POLITICS

Mr Heseltine must retaliate by putting a Frenchman on the moon

BORIS JOHNSON

Before Mr Portillo's pungent demand that Mr Heseltine abandon the DTI's fund- ing for space research, among other things, Britain had already been whittling away its annual subventions to the European Space Agency from £100 million to f77 million. While France and Germany pump billions of ecus into the upper air, Britain's effort accounts for a mere 7.5 per cent of the ESA budget, and has been sped on its downward path, Mr Portillo will be pleased to note, by the collapse of the pound on Black Wednesday. This year, the DTI has even opted out of Festip (Future European Space Transportation Investigations Pro- gramme), a new breed of smaller, sleeker interplanetary vehicle.

Now, though, a big man's honour is at stake; and more than honour, pride. It is not just the arrogant tone of Mr Portillo's letter, with not a trace of deference towards the great, lion-maned President and his vast experience of public office. You just cannot say to a man like Heseltine, talking of one of his department's few remaining spending commitments, 'I do not see why you do not move straight to abolition,' when the thought had not even occurred to him.

In attacking the European Space Agency, moreover, Mr Portillo has jabbed the cen- tral ganglion of Mr Heseltine's political being. This is a European Consortium (cf. Westland Helicopters, 1986), safeguarding European technology, providing European jobs, in which Britain's hesitant participa- tion is already viewed on the continent as a sign of the country's generally dog-in-the- mangerish approach.

Portillo's rash, intemperate letter is likely to mean that Mr Heseltine will have no choice, if he is to retain credibility and the esteem of Cabinet colleagues, but to react in the opposite direction.

As Mr Heseltine will know, if there is one goal every French minister wants, more than preserving the role of French as the chief official language of the EC and oblit- erating franglais, more than an indepen- dent force de frappe, more than safeguard- ing French films from the corruption of Hollywood, it is to put a man on the moon: a Frenchman, in fact, and one propelled thither by beautiful French machines.

Now one must imagine that 'the Presi- dent', tight-lipped with fury, is tempted to rebuke the pompadoured whippersnapper of the Right in the most crushing way; using British money to help gratify the French extra-terrestrial dream. In October 1995, ESA will test launch the first Ariane V, 31 metres tall, ten times bigger than any rocket built by Europe so far.

In 1987, Kenneth Clarke laughingly declined to join in. What better put-down for Mr Portillo than to revoke that deci- sion, and sign Britain up for the $6.6 billion Euro-rocket, which, if previous Ariane launches are anything to go by, will usher in a new cycle of detonations in the Caribbean skies, terrifying the tribes of Guyana and shrapnelling the leper colonies of Devil's Island?

For now, the DTI maintains a semblance of cynicism about the returns from space. `We're not in the prestige projects busi- ness,' says Victoria Street. Mr Heseltine's department points out that the present lim- ited investment in ESA observation satel- lites brings work for firms such as BAe Space Systems and Matra Marconi. 'We've got contracts, jobs and technology,' says the department. 'What more could you want?'

But if the President truly wishes to rub Mr Portillo's nose in it, he has only to sign a few more cheques, and soon British equipment will join Ariane V. One day, who knows, GEC and BAe will rival the French in supplying the cargo cults of Pacific Islanders with twisted, shiny objects of veneration.

I'm all for new blood myself.' Mr Heseltine might even accede to a joint attempt to revive Hermes, a sort of astronautical Concorde, aborted in 1992. All that remains of poor Hermes is a mock- up in the European Space Agency's head- quarters in Noordwijk, Holland: a desolate place, lashed with the spume of the North Sea, where disconsolate Dutch astronauts sit in the canteen, puffing their pipes, and awaiting the call from the heavens.

This was not intended to be a little-earth- er rant. Space exploration has its points, no doubt. After billions were spent on the ESA satellite Giotto, the probe exceeded the wildest dreams of scientists. It discov- ered, after all these years, that Halley's comet was an encrusted black rock emitting radiant gases.

I fully accept the argument that without space exploration there would be no teflon, no velcro, no potty putty. If it is necessary to spend hundreds of billions on rockets to make sure eggs do not stick to frying pans, then perhaps that is cheap at the price.

Mr Heseltine could go further. My col- league Adrian Berry quotes an idea to use special thrusters to dislodge Enceladus, a moon of Saturn, from its orbit, until it col- lides with Mars, so — by some process, beyond my understanding, involving 30 mil- lion cubic miles of water — turning the Red Planet into a kind of cultivable par- adise. Now that would really stick it to Mr Portillo. If that is not interventionism, I do not know what is.

All Mr Portillo will be able to offer in return is babble about fundamental expen- diture reviews, the concept of abuse of tax- payers' money, the notion that our children and grandchildren must pay for the budget deficits of their parents. No, in the 25th anniversary of the moonshot that put Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on the moon, the dream will not die. The romance is too strong.

The Heseltine-Portillo feud, in fact, is but a detail in the endless race for the stars; exactly like the terrible rivalry, which even today Nasa officials are ashamed to men- tion, between Armstrong and Aldrin: the one pair battling over who should set foot on the cold, sterile soil of the moon, the other competing as to who shall eject the Prime Minister from Downing Street. It is a tragic fact of human life that when a great prize is at stake, only one man can take it. Who is Neil, then, and who is Buzz?