5. A Gate to the Heavens
Who gave us the sponge to wipe away the entire horizon? What were we doing when we unchained this earth from its sun? Whither is it moving now? Whither are we moving? Away from all suns? Are we not plunging continually? Backward, sideward, forward, in all directions? Is there still any up or down? Are we not straying as through an infinite nothing? Do we not feel the breath of empty space?
Friedrich Nietzsche, The Gay Science, 1882
Exerting himself to look out into space, man did not descry something entirely different and alien; rather, what was held out to him was a cosmic mirror of his own world, of its history and its potential.
Hans Blumenberg, Genesis of the Copernican World, 1975
In 1865, even as the American Civil War wound to a painful, bloody close, a middle-aged Frenchman had a fantastic vision of its aftermath. In a sardonic tone, betrayed only by a fondness for technical elaboration, he described how American masters of artillery, at a loss in retirement, would construct a giant cannon and shoot it at the moon. The man, of course, was Jules Verne, a prolific former stockbroker who helped to establish the popular genre now known as science fiction, producing a remarkable stream of works filled with florid, masculine adventure and the wonders of machinery. From the Earth to the Moon was the third of his Voyages extraordinaire and, in a small, but precise way, proved to be one of the world's more influential books.[1] Beyond the pleasure and wonder it afforded Verne's contemporaries, it would eventually inspire a small group of engineers to more practical dreams of moon flight. Rarely has fiction translated more directly into fact. Like a number of Verne's works, his moon voyage includes remarkably prescient technical elements, from a Florida launch site to an ocean landing. Even more eerily, the tale foreshadows a number of cultural forces at play in reaching the moon, including the importance of excess military expertise, public relations, and human cargo. And Verne, for
Figure 10. Ariane launch, ca. 1988
Over a century later, on Christmas Eve, 1979, a slim white rocket left the ground and slowly climbed skyward. Bearing the flags of a dozen nations and the French name for a figure from Greek myth, it represented
The “final frontier” was not then very old. Even in the middle of the twentieth century, the sky was defined in a single direction; one looked up through it, not down from beyond. The Earth had but a single satellite, the moon, and the man on it was a figure of poetry, not technological triumph. What lay beyond the atmosphere remained the province of astronomic observation and literary speculation, not exploration or commercial development. Yet just as nineteenth-century Western imperial expansion began to unravel, ink drying on the last white areas of the disintegrating maps, a new and final frontier came into being above the emerging political boundaries of first, second, and third worlds. Frequently described in language of colonial conquest (the inexorable “progress of mankind” now carried beyond the confines of a single planet), this frontier reflects both a logical extension of modernist ambition and its limits. “Outer space” describes something undeniably distant from local place, a vastness stretching impossibly far from the familiar globe. To imagine this “beyond” as a frontier is to invite its exploration yet also simultaneously to reposition the surface already known. Once the heavens fill with human activity, the ground below shifts in meaning, drawing together into a globe. Divides and boundaries are recast, some growing obsolete, others deepening. And when the first Ariane headed skyward, its reflection, white and gleaming, headed down.
FROM SPUTNIK TO THE SPACE RACE
Go up a few miles and life as we know it ends. There, we would no longer have an atmospheric blanket to protect us. High temperatures exist but would not be sensed. X rays and cosmic rays would penetrate our
― 116 ―bodies and dissociate our cells. The air pressure would decrease below our blood pressure until our bodily fluids began to boil. Time is always a relative concept. Skyward all is darkness.Erik Bergaust and William Beller, Satellite! 1956
“Today the dreams of the best sons of mankind have come true. The assault on space has begun.”
Sergey Korolev,[2]1957, quoted inJames Oberg, Red Star in Orbit, 1981
The dawn of the Space Age came in the fall of 1957, in the form of a faintly beeping metal ball. The Soviet satellite Sputnik 1, though modest in size and capability, cast a long political shadow, one stretching through debates about science, technology, and education far beyond the immediate purview of outer space.[3] To understand the significance of the event and its representation, we must replay a small portion of context surrounding this launch and the subsequent history of the Space Race and satellite technology, sweeping quickly enough to blur general patterns into view, yet finely enough to collect telling details. The new configuration of technology and society described by the expression “Space Age” comes most clearly into focus when viewed through extremes: a sudden break, an evolutionary leap, the cut in Kubrick's film 2001 between bone tool and spaceship. In writing about it one traffics between precision and expansive myth. To focus on only one or the other loses the essence of their combination: a union of exact instrumentality and abstract ends that opened the sky.
Let us first demystify the event. Although the launch of Sputnik was a public surprise, it was far from unpredictable, or even unpredicted among those paying attention to the possibilities of spaceflight. The span of 1957–1958 had been designated the “International Geophysical Year,” and both the United States and the Soviet Union broadly hinted that a satellite launch would be an appropriate way to mark the occasion. What better way to contemplate the Earth, after all, than from beyond it? Both goliaths of the Cold War were engaged in experiments with nuclear warheads and working on another end of rocketry, the missile. The basic technology for space launches had been available for some time. And interest in the future and futuristic technology was running high in certain quarters: science fiction boomed after World War II, as it had after World War I. Thus while the launch of Sputnik
The tie to science fiction merits further stress, for it is a point to which we will return: not only were most of the major and minor figures of space technology deeply influenced by strains of futuristic literature, but the future that would transpire around them had been remarkably well envisioned beforehand. The case of Verne is in this sense exemplary more than exceptional. Well before the technical simulation of the Space Age we have another mode of anticipation: fantasies of the future. Dreams are made exact, legitimate, and even useful. Moreover, at certain points they are taken seriously. Thus it should come as no surprise that elaborate visions and mythic allusions wove deeply into outer space, for they ran through the very technologies that open it, as well as the cultural frame of the sky.[5]
The technical story of the rocket itself is appropriately global in scope. A device first made recognizable some thousand years ago in China traveled to Europe, where it remained a tool for signals and celebrations until enjoying brief popularity as a weapon of war in the early nineteenth century. Following improvements in artillery it fell again into obscurity, lingering marginally in the minds of Russian, German, and American enthusiasts of spaceflight until its dramatic return in World War II. The German device known as A-4, developed in secret and manufactured with forced labor, first flew successfully in October of 1942. Rechristened V-2, the missile began to rain from the skies only at the very end of the conflict. Nevertheless, it helped set the tone for much of the ensuing Cold War, for German scientists had dreamt grandiose plans around the A-4, including an orbiting space station. In the waning days of the Third Reich, a curious race occurred across Europe, one that foreshadowed the political standoff of coming decades, as American and Soviet agents both worked frantically to reach German V-2 sites and capture rockets, documents, and engineers. These trophies were then hauled away from Europe to the west and to the east, for testing and improvement on other continents. Technology born from the ashes of fascism would later rise phoenixlike amid a strategic and symbolic struggle between state capitalism and state socialism, in the form of both long-range nuclear missiles and space launch vehicles.[6]
Yet while there was much talk, research, and design throughout the 1950s, only after the launch of Sputnik did the Space Age come undeniably into view. Space became news. Space became strategy. Space
AMERICAN INFLUENCE AND FRENCH IMAGINATION
Amid the fireworks of American and Soviet competition for supremacy, the old center of Europe faded into the background. Although German engineers continued to play a role (particularly in the American program), they did so at a distance, and rockets rose from the empty edges of other continents—American marshland and Asian steppe—not the former heart of empires. Yet it would be a mistake to lose sight of Europe completely. The British and French did their best to acquire the remnants of the V-2 and develop something from it. The British played an important role in early satellite technology, and the French eventually became the third most significant space power, after the United States and the Soviet Union, and the driving force behind joint European ventures. This interest on their part was only natural. Beyond strong traditions of aeronautics and space enthusiasm, Britain had borne the brunt of early Nazi experiments in rocketry, and the first V-2 had left the ground aimed at Paris.[8]
