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90 chapter seven Hands across the Water The space business has been an inherently international endeavor since it began. In the earliest day, the Russians had a success, and we jumped in. We had a success or two, and they matched us and tried to best us. We struck back and so on, but space is a grand, risky, and very expensive arena in which to operate, and eventually competitors become collaborators . Today, we rely on the Russians for significant operations connected with the International Space Station, and we routinely collaborate with the European Space Agency (ESA), various specific European space agencies such as Centre National d’Études Spatiales (CNES, the French space agency) and Agenzia Spaziale Italiana (ASI, the Italian space agency), as well as many others like JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). No one is truly able to go it alone in space for long, plus there are diplomatic advantages to playing nicely in space. We do all truly live in the solar system together. The new Mars Program had a strong international component. The essence of this collaboration was around the Mars sample-­ return mission that had been planned for 2003 or 2005. I had never felt comfortable with the notion of what looked to me like a premature sample-­ return mission. I felt strongly that there were insurmountable issues on both the science and the technology sides. We at NASA HQ had canceled the U.S. planning for this mission, and we needed to set about organizing a new relationship with the Europeans. The thought of cancellation of the Mars sample-­ return mission was very unpopular with groups at both JPL and CNES. We were told time and again by people at the French space agency that they had Hands across the Water · 91 raised their money based on a promise to carry out a return of a sample from Mars. We planned a trip to Europe in June that required us to be on our best diplomatic behavior. In Washington, D.C., when you set about conducting international discussions and international collaborations, you don’t do this on your own. You have “help” from people in the international affairs office of your agency, in this case NASA. You get help from the State Department. You get help, which in some cases is really valuable, from the American embassy located in the country to which you are traveling. One of the first things that happens is that you get issued a red passport. This is the official U.S. passport for government employees and at times is more a liability than an advantage. The red passport, if you were on a plane that was being hijacked, would identify you as a government employee and could put you at risk. So we were advised that sometimes it’s better just to use your blue personal passport. Luckily, I found the people in the international affairs office at NASA HQ to be universally helpful. Folks like Diane Rauch, who helped organize a trip to Russia, and Steve Ballard, who helped us with the trip to Italy and France, were very knowledgeable and very helpful. The e-­ mails, official letters, telephone conversations, and the like highlighted the need for the always crucial face-­ to-­ face meeting sooner rather than later. By June 2000 my team at HQ and Firouz Naderi and his team at JPL had a pretty good idea of what might be in the new Mars Program. We didn’t have all the details filled in, we didn’t have all the cost estimates finished, but a picture was emerging. And in that picture, which ultimately ended with a Mars sample return sometime in the next decade, there were obvious places for international collaboration. At this point I have to acknowledge that working internationally is clearly a two-­ edged sword. First, there’s the political dimension. My boss on a daily basis, Ed Weiler, was distinctly divided about the value of international cooperation. The White House administration at the time, under President Clinton, was very much in support of international collaboration, but over time administrations and their attitudes toward cooperation come and go. The Mars plans needed to last a decade. In addition, the people at the front lines of putting programs together had seen how complicated it can be to work across eight or nine time zones with several languages and multiple interfaces. And these are just some of the more...

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