5.3 The Impact of the SLW on Europe The impact of the coming heightened USSR/USA contest on the rest of the world (Japan, Europe, China, and India) will be considerable. India and China are, in the main, satisfying internal and prestige demands and so a strict commercial contest is not a criterion for their programmes at present. Japan also has a national programme, but, beginning in 1992, will be able to compete with the Space Shuttle and Ariane. We believe this will be, for a limited period, against the USA due to other stimulation to the USA technology. However, launch capacity limitations should still leave a market outside the USA for competition between Japan and Europe. We believe that deficiencies in the European plans will leave Japan the victor in such an economic contest. The Japanese have plans for space stations, a shuttle and a modular launcher, together with studies for advanced single stage air breathing launchers. France. It must be admitted that the nation in Europe having the strongest political will for space is France, and in this it has been constant since the immediate post-war period. (France was the third nation to demonstrate an independent satellite launching capability.) The European programme is currently seen to be based on a conventional expendable launcher (core/strap-on configuration) able to carry a hypersonic glider (HERMES) for manned missions. This project has been claimed to be economic because ARIANE V can launch three satellites at a time. Through ESA, the French space agency CNES is gradually persuading Europe to fund the A5/Hermes spaceplane option. However, perhaps because of the apparently overriding need to get ‘man in space soonest', no real attention seems to have been paid to the most important question: What will be the world space political, financial and technical situation prevailing at the time that Hermes is introduced? Thus the European programme appears to be nonsensical, in terms of timescale, in terms of technology base, and as a competitive commercial venture. Ariane V will not be available until at least 1995, three years after the Japanese HII and at a time when the USA will have had 15 years operational experience with the STS and will be about to introduce the Mkll shuttle. Europe stands to be introducing 1960s technology into a world of solar power satellites, permanent lunar presence, manned Martian missions and single stage to orbit vehicles. Commercial use has been used to justify Ariane V but an 18t payload is an embarrassing size; too large to be commercial but too small to be a worthwhile heavy lift vehicle. The justification of the A5P/HM-60 combination is also based on current launchrates, so we have a self-fulfilling prophesy, since its cost will inhibit traffic. There has never been a transportation system in which traffic is not inversely proportional to cost. If the UK were to adopt a committed European approach then it should campaign at once to improve European high-pressure LH2 pump technology, to enable the development of more efficient engines and hence economic launcher designs. The HOTOL engine has within its components a very respectable pure rocket engine of about 75 tonnes thrust. This engine would be of a much more advanced design than the HM60 and could be clustered to give a core module for an expendable heavy lift vehicle. In addition, it could form the basis for a cislunar (including GEO) tug,
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