An independent French presence in space fit within larger policies of technical modernization and diplomatic autonomy. The land of Verne focused on steering a separate course between the Eastern Bloc and the rest of its Western allies, as French governments of the Fifth Republic, under the firm hands of Charles de Gaulle and Georges Pompidou,
Yet for all their independence, the French remained simultaneously committed to cooperation. The Asterix launch had been racing against a second French satellite poised on a NASA rocket, while negotiations for a joint European rocket program were completed at the same time as the founding of CNES, inspired in part by the earlier creation of the European physics consortium, CERN. On March 29, 1962, a convention for an organization known as the European Launcher Development Organization (ELDO) was signed, with France, Britain, West Germany, Italy, Belgium, the Netherlands, and Australia as full members and Denmark and Switzerland as observers. ELDO would be matched by another cooperative institution, the European Space Research Organization (ESRO) to design experiments and satellites. The plan for the launcher was an ingenious bit of improvisation: the main stage would be comprised of Britain's Blue Streak rocket, an obsolete missile design redeployed for civilian ends, while France would build a second stage known as Coralie, and Germany would build a third stage, Astris. The completed ensemble would be known as “Europa.” Australia's inclusion in the rocket program stemmed from its contribution of a desert launch site at Woomera, chosen by the British to test their captured V-2s on Commonwealth soil.[10]
The Europa program, however, went far less smoothly than French solo efforts. Although the Blue Streak base performed adequately, it was too modest to lift satellites into high orbit, and supplementary second and third stages fared less well. As the American and Soviet race continued, space technology advanced beyond the Europa design. The United States did not favor the European project and lent no aid. Funding was sparse and cost overruns endemic. But design changes (strongly promoted by the French) resulted in plans for Europa II, a
ARTIFICIAL SATELLITES AND THE NEW EQUATOR
The truth, of course, will be far stranger.
Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey, 1968
Even as Allied forces raced for the V-2, a young English astronomer and future science fiction luminary was struck by accounts of German aerospace ambitions and toyed with the possibilities of communications using relay stations in space. Published in 1945, Arthur C. Clarke's article “Extra-Terrestrial Relays” combined bold proposals for applied rocket “astronautics” with a pragmatic observation that German developments moved them into the realm of possibility. Addressing the problem of atmospheric and topographic limits to long-distance communication, which would make comprehensive television transmission across even a small European country an expensive and technically complicated affair, Clarke proposed a set of three satellite stations in space to cover the entire globe. Prophetically he proclaimed that “a true broadcast service, giving constant field strength across the whole globe would be invaluable, not to say indispensable, in a world society.”[11]
A decade would pass before Sputnik woke the world to the realities of the Space Age. However, Clarke's original title for his article, “The Future of World Communications,” was soon to prove the better one. What he had grasped was the significance of a geosynchronous orbit, where the rotation of the body in question would coincide with that of the Earth. Rather than rise and set in the sky, such a body would remain constant relative to a chosen area of the globe and thus be in a position to provide it with continuous communication support. Signals could be sent from one location within that area and then transmitted to another. With a carefully positioned set of such space platforms, signals could even be relayed between them and thus from one side of the world to another. While initial outlays might be large, the overall expense of such a system would ultimately prove reasonable, given the
What appeared a brash pronouncement at the end of World War II was taken quite seriously only fifteen years later. The beginning of the 1960s saw many significant milestones in space, including missions carrying humans beyond the atmosphere, beginning with Yuri Gagarin's 1961 flight. Yet while the Soviet Union won the symbolic races, sending up the first animal, man, and woman and landing pioneering probes on the moon, on Venus, and the like, it was the United States that began to put in place the basic practical infrastructure of space, launching the first weather satellite, the first navigational satellite, the first spy satellite, and—with a glorified balloon known as Echo I—the first communications satellite. The first active communications satellite, Telstar, was followed by the first in geosynchronous orbit, Syncom II, used to broadcast the Olympic Games in 1964.[13] Even more crucially, the United States created the Communication Satellite Corporation (COMSAT) to establish a worldwide system of communications satellites. This strange hybrid, partly state and partly corporate, prophetically identified the utility of outer space, opening it to commercial activity. The International Telecommunications Satellite Consortium (INTELSAT), largely controlled by COMSAT and American interests, began to establish the framework of space communications. Britain and France, dependent on American launchers, were forced to accept unequal roles within the organization. The Soviet Union, meanwhile, went its own way, claiming technical victory while in effect yielding much higher ground to the Western allies.[14]
In 1965 an orbiting bundle of mirrors and circuits named Early Bird became the first commercial realization of Clarke's proposal. Over the ensuing twenty years, satellite communications developed into both an industry standard and the primary focus of commercial activity in space. The artificial satellite became a naturalized part of the sky, greatly increasing both rate and volume of regular long-distance exchanges. The process of achieving geosynchronous orbit, however, redefined geography with a new practical physics. The period of any orbit is a function of altitude and velocity. At a velocity of approximately seventeen thousand miles (twenty-eight thousand kilometers) per hour an object can break free from the surface of the Earth; at an altitude of some twenty-two thousand miles (thirty-six thousand kilometers) it has a period of twenty-four hours and matches the rotation
Although communications satellites dominated the commercial space market, they hardly exhausted its possibilities, let alone the practical aspects of artificial satellites. The very medium of space, let us not forget, offers an ideal field for scientific experimentation, a vast vacuum free of gravity. Moreover, a perch in space allows for constant and sweeping observations, both out to the stars and down on the Earth. If one focuses from sufficient distance, the movements of the world fit into a single frame. Global phenomena such as weather patterns, ocean levels, and even the shape of the Earth itself can be tracked and monitored in a systematic and continuous way. Remote-sensing—by broad definition “measurement from a distance”—comes most clearly into its own in the production of visual data: satellite photos that redefine maps, espionage, and all other forms of surveillance. The marketing of such images represents the development of a second significant commercial arena in space, begun with the American Landsat and continued in the French SPOT and other programs.[16]
With the exception of weather satellites that use a high, geosynchronous orbit over the equator to maintain contact with a particular region below, Earth observation satellites generally occupy low positions (six hundred to twelve hundred miles, or one thousand to two thousand kilometers) in near-polar orbits. By traveling across the rotation of the Earth rather than with it, and maintaining an orbital period of about one hundred minutes rather than twenty-four hours, their instruments can thus repeatedly sweep over the globe rather than fix on a particular region. By further following an orbit synchronized to the sun rather than to the Earth they can consistently monitor points on the globe at the same local time of day. Thus by the end of the 1960s we have two general groups of useful satellites, one engaged in communication and the other in observation, and two common and significant orbital paths,
The widespread adoption of the artificial satellite presents us with an active, distinctly “modern” sky. The reorientation of the Earth in the Space Age is not solely a matter of cosmic contemplation or symbolic rivalry: there are significant technical consequences as well, for science, politics, and economics. The natural vacuum promises new scientific standards, a laboratory beyond the atmosphere. To a properly equipped eye in orbit, both stars above and land below grow sharper; earth, sky, and weather can all be monitored with lofty intimacy. Points on the globe need no longer be connected directly to each other but can instead acquire new significance through their relation to the zone above the atmosphere. In a sense, what has been a geometry of two dimensions becomes three, as connections are no longer restricted to the surface sphere of the planet. A platform in space offers both an imperial vantage point across continents and a potential beacon between them, circumventing geographical markers on the ground or altering their meaning. The world becomes more actively whole, open to inspection and connection from above, allowing a degree of uniformity never before possible.
