ESA Oral History Project
Memories and experiences of individuals playing a central role in European space cooperation
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23 OCT. 2009
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Preserving the memories of the people who played a key role in the development of the European space programme is the objective of the ESA Oral History Project.
A new website dedicated to the ESA Oral History Project was launched on 16 October, at the European University Institute in Florence, where the EU and ESA archives are located. A collection of 28 oral history interview transcripts that have been put online and can be read by scholars and the interested public alike.
Access can be made to the testimonies of first-hand witnesses in space exploration at national and European level. These include transcripts of interviews with personalities such as Roy Gibson, Hubert Curien, Michel Bignier and Harry Atkinson for example, as they retrace the first steps in European cooperation, under the auspices of ELDO and ESRO and later ESA.
These expert engineers, industrialists and politicians recount their experiences in Germany, Belgium, Denmark, France, Great Britain, Sweden and Switzerland, with accounts of the launch of the first Ariane rockets, the post-Apollo negotiations, the first European manned space missions and the origins of ESA's space science programme.
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