Політика адміністрації Р. Рейгана в галузі дослідження і використання космічного простору (1981-1989 рр.)

The dissertation is devoted to the analysis of the historical agenda, ideological basis and substance of the main initiatives of the Reagan administration's space policy. Influence of this policy on the current American role and place in the international space community is also analyzed. It is established that historical mission of the Reagan administration in the area of space activities was to lead the United States space program out of the prolonged period of political uncertainty which began after the end of the “Moon race” of the 1960s and lasted for the decade of the 1970s. The main points of space policy of the Reagan administration were as follows: set new goals of the American manned spaceflight program, streamline the methods of interaction between public and private sectors in space applications, choose optimal response to the aggressive foreign competition. In none of these areas and dimensions of space activities Reagan's historical mission was fulfilled to the full extent. Formulation of the Reagan administration's space policy in the early 1980s took place in the context of triumph of the Right Republicanism which postulated historical exceptionality of the American nation, justified hard-line politics in the international relations, demanded to cut expenditures of the “Big Government” and free entrepreneurial initiative. Significant contradictions between this ideological basis and reality of the space program as well as contradictions between symbolic, pragmatic and power components of the ideological basis itself were among the major causes of the difficulties the United States space program experienced during the 1980s. In the area of the manned spaceflight these contradictions brought about instability of political and financial support of human presence in space. In the area of space applications the Reagan administration's attempts to shift radically responsibilities for operation and update of such complex applied space systems as Landsat remote sensing system and expendable launch vehicles from public to private sector without substantial government support of private operators and proper correlation of space privatization and other space policy priorities were equally destabilizing. In the field of international relations in space the results of the Reagan administration's contradictory policy were the loss by the United States of its monopoly positions in the wide areas of space applications to second-generation space powers (member countries of the European Space Agency, Japan) and widening of the gap between the United States and the Soviet Union in several realms of space activities. On the other hand for the first time in the history of the United States space program the Reagan administration proposed the forward-looking concept of human presence in space based on the idea of space expansion of the human race and made first steps toward reorienting the space program from securing American space leadership by means of outstripping other countries to realization of more stable model of space leadership - leadership through engagement. While the question of the long-range goals of the United States manned spaceflight program remains unsettled, Space Station project initiated by the Reagan administration has served for almost twenty years now as the foundation of long-term cooperation between the United States and world's leading space powers and organizations and as the American instrument of shaping the significant part of the agenda of the international space community.

Key words: space policy, manned spaceflight, expansion, engagement, privatization, international relations in space.

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