Of course, the foregoing sketch abbreviates many stories. European conceptions of time and space shifted dramatically between the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, as witnessed by artistic movements under various banners of “modernism,” while the establishment of universal time zones, news services, photography, telephones, and radio and television networks, not to mention aircraft, radically altered the rate and topography of everyday life.[18] Yet in order to evoke the meaning of the “Space Age,” with all its powerful technological and representational possibilities, a certain degree of abstract distance is necessary. Although the airplane opened the sky and moved through it at dramatic elevations, and the radio tower filled the air with waves, bypassing ground connections, neither made the limits of the Earth entirely visible or transparent. Space technology closed the sky again, bounded it from above and sealed it whole. Only then could the sky become fully modern in an active, technological sense, and only then could what lay beyond it become meaningful as space, a vast sea of darkness surrounding a blue and green point of human place. At last the world was one.
The development of the artificial satellite represents the most realized transformation of the Space Age, as well as one of the best illustrations
HEAVEN'S GATE
A redefinition of the equator as a modern marker of the sky had technological consequences on the ground. After all, in order to have satellites in orbit, one must first get them there. While a large number of nations currently use satellite technology, relatively few possess the technology to launch payloads into space. By virtue of other factors of economic history, the industrial centers of the world, including the original giant twins of the Space Race, are located high in the Northern Hemisphere. In terms of achieving geosynchronous orbit, this position is less than ideal, because the further one is from the equator, the more fuel must be expended to place a satellite above the equator. The primary launch sites established by the United States and the former Soviet Union are both well north, the former (Cape Canaveral) at 28° latitude and the latter (Baikonur) at 45° latitude. The location of these sites was driven by other considerations than those of proximity to the equator, such as the need for sparsely populated land to increase military security and decrease the risk of accidental civilian death. The rockets and missiles of the Cold War could thus fall mistakenly without mishap, in preparation for their eventual planned trajectories. In the case of Cape Canaveral, eastward access to the ocean gave the added benefit of permitting a flight path over open water in the direction of the Earth's rotation, allowing rockets to use the planet's momentum to help reach escape velocity. An ideal launch site for communications and other geosynchronous satellites would combine such positive attributes found at Canaveral (a coastline with a large body of water and an open eastern horizon) with a location as near as possible to the equator. An open horizon toward the poles would add the additional benefit of facilitating launches of satellites into low orbit.
In more recent decades these facts of Space Age geography have not escaped the notice of certain states located deep in the tropics, and several of them (such as India, Brazil, and Papua New Guinea) have
A MARGIN OF UTILITY
Courroux passe / colère finit / quand on oeuvre (Wrath passes / anger ends / when one works)
Coat of arms for the city of Kourou, Anonymous, Kourou: Ville en devenir, 1987
At the moment of the French space agency's creation in 1962, the French army was using a rocket testing site named Hammaguir in the Saharan desert of Algeria. The Evian accords, however, signed on March 18 of that year—even as CNES came into being—committed France to seek another rocket range starting July 1967. Thus a search for a new launch site was on from the very inception of the French space program. Preferably, that site would equal or surpass Algeria in terms of location and availability of open land. Those responsible for the choice thought of French Guiana immediately, but they worried about the logistical difficulties (and potential political uncertainties) of establishing an operation at such a distance from the Metropole. Therefore the search continued in 1963 along two tracks, one focusing on possibilities within mainland France and the other concentrating on equatorial sites around the globe.[20]
Let us follow the equatorial search, via its summary analysis of sites. The following criteria were considered:
- polar and equatorial launching possibility
- proximity of the equator
- sufficient physical dimensions to ensure the security of launches
- existence of a deepwater port
- existence of an adequate airfield (with a runway of three thousand meters)
- shortest possible distance between the launch base and Europe
- stable political situation in order that the base's availability “is not linked to a change of local political regime”[21]
After numerous possibilities were dismissed out of hand, the report concentrated on a list of fourteen potential sites. The description and official evaluation of each ran as follows:
The archipelago of the Seychelles (4°37′ South): not retained because of its restrictive dimensions, its tortured topography, and the impossibility of building a runway of sufficient length
The island of Trinidad (British West Indies, 10°05′ to 10°50′ North): a suitable site, but not retained because launching to the north is impossible and the political stability of the island is not guaranteed
The island of Nuku-Hiva (archipelago of Marquesas, French Polynesia, 8°55′ South): a favorable site, but not retained because of the impossibility of building a runway of sufficient length
The archipelago of Tuamotu (French Polynesia, 15° South to 18°26′ South): a favorable site, but not retained because of its distance from Europe (twenty thousand kilometers [twelve thousand miles]), the existence of cyclones, and the absence of fresh water
The island of Désirade (French West Indies, 16°20′ North): a possible site, but not retained because of its hurricanes, insufficient dimensions, and absence of a port or airfield
The island of Marie-Galante (French West Indies, 15°33′ North): not retained because of the impossibility of launching to the north (Guadeloupe being only forty kilometers [twenty-four miles] away) as well as the danger of hurricanes and the absence of a port and airport
Djibouti (French Somaliland [now independent], 11°35′ North): a very favorable site, but not retained because of almost insoluble problems of security
Australia: Darwin (12°28′ South) and Broome (17°57′ South): attractive sites, but not retained because of their relative distance from the equator, their extreme distance from Europe, and the existence of cyclones
Trincomalee (Ceylon [now Sri Lanka], 8°35′ North): a possible site, but not retained because of its distance from Europe, the existence of cyclones, the size of its population, and the uncertain political regime
― 127 ―Fort Dolphin (Malagasy Republic [Madagascar], 25°02′ South): a very suitable site, but not retained because of its distance from the equator, lack of a deepwater port, and need for airport improvements
Mogadishu (Republic of Somalia, 2°02′ North): a site with an excellent situation with respect to the equator, but not retained because of great political instability
Port Etienne ([Nouâdhibou] Islamic Republic of Mauritania, 20°55′ North): a very attractive site, but not retained because of its high latitude, the continuous presence of wind, and the difficulty in finding potable water
Belem (Brazil, Amazon delta, 1°27′ South): a very suitable site, but not retained because of a bad weather report, delicate security, linguistic difficulties created by the usage of Portuguese, and the risk of political instability
