The Press SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1966. New Terms For E.L.D.O.

Press, Volume CVI, Issue 31083, 11 June 1966, Page 16

The Press SATURDAY, JUNE 11, 1966. New Terms For E.L.D.O.

The cabled reports suggest that there is a good deal of unnecessary confusion over the British Government’s announced intention to withdraw from the European Launcher Development Organisation. We have been told that the decision came as “no “ surprise ” to Britain’s E.L.D.O. partners—France, Italy, the Netherlands, Belgium, West Germany, and Australia; that it represented a “ blow ” to Italy, which expressed “ surprise and perplexity and that, despite the announcement, Britain would “ remain “technically a partner” in the organisation. No doubt this week’s meeting in Paris of Ministers of the seven participating countries has cleared away doubts about the British position, and presumably also about the organisation’s future. The British attitude to E.L.D.O. had been clearly stated at the May meeting of Ministers, when a number of points raised were deferred for further study. The attendance of three British representatives at that meeting—the Minister of Aviation (Mr Mulley), the Minister of State at the Foreign Office (Lord Chalfont), and the Chief Secretary of the Treasury (Mr Diamond) —emphasised the importance, in the British view, of the issues at stake.

These concerned, primarily, the steeply rising cost of the organisation’s programme, the programme itself, and the extent to which it had slipped behind timetable. In the British view, there was a need for a radical reorganisation of the programme, a change in the distribution of the work load, and a more equitable division of costs. British spokesmen said bluntly that failure to achieve these aims could result in Britain’s withdrawal, since the Government was not prepared to go on paying more than a third of the operating c05t—38.79 per cent—of a programme which seemed incapable of producing useful results. It was suggested further that Britain would like to see E.L.D.O. widened, by the incorporation of other space exploration agencies in Europe, to produce a supra-national European authority comparable with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration in the United States, but working on a far less ambitious scale.

Proposals are currently being examined, in point of fact, for American participation in a major space project in Europe—something, President Johnson has made clear, which the United States is not doing and does not as yet plan to do. Two projects for consideration, Mr Johnson thought, might be a sun shot and a probe of Jupiter. The cost, it was recognised, would be heavy, though lessened in some degree by the fact that E.S.R.O. (European Space Research Organisation) and E.L.D.O. already existed. Something of this nature, as an alternative to E.L.D.0., would probably appeal to the British Government, in view of the (relatively) wasted years spent on the organisation’s five-year, three-stage test satellite programme. The original cost estimate was £7O million. Today, with the programme into its fifth year, the estimate exceeds £l5O million and on existing evidence must go higher, while the target date for launching has drifted from September of this year to some time in 1969.

No doubt, as has been emphasised, a British withdrawal from E.L.D.O. now would wreck the organisation, since Britain, apart from providing a major share of the money, had agreed to contribute also the Blue Streak heavy launcher. If the French initiative to save the organisation is to have any prospect of success, obviously there will have to be a more realistic cost-sharing arrangement as well as programme reorganisation—directed, in terms of Britain’s earlier hopes, towards Europe’s acquisition of communications and other satellites of practical value. In the long view, the wiser course might well be to aim at a merger of European interests, together with collaboration with the United States—even if E.L.D.O. were sacrificed in the process. The current meeting of the seven-nation council may expect to hear views pointing in that direction, if active British participation is to continue on the reported conditions of financial adjustments.