. "Make sure you structure your partnership to be flexible," he advised.

International partnerships are often foisted onto space projects because of larger foreign policy issues. "The United States has viewed international cooperation from the beginning as a political enabler first and only second as a way to advance science and technology," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute of George Washington University. This can work when those international projects are in the mutual self-interest of all parties, but, as Pryke noted, "When you're a tool of foreign policy, you can also be a hostage of foreign policy."

Despite the bad reputation the ISS has given to international cooperation, a wide array joint efforts continue today. These efforts range from simple coordination of independent national projects to institutional cooperation, like ESA. Rupinder Singh Bhatia, technical liaison officer for the Indian Space Research Organisation, said that while his nation cannot afford to cooperate on large projects like ISS, it does work with other nations to further efforts like satellite-enabled telemedicine and distance learning that are of particular interest to India.

International cooperation on the most inclusive scale can be found in the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), a United Nations committee with 64 member nations. Cline, the US representative to COPUOS, said that while the committee has "high overhead" and required consensus to reach agreement on issues, it serves a valuable purpose. "This group is the one government forum that looks across all the disciplines," she noted.

Although the panelists gave a positive spin to international cooperation, they acknowledged that not all space projects are suitable for such joint efforts. Masato Koyama, director of the Washington office of Japan's National Space Development Agency (NASDA), said it was unlikely there would be much international cooperation in the development of expendable launch vehicles (ELVs), given the highly competitive commercial launch market as well as individual governments' interests in maintaining their own launch capability.

While intergovernmental cooperation on ELVs is unlikely, the panel noted that there is already international private cooperation, thanks to international companies and joint ventures like Arianespace, International Launch Services, and Sea Launch. Pryke said that there are currently discussions between ESA and NASA that could give Europe a role in the Space Launch Initiative, a NASA effort to develop technologies for a second-generation reusable launch vehicle.

"International cooperation is not a monolithic activity," said Logsdon.




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