A new era of space transportation - Future programs
- Paper ID
1976-IAF-V-03
- author
- company
European Space Agency
- country
France
- year
1976
- abstract
The European Space Agency is grateful for this opportunity to explain, before such a distinguished audience, something of its future programmes. You will, I hope, permit me, before talking of the future, to tell you something of the present and a little of the - relevant - past. The Convention which gave effect to the European Space Agency - ESA - had 11 Western European signatories b^ the end of 1975, which was the time allowed for Member States of the European Space Conference to become members of the new Agency. Ratification of the Convention has already been completed in some Member States and the process is still continuing in others. It is reasonable to assume that by mid-1977 all States will have ratified the Convention and the Agency will then legally exist - at present we owe our legal existence to the old ESRO Convention. I mention this not because I believe that many of you are at all interested in such legal niceties, but because the process of ratification is the consecration in individual countries of the collective political will Ministers demonstrated when they signed the ESA Convention eighteen months ago.