From the start, space exploration was a field of rivalry between the superpowers as they built alliances to involve and reward their friends, consolidate their influence and frustrate their enemies. Space diplomacy became a diplomatic instrument, ever more sophisticated as new countries and regions developed their own rockets, satellites and industries. 

This book examines the role, contours, shifting nature and purposes of space alliances from the early days to now; the formation of new alliances and the dissolution of old ones; the scientific and other benefits arising; and, alongside the competition, understated strands of cooperation.  It tells the story of ‘cross alliances’ – some improbable – where quite opposite countries cooperated across political divides and ideology. It illustrates how on the sidelines, allies and opponents fought over satellite broadcasting rights and the location of ground stations. It shows how they used ‘soft power’ to impress the uncommitted, like astronaut tours, Moon rock displays and exhibitions.

The book describes the alliances built up by the United States, the first country to do so, especially with Europe; the USSR (Interkosmos); China, especially with the global south; India, Japan and other, less well-known space powers. It examines the projects that brought them together, like the International Space Station. It records how in the new race to the Moon in the tense 2020s, the world divided sharply between the United States and its friends on one side, with China, Russia and theirs on the other. Several countries formed  ‘space forces’.

This book identifies the political and scientific personalities that made cooperation and alliances work, the institutions that they established, the ideas that drove them, the skills and techniques that they used. There were people who stopped cooperation too, ‘what if?’ moments, alliances that never happened and others that ended in tears.

Brian Harvey has been a writer and broadcaster on spaceflight since the early 1970s. His articles have appeared in Spaceflight, Space Chronicle, Quest, Orbit, Astronomy & Space, Go Taikonauts! and ROOM.  He has contributed to radio programs on BBC (Radio 4, Radio 5, World Service, Northern Ireland), Voice of America, Radio Free Europe, Future Tense (Australia) and to television and film programs for the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, Discovery Channel, Danish TV and China CCTV (Dialogue - ideas matter). His first book was a history of the Soviet space program (Ellis Horwood, 1988), with three subsequent editions, followed by histories of Soviet lunar exploration, Soviet planetary exploration, Russian space science, the American Explorer program as well as histories of the European, Japanese and Indian space programs (all published by Praxis, later Praxis/Springer).  He has written four histories of China’s space program, the most recent also published in Chinese.  He contributed chapters to Space Sleuths (Praxis, 2012) and a book on Yuri Galperin, published by the Academy of Sciences in Moscow (2012).