Cayenne (French Guiana, 4°50′ North): a very favorable site, whose sole important disadvantage is the weak capacity of the port of Cayenne, which could easily be circumvented by unloading on the Iles du Salut, approximately fifty kilometers [thirty miles] away, or by improving the port installations; ambient humidity necessitates serious precautions for the conservation of equipment but is not considered a major disadvantage
The terms of the presentation reveal a mixture of logics: an application of the desired geographical criteria (physical and social), as well as a bias against any political landscape threatening movement, and a preference for sites within the French sphere of influence, former colonies and continuing territories. The scope of the places under consideration parallels the list of potential penal colonies a century earlier; once again the search is for openings on the globe, margins to house an experiment.[22]
In February, 1964, the report was completed, establishing a classification by points “in function of selection criteria retained.” The final ranking went as follows:
| French Guiana | 118 |
| Australia | 96 |
| Brazil | 90 |
| Tuamotu | 80 |
| Trinidad | 79 |
In the end, it was decided that French Guiana did indeed represent the best of possible worlds beyond the hexagon of France itself. At the same time, a comparison with the best European French site available (Languedoc-Roussillon) highlighted additional advantages, for despite the greater expense involved in building adequate facilities, French Guiana offered a better location, posed fewer social concerns, and promised greater potential “evolution.” On March 21, 1964, General de Gaulle made an official visit to French Guiana and announced, in rather elliptical fashion, a coming “great work.” On April 14, Georges Pompidou, the modernizing prime minister, personally decided in favor of building the base in Guyane.[23]
Within French Guiana the decision to locate the center at Kourou followed quickly, given the town's small population and its favorable geographical characteristics and location with respect to Cayenne and the airport (close enough for convenience, yet far enough for security). The space agency initially claimed land along the coast between Kourou and the neighboring town to the northwest, Sinnamary, some thirty kilometers by ten kilometers (nineteen by six miles) of savanna encompassing a smattering of agricultural sites and a hamlet known as Malmanoury. The social landscape was quiet and rural, and the number of people involved was quite small; in 1961 Kourou registered a population of 659, and Sinnamary had a population of 1,796, mostly Creole. On a Metropolitan scale the appropriation seemed a minor affair. Local opinion was more varied but less influential, and the transfer of authority was soon complete.[24]
BUILDING THE SPACE CENTER
For those persons coming to French Guiana for the first time, we call attention to the fact that it is a country where they cannot expect to find an infrastructure of services and facilities resembling those of the Metropole. And yet, if they only show interest and a certain comprehension for Guyanais life and its difficulties during this period of all-out evolution, they will be welcomed with graciousness and amiability.
CNES brochure, 1970
Kourou's bucolic feel would not last long. Locating the launch site in French Guiana necessitated much work, both on the new center itself
The rapid construction of the base and its attendant structures spurred an influx of workers from outside French Guiana, largely from Metropolitan France and neighboring areas of South America and the Caribbean. In 1966 CNES contracted Colombians to provide manual labor; they were supplemented by workers from elsewhere, particularly Brazil and Suriname. It should be stressed that the composition of this labor force of several thousand differed significantly from the smaller one that would operate the completed installation. The door of opportunity for those without specialized training swung open briefly and then shut.[27]
The first launch, that of a test rocket named Véronique, took place on April 9, 1968. Two years later the first French rocket of import, a Diamant, lifted off with a German satellite named Wika. But the initial optimism of the project dimmed even as the first wave of construction ended. Far from throwing wide the gates to space, the overall technical record of the first phase of the European space center was relatively meager. Although CSG could claim 354 “launches” between 1968 and 1978, 288 of these were test rockets, and another 57 were balloons; the total includes only nine satellite launch vehicles, eight Diamants, and a single Europa. The failure of the Europa II—which crashed into the sea after only two and a half minutes of flight—was an ominous sign, inspiring criticism of not only the rocket but also the organization that
THE SPACE CENTER AND DEVELOPMENT
Kourou is a city of the future.
Anonymous, Kourou, 1987
Effects of the establishment of the space center rippled through French Guiana, well beyond the immediate confines of Kourou. The spate of construction associated with the project, the substantial improvements in the general infrastructure of the department, and the sudden wave of migrant labor attracted to the area altered the local landscape. Even as Kourou transformed dramatically, French Guiana shifted around it, adjusting to the new conditions. And while the space center was not the only modernizing influence in French Guiana—the area's formal incorporation into the French state in 1946–1947 established much of the economic framework—it quickly came to represent everything, good or bad, that emerged alongside it.
The initial promises about the potential benefits in store for French Guiana from its involvement in the space program varied. De Gaulle had alluded to a “great work,” the engineer in charge of the initial mission spoke of an “era of prosperity for Kourou, Cayenne and French Guiana as a whole,” and one of the conservative political papers of the time predicted full-time employment for all. Opinion in French Guiana, however, was quite divided over the installation of a space base. Even before the official announcement was made, rumors circulated about what this new project might bring, and political debates already extant began to revolve around this new center of official gravity. Even as those in favor of assimilation welcomed the project, the local branch of the Socialist Party and other left groups opposed it, raising concerns about Cold War politics and the launch site's potential role in nuclear conflict. Further, they were irritated by the “implantation” of the space center, pointing out that local officials had not been consulted and warning that the creation of such an artificial island in an underdeveloped
In a press conference held in October 1964, the delegates of CNES maintained a measure of studied caution, albeit laced with progressive enthusiasm. Stressing that this was a purely civil affair, with no links to either the military or atomic testing, they explained the logic behind the selection of French Guiana to the assembled audience of local officials, suggesting that if the space project went forward successfully, this would be the only extant equatorial rocket base and hence “would certainly be the greatest launch site in the world.”[30] France, they emphasized, had chosen to bypass the cheaper option of an installation at Roussillon, and this should be taken as a sign of commitment to its overseas department: “The government thinks that the supplementary cost will have, at least, the beneficial side effect of creating considerable activity in French Guiana, while Roussillon has other possibilities.” For all that the primary motivation of building a space base was national and French, the technological development of the nation would here assist in the modernization of its outlying parts.
