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bjbjD ---- Ed Hoffman: Lynn you led a U.S. delegation to the United Nations Committee
on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space which seems like, obviously it s a very global thing.
What were some of the lessons that you experienced that you picked up from that? Lynn Cline:
Uh, that was very, very different environment because all of the other projects that I ve
worked on over the years, we already had a project that we wanted to do together, a willingness
to work in some area together. We decided we were going to do the Galileo mission to
Jupiter or the Cassini mission to Saturn. When you get in the UN committee, first of
all it I don t know ninety member states or something like, most of them did not have
any space programs, but everyone has an equal voice. It s driven very much by the interests
of developing countries and by and large they are interested in space applications, space
for development of their countries so they re interested in communications, remote sensing,
those kinds of things. Very limited interest in space science and not much discussion about
human spaceflight. Just finding the common denominator among all of those parties was
a challenge. Then figuring out, out of all these different players, what was a reasonable
path forward? And one of the lessons I learned early was the United States is viewed sort
of as a maybe bad guy is the wrong word, but re the big powerful superpower space nation.
We have all of this capability and so why aren t we just freely giving it all away to
these developing countries and teaching them everything they need to know and just giving
them data. So being suddenly put in this position of what have you done for us lately, you re
not doing enough, why are you not helping us was a difficult position to be in. I also
learned that if a proposal because of that sort of view of the U.S. - if a proposal came
from the U.S., then it would quickly be dismissed. So I got quite good at behind the scenes negations,
so what I would do is work with another country willing to make the proposal was that we wanted
and then I d go around and get as many cosponsors. The one I did best on was a work plan going
forward to mitigate orbital debris. We got Germany to propose the plan and I even got
China, Brazil, and Japan to co-sponsor the plan. So it was all U.S. proposal, but we
developed a partnership with Germany, but because it came from somebody other than the
U.S. we were able to get it accepted and go forward. So learning to maneuver behind the
scenes iinstead of being out in front was a whole different approach to cooperation.
Ed Hoffman: Building the alliances and the coalitions becomes even more important. ----
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