May 4 1985
From The Space Library
NASA announced that Sultan Salman Abdelazize Al-Saud, an Arabsat payload specialist scheduled to fly on the 51-G 7-day Space Shuttle mission in June, would conduct 70mm photography over Saudi Arabia, 35mm photography of a fluids experiment, and would participate in the French posture experiment. Al-Saud's flight was part of a reimbursable agreement with the Arab Satellite Communications Organization covering the launch of the Arabsat 1B communications satellite.
Al-Saud would use the 70mm camera to take pictures on daylight orbital passes over Saudi Arabia and the 35mm camera to document such phenomena as surface tension effects on mixed fluids in the absence of gravity. His other activities would include photography of the new moon in a lunar crescent observation and assisting the French payload specialist as a test subject in the French experiment.
At a May 28 news conference at Johnson Space Center, Al-Saud said his flight was bound to improve diplomatic relations between the U.S. and the Islamic world, the Washington Post reported. "You will have 800 million Moslems and 155 million Arabs glued to their TV sets watching an American spaceship carrying an Arab into space," he commented.
NASA selected Al-Saud, nephew of Saudi's King Faud, from hundreds of Saudi applicants. He had logged more than 1,000 hours in jet aircraft.
Other crew for the mission were Daniel Brandenstein, commander; John Creighton, pilot; Shannon Lucid, John Fabian, and Steven Nagel, mission specialists; and Patrick Baudry, French payload specialist. Backup payload specialist for Arabsat was Abdulmohsen Hamad Al-Bassam. (NASA Release 85-69; W Post, May 29/85, Al2)
France turned down President Reagan's invitation to participate in the U.S. Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) project because of the subordinate role France would have to play and because it was at that time promoting its own French-led European advanced technology/space research project that included some key technologies related to strategic defense, Defense Daily reported.
French President Francois Mitterrand told a news conference May 4 at the close of the Bonn economic summit that President Reagan used the term "subcontractors" in reference to Europe's role in the SDI project, which confirmed his view that the U.S. would not treat France and other European countries as equal partners in SDI and that they would not get access to all research results.
"The technology interests me," Mitterrand said, "but the strategic project is interesting only for the future when man becomes a master of space." He urged other European nations to join France in an independent advanced technology R&D program called "Eureka," which would explore civilian uses of space and other advanced technologies including high-power lasers, optics, microelectronics, and high-speed computers. Although these technologies would apply to a number of areas including strategic defense, the primary aim of Eureka would be to "explore space through advanced research in order to master new technologies," Mitterrand said. He noted that Eureka was important for Europe because of the need to "preserve their fund of intelligence, technology, and brains. All this has to be mobilized in a great project that is European." According to reports, Mitterrand told Reagan that he was concerned about actual deployment of SDI because it could alter the strategy of mutual assured destruction that had successfully prevented nuclear war. (France had its own small nuclear deterrent, but it was more vulnerable to ballistic missile defense than the large strategic forces of the U.S. and USSR.)
France had agreed to support the European Space Agency's proposal to define a pressurized module called Columbus for the U.S. space station, if all parties could work out adequate arrangements. (D/D, May 7/85, 35)
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