The stated goals were both strikingly egalitarian and relatively concrete:
Perhaps you would now like to know what sort of human development we envisage with respect to this launch site? Well, we think that almost five hundred people will be necessary for it to function. To the extent to which you are able to provide us with half that figure, we would be happy to recruit them, either among those who live here or among those children of this land who have left and would like to return. In fact we can give 250 jobs easily enough to local people. The people arriving from the Metropole will be rocket technicians, space research technicians. We plan to establish similar conditions for everyone, those from Guiana as well as those who will come from the Metropole, in the region of des Roches or Kourou.
Space, then, was to be a cooperative affair, employment split fifty-fifty and equality guaranteed for all. French Guiana would provide land and muscle; France would provide a rocket and expertise. Together they would forge the future, while living in a model town. Yet the very sentence underlining the technical nature of the future Metropolitan immigrants, meant to reassure, also reveals the original tension of the project: unlike those already living there, these space technicians would be arriving in French Guiana with a purpose in mind. They would not be competing with local residents for labor positions because they were skilled, and yet their very skills would also set them apart. Egalitarian
At a later point during a question and answer period, the issue of local effects came up again. A member of the city administration of Cayenne asked the president of CNES to elaborate on what the citizens of French Guiana might expect from the space project. After dwelling on images of direct flights between Paris and the new airport, the president returned to the issue of employment, suggesting a potential improvement in the “technical level” of Guyanais youth. Finally he considered what would happen if the project really took off and attracted the attention of other countries:
That would have an absolutely major effect on the development of French Guiana, by bringing a lot of people, increasing the consumption of vegetables, food crops, and so forth …. Naturally this development, as all development, has to be considered carefully not to be harmful, for I think that you are all for the development of your country, but that you also wish it to be harmonious, preserving those characteristics you like. In this you can absolutely count on our cooperation, since it is one of the questions that preoccupies us. We do not want this development to be disorderly, or to produce shantytowns instead of cities, because what is necessary is that French Guiana profit as much as possible.
At once guarded and optimistic, the agenda is laid forth: unlike past ventures in French Guiana, this will be no pie-in-the-sky affair, but concrete, real, and carefully planned. The benefits beyond the initial promise of jobs begin to be detailed, including accurate prophecies about increased air traffic and a direct link to Paris and rosy hopes for future phalanxes of Guyanais engineers. But a mask of naiveté about development is shed; not all modernization leads to progress, we are warned, there are dangers of inequality, social chaos, and cultural discord.
However, the press conference would not close on such a doubtful note. Near the end of the affair the departmental director of the Service for Radio and Telephones asked whether or not the president of CNES thought the average American was proud of what was taking place at Cape Canaveral. Yes, was the reply. The exchange continued: would not the Guyanais also one day be proud of their launch site? “Well, Sir,” the president replied, somewhat elliptically, “I think that we are proud enough of what we do, perhaps we are wrong, but after all when one does something well one is very proud.” Hanging in the air was the prospect of technical assimilation: if the citizens of French Guiana
Such affirmations of technological pride notwithstanding, hostility to the space center continued in certain quarters. Even in the mid-1960s, opposition papers described the project as a “cancer,” a “diabolical plan,” that would produce a “white city” by chasing Guyanais from their land and redistributing it to Europeans. A more general survey of Creoles living in Kourou, the most affected segment of the population, indicated that in 1971 fewer than half of them considered the changes brought about by the base to have been positive.[31] A sample of remarks collected at the time reveals two poles of reaction: appreciation of material improvements in everyday life, countered by distress over social tension, heightened cost of living, and perceptions of racism. On the one hand, space brings practical comforts, symbols of progress, and increased possibilities of wage labor:
“Before, there was nothing in Kourou. Now you can find anything you want to buy.”
“The base has brought us modernism [le modernisme]: I am for modernism. We have light all day long, drinkable water from the tap. With the fridge, everything preserves, and there's no more need to salt things …. Before, for entertainment, it was necessary to go to Cayenne. Now we have the movie theater and TV.”
“By making their base in Kourou, the Whites have brought us evolution. The time of farming is past. It's necessary to be modern.”
“The base has brought many people and a lot of work. We're no longer condemned to the abattis [agricultural plots]. You can choose the work you want to do, and when it doesn't pan out, you can always change.”
On the other hand, the bonanza of the space base bears the blame for market fluctuations and a more rigid accounting of time, as well as a heightened sense of racial inequity over work prospects and distinctions in pay scales:
“I had a good job, but the company went away, and up till now, I haven't found anything else.”
“Before, food for us was practically free[;] … now, you have to buy everything, and it is so expensive that you never have enough money to eat as well as before.”
“The least of white workers earns three time as much as a Guyanais worker. He has allowances, advantages, solely because he's white.”
“When I was on my habitation [agricultural site], I was free and happy with my farming and my breeding! I worked to my liking: I wasn't a prisoner of fixed schedules …. Now, I'm a slave of money, a slave of work!”[32]
Here, then, we have a split vote; an image of the Janus face of modern good and modern bad, with references to capitalism, slavery, inflation, and refrigerators, all encapsulated in the space center.
Like these personal views, the abstracted estimates of the space program's economic effects were mixed. The space center represented over half of all investment in French Guiana at the time.[33] In concrete terms the airport and port facilities found dramatic improvement, as did the road between Kourou and Cayenne. In terms of jobs the picture remained less clear, for while some 19,500 people throughout the department were officially listed as working in 1974 (as opposed to 12,000 in 1962), the level of employment relative to both the total population and the working population actually shrank slightly. Over the decade between 1965 and 1975, Kourou went from representing 1.75 percent of French Guiana's total population to 8.5 percent, even as that population grew from some forty thousand to close to sixty thousand. An earlier trend toward population loss was thus now effectively countered; out-migration of young Guyanais Creoles to France was balanced by in-migration of foreigners into Guyane. Yet in this very solution to the long-standing demographic dilemma lay the seeds of new and growing discord: French Guiana was becoming a more varied and decidedly multiethnic society. All in all, at least some twenty-four hundred non-French foreigners (Brazilians, Surinamese, and Colombians) participated in the construction of CSG.[34] Out of the thousand or so people employed at the functioning space center, approximately 60 percent were “detached” from the Metropole. Following official estimates of indirect effects, the functioning space program perhaps accounted for some 15 percent of the employed workforce. But significant elements of that workforce—at both top and bottom ends—were not Creole. Metro technicians and immigrant laborers played increasingly prominent roles.
