At issue is the next big transportation project for the 13-nation European Space Agency (ESA), the Paris-based, intergovernmental body that coordinates Western Europe's space activities. The agency, which was formed in 1975 and spends about $1.5 billion a year, developed the French-inspired Ariane, a conventional, expendable rocket for launching satellites. Thanks largely to the shuttle problems in the United States, the rocket is likely to be the main launch vehicle for the western world's satellites over the next two years.
ESA has already decided to spend nearly $3 billion over the next decade to build a more powerful version of Ariane, the so-called Ariane-5, to lift heavier satellites. But the arguments about what comes next have already begun.
France, as the world's third biggest spender on space technology after the United States and the Soviet Union, is the dominant nation. within ESA. She has proposed spending up to $4.5 billion ...
