Reaching for the stars in times of crisis. Western Europe’s entry into manned spaceflight, 1972-1985

通过参与美国的后阿波罗计划，欧洲航天局(ESA)在20世纪70年代进入了载人航天。尽管在西欧航天界内部存在争议，但欧空局对后阿波罗计划的贡献，一个可重复使用的多功能实验室，被称为Spacelab，被宣传为未来的“关键技术”，特别是被德意志联邦共和国(FRG)推广。通过对其开发、建设和使用的分析，本研究项目提出了一个问题，即在严重的经济危机和社会政治挑战时期，如何以及为什么实现一个不仅需要巨大资源，而且涉及严重的金融和技术风险的项目。这项研究以联邦德国作为空间实验室的主要推动者，也关注属于欧空局和美国的其他西欧国家，重构了伴随着空间实验室的开发和使用而产生的社会和政治话语。考虑到广泛的应用，空间实验室特别说明了空间技术如何成为各种政治和经济利益的投影屏。虽然西欧希望参与载人航天将增强其经济竞争力，重振一体化进程，但在20世纪80年代初罗纳德·里根的战略防御倡议的背景下，太空实验室也获得了重大的军事影响。因此，这一研究项目结合了各种往往互不相关的研究领域：航天历史和外层空间从二十世纪乌托邦思想的主要场所向冲突和危机地带的过渡，重大技术对应对政治和经济危机的重要性，以及冷战重新加剧时期欧洲一体化和跨大西洋联盟的历史。太空实验室象征着从纯粹的科学利益到主要的政治利益的转变，它不仅标志着西欧航天史上的一个重要事件。它还承诺深入了解具体的“关键技术”在应对1970年代的政治和经济挑战方面的作用和相关性，从而探讨1970年代作为当代历史关键时期的重要意义的问题。

Through participation in the United States’ Post-Apollo Program, the European Space Agency (ESA) entered manned spaceflight in the 1970s. Although controversially debated within the Western European space community, ESA’s contribution to the Post-Apollo Program, a re-usable and multi-functional laboratory called Spacelab, was promoted as a “key technology” for the future, especially by the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG). Analyzing its development, construction and use, this research project asks how and why a project that not only required huge resources but implicated serious financial and technological risks as well was realized in times of grave economic crisis and socio-political challenges. Focusing on the FRG as the Spacelabs main promoter, but also on other Western European nations belonging to ESA and the US, this research project reconstructs the social and political discourses that accompanied the development and use of the Spacelab. Allowing for a wide range of applications Spacelab illustrates in particular how space technology served as a projection screen for diverse and often conflicting political and economic interests. While Western Europe hoped that participation in manned spaceflight would strengthen its economic competitiveness and revitalize its integration process, Spacelab also gained a significant military impact against the backdrop of Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative in the early 1980s. Thus, this research project combines diverse and often unconnected fields of research: the history of spacefaring and the transition of outer space from a major site of twentieth-century utopian thinking to a zone of conflict and crisis, the significance of big technologies to counter political and economic crises, and the history of European integration and the transatlantic alliance in times of a re-intensifying Cold War. Symbolizing the transition from purely scientific interests to dominantly political interests, Spacelab not only marks an important caesura in Western European space history. It also promises insight on the role and relevance of specific “key technologies” in coping with the political and economic challenges of the 1970s, thereby taking up questions that address the significance of the 1970s as a key period of contemporary history.