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领域。尽管在西欧航天界存在争议，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，被称为空间实验室，被推广为未来的“关键技术”，尤其是德意志联邦共和国（FRG）。分析其开发，建设和使用，这个研究项目询问如何以及为什么一个项目，不仅需要巨大的资源，而且涉及严重的金融和技术风险，以及在严重的经济危机和社会政治挑战的时代实现。着眼于FRG作为空间实验室的主要推动者，但也在其他西欧国家属于欧空局和美国，这个研究项目重建社会和政治话语，伴随着空间实验室的发展和使用。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不同的、往往相互冲突的政治和经济利益的投影屏幕。虽然西欧希望参与载人航天飞行将加强其经济竞争力和振兴其一体化进程，但在1980年代初罗纳德·里根的战略防御倡议的背景下，空间实验室也获得了重大的军事影响。因此，本研究项目结合了不同且往往互不相关的研究领域：航天历史和外层空间从20世纪乌托邦思想的主要场所向冲突和危机地区的转变，大技术对应对政治和经济危机的意义，以及冷战再次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兴趣到主导的政治兴趣的转变，它不仅标志着西欧航天史上的一个重要转折。它还承诺深入了解具体的“关键技术”在应对20世纪70年代的政治和经济挑战方面的作用和相关性，从而提出了解决20世纪70年代作为当代历史关键时期的重要性的问题。

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.