Furthermore, the sudden bonanza of the space center and the visions of manna it inspired proved relatively fleeting. After the initial phase of construction was complete the need for unskilled labor fell drastically. The collapse of the Europa program and the consequent growing lull in space activity between 1972 and 1976 struck Kourou hard. Writing in 1975, the head of the local government warned that any further reductions would decimate not only the population of that town but also the economy of the department as a whole. These reductions highlighted inherent difficulties in Kourou's role as a peculiar sort of company town: “the support city of the European space effort,” as a planning report
THE CITY OF SPACE:
A TOUR OF KOUROU'S NEW TOWN
But what was the urban space created around the space center? How does the physical layout of Kourou fit with its descriptions? In the enthusiastic memoirs of a former prefect, a political figure strongly in favor of closer ties with France, the early story of space can be summarized as follows:
From a modest village of some hundred residents, Kourou has become a stylish city of five thousand souls, with a supermarket, a hospital, … two great hotels, a magnificent pool, where the Guyanais come to pass the weekend with their families or elegant company. Evidently researchers of CNES have the tendency to live in isolation, sticking with each other. But nevertheless they are consumers of remarkable purchasing power who affect the Guyanais market, and a number of new shops have been created in Cayenne to satisfy them. All Guyanais youth devoted to physics, mathematics, data-processing, and mechanics have been recruited by CNES. True, they are not numerous; most orient themselves toward letters, law, or medicine. But CNES has offered them other opportunities in their own department, and that they appreciate greatly. For jobs of lesser scale, a training center devoted to the various techniques of space has been opened in Kourou. Thus, as was easy to anticipate, the creation of CNES has been particularly beneficial to French Guiana. That has not, however, prevented the political situation from evolving in a different direction than it was logically permitted to hope.[36]
But such an outline allows no fine resolution; it provides only the most general of maps and vaguest of reservations (“evolving in a different direction than it was logically permitted to hope”). The French social scientist Marie-José Jolivet presents us with a more detailed, biting tour of the newly constructed Kourou, circa 1971. In Kourou, she suggests, “socio-professional hierarchy is found to be exactly inscribed on the ground.” This thesis, simultaneously descriptive and analytic, merits extended attention.[37]
Beginning the inventory by the Pointe des Roches, the granite promontory situated at the mouth of the river where one can still see “Dreyfus' Tower,”
- The “des Roches” quarter—Clearly at a distance from the rest of the town, this is the finest residential neighborhood. One finds there first of all a hundred-room luxury hotel, with bar, restaurant, and pool. Just beside it is a private club. Further on, by the sea, the two villas of the respective directors of CSG and ELDO, as well as six other houses reserved for their immediate deputies.
- The “executive” quarter—Further west, but always close to the sea, come then some one hundred identical villas set in rows, which principally house engineers and administrative personnel of the base.
- The city center—Italianate in style, its apartment blocks frame an internal plaza of sorts, prohibited to automobiles, adorned with flower beds and ornamental pools, and surrounded by arcades that open into shops. It is there that we find the supermarket … and the industrial bakery …. The residential buildings have two or three floors and include more than two hundred apartments, occupied by technicians, staff, and shopkeepers.
- The “Calypso” quarter—This consists of a group of three hundred prefabricated chalets, situated on the eastern side of the central plaza. These were the first lodgings built, originally to house the people who came for the installation of CSG, and later turned over to personnel of the construction companies. In 1971 their occupancy is more varied but still for the most part Metropolitan.
- The lower-income district—These low-rise, multiple-family dwellings stretch to the south and westward of the city center. In some 250 apartments Metropolitans and Creoles mix, mostly semiskilled workers, some teachers, and young civil service volunteers.
- The very low income district—This consists of high-rise blocks, built last at the entrance to town. This quarter includes two hundred apartments for the Creole workforce.
Such is the town of Kourou proper. Differentiation, one sees, comprises the primary element of its conception. But this phenomenon does not stop there: units forming the suburbs of the city only emphasize it. These are:
- The “Cité Stade,” or housing for the relocated—At the edge of town, this district was built to shelter those whose land was expropriated by the base. The structures are low-rise concrete blocks, the most economic possible, comprising sixty or so apartments that, in 1971, have already acquired a dilapidated look.
- The Maroon village—Well hidden behind the stadium and the empty lots that separate the housing for the relocated from the old town center, this village was built around a water standpipe by Saramakas and Bonis, with the help of recycled materials (old planks, beams) that were “generously” provided for them. In fact there are two distinct sections: Saramakas and
― 137 ―Bonis [Aluku] do not mix. As a whole it is composed of rows of rudimentary shacks that, far from resembling the charming villages along the Maroni, form nothing but a sad shantytown, despite the undeniable efforts by its residents to make the place more attractive.
- The Indian village—The Galibi [Kaliña] have changed location several times. Their villages were first formed of traditional huts: “carbets,” entirely open [wood and] dried-leaf shelters. In 1971, they have just settled in a new village built in accordance with their wishes. This last is situated at the entrance to the town but near the edge of the sea and far back from the road. It is comprised of enclosed huts in Creole style, forms now preferred by those concerned themselves, who are weary of being the object (private life included) of tourist curiosity.
- The “Old Town”—Starting from the dock of the old ferryboat, the old town stretches along a main street perpendicular to the river. Formerly the national road, this street has become a cul-de-sac since the construction of the bridge spanning the Kourou River some kilometers upstream and the subsequent displacement of the road. Some houses in concrete have appeared here and there. But as an ensemble, with its old wooden houses, its quaint town hall, and its little church, the old town preserves the flavor of a rural Guyanese Creole settlement.
Having provided us with the elements, Jolivet then sums up the resulting social constellation:
For the Boni or Saramaka laborer: salvaged boards and a well-camouflaged shantytown (the landscape must not be disfigured!). For the relocated cultivator: cramped accommodations in a reserved housing development. For the Creole worker: a low-income apartment in a public housing project located at the entry of the city. For the skilled worker: an apartment in a standard public housing complex at the edge of the town's center, the only place where it is imagined that Creoles and White could mix. And then, the White town, with its hierarchical gradations also scrupulously respected. Such is the conception of the new city of Kourou! Can one have dreamed up a more vivid demonstration of the expertise of Whites to orchestrate the countless hierarchical encounters that allow them to maintain the ideological bases of their domination?
While Jolivet's tour is hardly dispassionate—relentless anger pressing between every line—it remains careful and spatially exact. The built environment, entrenched as is, lends empirical clarity to her claims: people in buildings are easy to locate, easy to count. Both the power and the weakness of a fortress, after all, lie in its fixed position and visibility.[38] The new town of Kourou, so exposed in its French Guiana setting, cannot hide the starkness of its form. In replacing the vernacular
Figure 11. Villas, Kourou, 1993
Figure 12. Apartments, Kourou, 1993
Figure 13. Shack, Kourou, 1993
What we have in Kourou is a future archaeologist's dream. Structure speaks; society lies written on the ground. In one forgotten corner between river and the sea, a human epic is quickly rewritten, from first world to third world. Kourou, then, is a new colony (its imported elements “up to date”), but one that reproduces an old colonialism in its racial divides reinforced by social class. Taken more broadly, Jolivet's point carries further still. Social class here is reinforced by educational certification and technical expertise. The discrepancies of capitalism, wide verandah to tiny room, meet the gray uniformity of social welfare, row upon row of universal shelters; parts of France's space city
At the moment of Jolivet's survey, Kourou was also entering a period of crisis, anticipated by the failure of the Europa program. Yet even as the space center lapses into inactivity and the buildings it inspired begin to decay (their futuristic touches aging especially badly), the structure of the urban layout remains. The requisite elements of a launch program are still in place, as is the general shape of the town next to it. Prophetically, Jolivet concludes her spatial review by wondering if the hierarchical structure of Kourou would not necessarily reproduce similar social patterns should the program expand again.[39] No matter what might come after, the foundations of the future had been laid.
