Transnational Utopias, Space Exploration and the Association of Space Explorers, 1972–85

Abstract

Focusing on manned spaceflight in Europe during the ‘long’ 1970s – from the Ostpolitik and détente of the 1970s to its demise in the first half of the1980s – this chapter explores tensions between the national and military goals of space exploration and visions of spaceflight as a way to build peaceful transnational communities. It traces the intellectual roots of collaboration in spaceflight, including the increasing linkage between spaceflight and environmentalism in the 1970s. The discussion then turns to an examination of three collaborative moments: the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project, the Soviet Union’s Interkosmos program and the creation of the Association of Space Explorers in the 1980s.