The Role of Diplomacy on the Future International Order for Space Research and Exploration
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Amid a booming space economy, changing science policy, and an increasing number of countries with launch capabilities, space diplomacy has emerged as a crucial topic in international relations. This thesis explores space diplomacy and international collaboration through the lens of extremely complex scientific missions and how they are realized in practice. Through a case study of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), this work analyzes distinct components that enabled cooperation between key stakeholders: the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the European Space Agency (ESA), the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), participating governments, private industry, the scientific community, and the public. This recently launched telescope (December 2021) allows for innovative approaches to understanding contemporary space policy: key insights were gained through biographical oral history interviews—conducted by the author for this work—with senior scientists who shaped the Webb Telescope and those involved in space policy, greatly expanding (limited) published records and available archival materials. Among the main questions addressed by this thesis: What does it take to develop and give coherence to multi-state Big Science programs in space? What was the impact of diplomacy and international partnerships on the planning, development, and current operation of JWST? The history of international cooperation in space science, the universalism of science, funding mechanisms, the role of the scientist, technological developments, and public opinion: all are analyzed here. Lastly, this thesis speculates about the future of space diplomacy and international collaboration given the current geopolitical landscape.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.018 | 0.023 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.010 | 0.037 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.025 | 0.020 |
| Open science | 0.001 | 0.010 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.007 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".