Nasa Chief Toasts French Seeks Better Ties To Build Space Station

With plans to begin building an international space station next year, the head of NASA praised French and European involvement Thursday, and said he hoped for cooperation in building a low-cost crew shuttle.

Daniel Goldin was in France this week to meet with officials of the European Space Agency; the state-controlled aerospace company Aerospatiale; and Arianespace, the commercial arm of the ESA.

His mission also was to lobby for closer ties to share technology and combine efforts to control costs in the multibillion-dollar project.

After watching the televised launch of a satellite-carrying Ariane rocket in French Guiana, Goldin said that because France competes with the United States, “the American launch industry is better.”

Arianespace leads the world’s commercial launch market.

“I see only better relations between America and France based on mutual respect, based on where we can work together and where we can compete, where we can agree and where we can disagree,” Goldin told reporters.

In contrast to U.S.-French bickering over trade, culture and foreign policy issues, Goldin’s trip appeared as an ego-stroking mission, and the French were loving it. The respected Le Monde headlined its exclusive interview with Goldin saying Ariane “forced American industry to advance.”

Behind the diplomacy was a U.S. effort to get the Europeans to contribute their share to the international space station.

Goldin said he got assurances from French officials that “France will live up to the commitment” of a space station. But gently prodding, he said he had yet to get cooperation on the so-called Crew Re-entry Vehicle, or CRV.

NASA is ready to go it alone, but “if we don’t have international participation on the CRV, we will be disappointed.”

On Wednesday, the European Space Agency said its director-general, Antonio Rodota, confirmed with Goldin “their strong commitment” to enhance “already strong cooperation,” though it made no mention of the CRV. The two are to meet again in January.

Goldin, who has instituted rigorous cost control since taking NASA’s helm five years ago, said a team of French and American scientists also is “beginning to define” a mission to Mars. He emphasized his agency has “no specific dates to send people to Mars,” but that “we’re getting ready to,” and when it happens “they will not just be Americans.”

“Wouldn’t it be exciting to have a French woman and an American astronaut set their steps in that crunchy red dust on Mars?” he said.

Goldin also had praise for the Russians, whose Mir space station has served as a platform for manned U.S. missions, to wrap up with one more by July 1998, he said. Without the Mir experiments, “we would not have been able to build the international space station.”