HELPING SCIENTIFIC RESEARCH OR BECOMING PART OF THE MARKET: HOW THE BOARD OF DIRECTORS OF THE FRENCH SPACE AGENCY NAVIGATED CONTRADICTORY SITUATIONS (1981-2001)

Abstract

From analysis of the minutes of the board of directors of the French Space Agency (CNES), this paper shows how the agency involved the members of the organisation into two different regimes of scientific and technical research: a regulatory regime and a utilitarian regime. While the former shaped sciences by and for government, the latter organized markets for scientific outputs. The positions of board members in relation to these regimes are examined to
understand how the activity of the agency was organised. On the one hand, the agency was concerned with the development of space markets that were being shaped by the creation ofcommercial subsidiaries and the profits drawn from launch activities and, on the other hand, it was structuring scientific programmes. Terry Shinn’s sociology of scientific regimes is used to analyse and explore the tensions and compromises that resulted from the position of an agency involved in these two very different regimes. The years from 1981 to 2001 represent a specific period in the history of CNES during which Europe structured its space sector and the geopolitical competition between the United States and the Soviet Union and later Russia gradually disappeared. The period was also marked by the ideological preeminence of free-market capitalism and the growth of international cooperation in satellites. Within these evolving dynamics, the discussions that were held and the compromises that emerged in the board highlight the contradictions of the two regimes of sciences that characterize the context of the CNES during that period.