ARIANESPACE, ESA, AND THE LATER SPACE CENTER
“Ariane is the posthumous child of the General [de Gaulle].”
Former French minister of science andindustrial development, 1993[40]
In 1972 the future of the European Launcher Program appeared in as much doubt as that of the Space Age around it. The successful American moon landing left a vacuum of intensity and purpose, one that affected the Europeans at least as much as NASA. Britain, the driving force behind Europa I, left ELDO in 1970, and the Europa II program emerged stillborn. The shift in U.S. policy toward the space shuttle and toward greater cooperation in space cast the whole project of an independent European rocket into question on both technical and political grounds. The French, however, were not easily dissuaded. A working group at CNES sought a replacement for the planned Europa III, which was to be a two-stage rocket equivalent to the American Atlas Centaur, and came up with a three-stage design known as L3S. A “tough” European Space Conference in December of that year and an even more intense and interrupted meeting in Brussels during the summer of 1973 resulted in several momentous decisions. On the basis of these agreements, ELDO and ESRO were disbanded and then gradually reformulated over the next two years into a single entity, the European Space Agency (ESA), whose purview would include both space launches and space science. Furthermore, the conference endorsed the
ARIANE AND THE TECHNOLOGY OF SUCCESS
The European Space Agency proved a more resilient organization than its predecessors. Formally ratified in 1975, it grew to encompass thirteen member states (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom) as well as an associate member (Finland) and a cooperative one (Canada).[42] The commitment to the new launcher, rechristened Ariane, proved in retrospect an excellent gamble. While the program was not free from hitches and awkward delays, it managed to squeeze under its original deadline, producing a rocket by the end of 1979. Despite subsequent setbacks, the program blossomed, filling a void created by NASA's overreliance on the expensive and problem-prone space shuttle. Largely designed around tested technologies, Ariane evolved into a reliable rocket, well suited to placing communications satellites into equatorial orbit.
The Europeans also proved prescient in another respect: the market for commercial space launches, particularly of communications satellites, expanded considerably in the 1980s. The final frontier became an arena of interest to corporations as well as nation-states, and networks of international communications grew rapidly. Again led by the French, the European venture was ready. At the beginning of the decade the space consortium established a new, semiprivate corporation to coordinate and market the Ariane rocket. Under the name Arianespace, it gradually expanded from its first commercial launch in 1984 to claim over half the satellite market, gaining a significant boost after the 1986 explosion of the space shuttle Challenger and the subsequent withdrawal of NASA from commercial launches. The first version of the rocket, Ariane 1, gave way to more powerful siblings, Ariane 2, 3, and finally the mature design, Ariane 4, which appeared in 1988. After its fiftieth flight in 1992, the Ariane program could claim forty-five successful launches (a 90 percent success rate) and eighty-five satellites placed into orbit.[43] At the same time, plans were under way for a new generation of rockets, the Ariane 5 series. Wider, heavier, and shorter, this model was designed to lift close to twice as much as its predecessor into equatorial orbit.[44] The adoption of such a powerful launcher
The Ariane program initiated a second wave of construction in Kourou, at first picking up the slack left by the Europa cutbacks and then expanding the space center to unprecedented dimensions. The new launcher required a series of launchpads and other service facilities, and its success stimulated further urban growth. The number of active personnel required to run the operation remained roughly comparable to that of the earlier period, but the estimated factor of indirect employment related to the base grew.[45] In addition, the percentage of the workforce officially resident in Kourou expanded, surpassing 50 percent in 1985. At the beginning of the 1990s, the space program accounted for over half the department's production, supported a quarter of the population, and was involved in something on the order of two-thirds of all imports.[46] The postponement of the Hermès shuttle in 1991 dampened the expansive rhetoric of the space program, but the third wave of investment and publicity related to the Ariane 5 program, coupled with the continued general success of the Ariane 4 program, maintained CSG's high profile in and out of French Guiana. Given the hollow nature of the region's economy, the weight of the space program grew all the more obvious.
SOME NUTS AND BOLTS OF A LAUNCH
Let us examine an Ariane 4 launch “campaign” of the early nineties in detail, and through it the material culture of rockets and satellites. For all that a rocket may be a glorified firecracker, it is also a complicated one. Preparation of an Ariane takes about three years, including thirty months invested in the three stages and lesser periods invested in the other component parts. Because this is a joint European venture, the major contractors are large corporations spread throughout Europe, headed by the French firm Aerospatiale. Once together, the major elements of the rocket find their way to French Guiana by ship or plane, and after being unloaded near Cayenne, they are transported by road to Kourou. At this point the CSG launch campaign proper can begin, ideally lasting around a month. The preparation of the rocket takes place in the launch pad complex, first in an assembly area and then at the launch site a short distance away. The ground installations are expressly
Over the first five days, the three stages are erected into a rocket. The first two stages represent one of the keys of Ariane's success: powered by liquid fuels, they draw on proven technologies for “simplicity and reliability.” The third stage, however, represents technical progress, being cryogenic, or powered by oxygen and hydrogen at extremely low temperatures for extra thrust. Cryogenics, a technology over which the United States held a monopoly until the 1980s, is both “the key to power” and a matter of technical pride. French engineers were the second to successfully use cryogenics after the Americans, and the design of the next-generation Ariane 5 depends heavily on this approach.[48]
About thirteen days before the launch date the assembled rocket is transferred to the launch zone, while nine days before liftoff the first countdown rehearsals begin. At the same time a parallel preparation campaign for the satellite or satellites destined for orbit draws to a close in a highly sterile environment. Four days before launch the assembled and tested satellite finds a home in the bulbous cargo bay at the top of the thin rocket shaft. The completed object stands 58.4 meters tall (192 feet) and weighs some 339 to 470 metric tons (about 750,000 to 1,000,000 pounds), depending on the exact configuration. White, and painted with the logos of Arianespace and CNES and ESA, as well as the flags of participating nation-states, the completed launcher stands framed by the boosters attached to its base.[49] Though few onlookers consider it significant, many note at least one allusion embedded in the final form. Although all rockets may be vaguely phallic, Ariane 4—slim and shapely—is unmistakably so.
Final preparations include the filling of each stage with fuel, sending balloons aloft to measure the wind, and monitoring the equipment and other atmospheric conditions, particularly the threat of lightning. Sixteen hours and forty minutes before ignition (that point in time designated H0), the countdown begins. At H0 minus six minutes a synchronized sequence begins, the internal power supplies activate, and the umbilical cords binding the rocket to its platform swing away. At H0 the first stage and booster engines fire, and 4.4 seconds later liftoff begins. The rocket climbs vertically for about another eight seconds, slowly gathering speed, before beginning to tilt on its journey
The expense of this explosive venture is staggering. Beyond the cost of launch and the satellite itself, one must calculate appropriate insurance and frequently a spare satellite, should the first be lost. As one industry analyst likes to point out, satellites are worth far more than their weight in gold.[51] Yet if we consider the potential long-term return on initial investment, the economic logic of the industry emerges. Accepting a conservative total cost of two hundred million dollars to place and operate an individual communications satellite in geostationary orbit at the beginning of the 1990s, given eighteen thousand communication lines and an optimistic ten-year life span at full use, the long-term cost could translate into a figure as low as a fifth of a cent a minute.[52] Thus even while this branch of the transport business appears lumbering and slow in a world of high-speed mass production, it constitutes both a lucrative venture and a vital link in the vast network of international communication.
