Europe
The European Space Agency (ESA) is the common space agency for many European nations. It is independent of the European Union, though the 2007 European Space Policy provides a framework for coordination between the two organizations and member states, including issues such as security and defence, access to space, space science, and space exploration.
The ESA was founded to serve as a counterweight to the dominant United States and Soviet space programs, and further the economic and military independence of Europe. This has included the development of the Ariane rockets, which by 1985 had captured over 40 percent of commercial launch market in the free world. The ESA budget is split between mandatory and voluntary programs, the latter of which allow individual member nations to pursue their own national space goals within the organization.
The ESA Director General’s Proposal for the European Space Policy states, "Space systems are strategic assets demonstrating independence and the readiness to assume global responsibilities. Initially developed as defence or scientific projects, they now also provide commercial infrastructures on which important sectors of the economy depend and which are relevant in the daily life of citizens.... Europe needs an effective space policy to enable it to exert global leadership in selected policy areas in accordance with European interests and values."
Read more about this topic: Space Policy, Space Policy By Country
Famous quotes containing the word europe:
“For it does not follow because many books are written by persons born in America that there exists an American literature. Books which imitate or represent the thoughts and life of Europe do not constitute an American literature. Before such can exist, an original idea must animate this nation and fresh currents of life must call into life fresh thoughts along its shores.”
—Margaret Fuller (1810–1850)
“I’ve come to think of Europe as a hardcover book, America as the paperback version.”
—Don Delillo (b. 1926)
“In everyone’s youthful dreams, philosophy is still vaguely but inseparably, and with singular truth, associated with the East, nor do after years discover its local habitation in the Western world. In comparison with the philosophers of the East, we may say that modern Europe has yet given birth to none.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)