Together in Orbit: Round One

Abstract

Inviting other countries to participate in the space station was only one of the steps toward enhanced international cooperation pursued by the Reagan administration in the 1983–1985 period. Invitations were extended by the White House to a number of countries to fly one of their citizens aboard the shuttle. Perhaps most intriguingly, there were preliminary discussions with the People’s Republic of China about flying a Chinese-developed experiment, accompanied by a Chinese payload specialist, on the vehicle. Although the White House in 1982 had decided to let lapse the U.S.-U.S.S.R. space cooperation agreement first signed in 1972 and renewed in 1977, and in the final stages of the space station decision process had rejected the possibility of inviting the Soviet Union to participate along with U.S. “friends and allies” in the space station, it did in January 1984 and subsequently float the idea of a joint U.S.-Soviet space rescue demonstration. Between January and June 1984, international participation in the U.S. space station became a significant U.S. foreign policy initiative to be discussed among Reagan and the leaders of the other six members of the Group of Seven—the leading economies of the world—as they met in London for their annual economic summit. It was the U.S. hope to get at the early June summit top-level political agreement, at least in principle, to participate in the U.S. space station. That agreement proved impossible to achieve by the time of the summit meeting, but the foundation was laid for discussions regarding participation over the next few years by Europe, Japan, and Canada.