In sum, the technology before us consists of a few simple ideas and many complicated details. It is at once highly advanced and remarkably primitive, bending many fragile components into a raw exercise of power. It requires massive investments, risks all in the brief possibility of devastating explosion, and renders profits slowly at high volume. It is not—and could never be—the work of any single individual but requires the resources and skills of a large, competent organization.
HUMAN SYSTEMS AND ROCKET ENGINEERS
A technology, however advanced it be, does not in itself guarantee success. It must be applied by a rational organization.
Participant in a launching base conference, 1972[53]
To continue our consideration of the Guiana Space Center we need to establish a set of social facts delineating “Europe's Spaceport.” At the point of our ethnographic present tense (the early 1990s), the CSG occupies approximately nine hundred square kilometers of coastal land, almost the same surface area as the island of Martinique, or 1 percent of the total area of French Guiana. As we have seen, the primary technical activities conducted at the center consist of final preparation and assembly of the three launcher stages and the payload, preparing and launching the assembled rocket, and monitoring its ensuing trajectory and performance. The CSG provides both facilities and logistical support for visiting teams in charge of particular payloads in different launch “campaigns,” including testing and laboratory space as well as housing and social services. The program seeks to average eight to nine payloads a year using the Ariane 4 rocket, even while development continues apace on the Ariane 5 and the possible (if increasingly doubtful) future European space shuttle Hermès.[54]
The space operation consists of three separate, overlapping entities: CSG itself, a unit of CNES, the French national space agency, which is responsible for the launch facilities; Arianespace, a semiprivate corporation, which is responsible for the commercial aspects of the launch service; and ESA, an umbrella European space consortium, which is responsible for long-range planning and coordination of funding. Although united around common goals, this trio, sometimes jokingly referred to as a “trinity,” do not always share specific interests. CSG seeks to forward French national aims and encounters the brunt of local pressure. Arianespace worries the most about commercial operations, competition, client services, and profitability. And ESA works to increase the European heterogeneity of the program, gradually diluting its French purity and maintaining its public face of European cooperation.
Both directly and through a complex network of arrangements with private companies, CSG itself engages approximately 850 persons and Arianespace another 250, while ESA maintains a tiny bureau of liaison agents. However much economic activity it may generate, the combined space industry only directly employs something on the order of 7 to 10 percent of Kourou's population and less than 1 percent of French Guiana's. Most of the technical and upper-administrative positions are filled by Europeans, and almost half of the center's workforce is still composed of Europeans on temporary overseas contracts. Kourou has the greatest overall number of workers within CNES, outranking the administrative headquarters in Paris and the satellite control center in
In addition to those directly employed in technical tasks, the presence of the center has created a need for a wide range of nontechnical support occupations around it. Such positions include midlevel bureaucratic posts within the town, largely filled by Guyanais Creoles, as well as manual labor and maintenance, largely performed by illegal immigrants. Security is also a concern, and security guards, units of the French army, and a detachment of the Foreign Legion are all deployed during launches. Along with the resident technical personnel, one must add rotating teams of engineers and other representatives of Arianespace and CSG's clients present to oversee the preparation of their satellites for launch. Numbering some two hundred to four hundred at any one time, these missionnaires stay an average of two months. The town has a number of expensive hotels and restaurants to cater to them, and a unit within CSG attends to their logistical needs and arranges entertainment, including nature tours.
The launch base in Kourou is at once pivotal and peripheral to French and European space activities. The success or failure of every satellite first rides on the crucial moment when the rocket carrying it rises through the sky. Thus the responsibility of overseeing the ground operations is great. Yet much of the work actually done at the space center is relatively repetitious and routine—in the realm of operation rather than of design—and hence many of the jobs are not glamorous. Broadly speaking, personnel at CSG fit one of two categories: mobile professionals who are passing through while rising in the ranks of CNES or Arianespace and subordinate technicians who are fixed in place and position. It would be a mistake to divide these realms too completely. Not only do they blur in the cases of certain individuals, but in this realm of technocratic France it must be stressed that the administrators in question are largely engineers, recipients of technical—if elite—education.[56] However, for our purposes the distinction helps underscore an essential difference between categories of people associated with the Guiana Space Center, separating those for whom it represents a temporary point within a career from those for whom it represents a steady job.
These two categories—the mobile and the fixed—fall loosely if imperfectly along ethnic lines; although a number of Europeans fill low-level posts, few workers born in French Guiana enter the career orbit. After all, such a career entails motion: to acquire the requisite experience one must migrate between different key points in the space world rather than remain fixed in Kourou. In this fact lie seeds of systematic resentment. For CSG will never—could never—exist wholly within Guyane. The support systems upon which it depends, from material production to trained staff and clientele, extend elsewhere on the globe, weaving most thickly over technological centers of Europe. Even if French Guiana were to become independent, in order to operate the space center it would need personnel equipped with both instrumental knowledge and international connections. On a crucial, institutional level, the work of the cosmos is irreducibly cosmopolitan.
DEFINING THE FUTURE
Engineers think like savages, my friend, as Lévi-Strauss does not say. It's a matter of tinkering with what you have on hand to get yourself out of terrible muddles: what was only a stage becomes an infinite number of stages, a real labyrinth.
Bruno Latour, Aramis, 1992
However much the Guiana Space Center has changed between its first incarnation in the 1960s and 1970s and the Ariane era, it remains committed to a deep belief in progress, counterbalanced by a deep concern for reliability. Although outer space may have become an arena for commercial as well as national competition, it still represents an expanding domain, a seemingly endless horizon of human opportunity. The fundamental vision of the Space Age depends on improvement and expansion, a belief that the only thing standing between our species and the future is technical evolution. The essential optimism of Verne's nineteenth-century adventurers, cheerfully sailing out of their cannon to colonize the moon, remains very much alive. At the same time, however, rockets remain undeniably tricky and explosive. What is intended to be a transport vehicle can easily become a bomb. Thus every procedure must be standardized and routinized in an effort to achieve consistency. Yet however standardized things become, they remain imperfect and volatile at such a complex
The tension between a progressive sensibility and a neurotic awareness of potential disaster has produced a fertile field of representation around CSG. This representational field, running through Europe, French Guiana, and the Ariane rocket, constitutes an essential dimension of the space enterprise. Examining it will allow us to excavate layers of meaning surrounding the space program and find fragments of cosmology and ritual in the culture of fantasy borne by Verne's descendants, proud authors of “French Guiana, Land of Space.”