ESA's first Director General at 100

Roy Gibson oversaw the first steps of the creation of our ‘European Space Agency’. This was a double task of dealing with its two predecessor organisations – the European Space Research Organisation (ESRO) and the European Launcher Development Organisation (ELDO) – and creating a new structure for ESA, which was unlike either.

At ESRO, Mr Gibson had already proved his ability at building the solid legal and administrative structures on which the scientific and technical successes of the organisations were founded, but it was at ESA that he was able to show the full range of his talents.

He devoted himself over five years to giving ESA a strong personality. According to his biographer André Lebeau, ‘those who lived through that era recognised, in the great European organisation that ESA was to become, the foundations that Mr Gibson created’.

Lebeau describes Mr Gibson as discreet with a ‘somewhat mysterious legend surrounding him at ESA’. He spoke very little of his past, but people knew he had served in the Far East as a young soldier and that he ‘spoke the languages of many peoples’.

A revealing profile by Angela Groome for Nature in 1975, stated that Mr Gibson ‘was no civil servant; he more resembles senior management in a multinational company. He is a glutton for work and long hours, and thrives on both’.

‘Pre-breakfast briefings and constant commuting by air are a regular pattern for his diary. He explains that the key to such a life is being able to drop off to sleep at any time – a talent he learned as a cipher officer in the army. Another asset is his proficiency in several languages’.

Born in Manchester, England, on 4 July 1924, Roy Gibson was educated at the Universities of Oxford and London (London School of Economics).

Early in World War II, he joined the British Army’s Home Guard, although under-age, and subsequently joined the regular army as a volunteer at age 18. After officer training and commissioning into the Royal Corps of Signals, he served in India and Ceylon from 1944 during the Burma campaign.

Mr Gibson served in the British Colonial Administrative Service in Malaya from 1948 to 1958. He returned to London to work at the UK Atomic Energy Authority until 1967. He became Deputy Director of the ESRO technical centre (ESTEC), until 1971 when he became Director of Administration for ESRO.

The evening after the ESRO council approved his nomination to work at ESTEC, there was a major fire at the site, destroying several temporary buildings. “I found that not a very encouraging sign for my arrival,” said Mr Gibson.

“It was in October 1966, I arrived to take over from an elderly and charming Dutchman who had very good relations with the Dutch authorities but who was not a gifted administrator.”

“It was chaos. There was no Director. There were no rules for buying things, for security of buildings, everything was in a raw state. No doubt I am exaggerating a little, everything was not bad, but it was a time when we had little to show the Member States.

“Slowly we were able to demonstrate that we had indeed introduced some important improvements. With George van Reeth and Winfried Thoma, for example, we had written the contracting rules for ESRO,” said Mr Gibson.

This procurement mechanism would later allow the implementation of ESA’s industrial policy, and George van Reeth would serve as ESA’s first Director of Administration under Mr Gibson.

From 1974 he was Acting Director General of ESRO, and oversaw the transition of the two previous organisations ESRO and ELDO to form ESA in 1975. ELDO was liquidated and the new ESA Convention was based on a draft revised ESRO Convention.

“This was a difficult task,” recalls André Lebeau. “ESA was built around a team of directors selected by Member States concerned about the balance of nationalities. Members of this team first had to get to know each other.”

“Plus it was a difficult task to establish the correct balance between the Council and the Director General (ESRO and ELDO were imperfect models). The natural tendency was to live under direct rule by committee, but that was to risk destruction. The Director General had to have sufficient power to create unity. This is where Roy was able to succeed admirably.”

Mr Gibson did not appear interested in personal publicity though he recognised the need for such an organisation as ESA to have a face. He was clear on the management style he intended to promote, envisaging ‘a sharpening and streamlining of management responsibility’.

This style also included, as Angela Groome writes, “Wide discussion of any problem among directors and all other staff involved, an entirely free debate where everyone chips in but once the executive decision is taken, he requires complete loyalty of excecution.”

He felt very strongly about the ‘team’ approach, but not in terms of vagueness, where the word ‘team’ is often used to shift responsibility on to someone else.

“Today we have no diplomatic passengers,” said Mr Gibson in 1975. “We simply cannot afford to be transformed into a woolly civil service type outfit where people are housed when they are not making a contribution. Most of our people are sold on space, and the way to keep things this way is above all to be extremely careful in recruiting.”

Mr Gibson was instrumental in persuading other countries to join together to form ESA and in pooling national space projects. “ESA’s objectives cannot be brought off without sacrifice,” said Mr Gibson in 1975. “And up till now, ‘sacrifice’ is something someone else makes.”

He prioritised the rationalisation of aerospace facilities in Europe and in particular on ‘improving the worldwide competitiveness of European industry’. On the 40th anniversary of the ESA Convention in 2014, Mr Gibson recalled that, “We were helping to construct Europe. ESA has built up European space companies, such as Arianespace. Companies, such as Thales or OHB, have national roots but have become European multinational companies.”

Mr Gibson was also responsible for the success of ESA’s entry into the realm of human spaceflight. In 1978, Spacelab development was having a difficult time. The price of a Shuttle flight was skyrocketing in comparison with the original estimates, and no solution seemed in sight for the procurement of a second Spacelab unit.

Mr Gibson was diplomatic yet firm in a letter to NASA about what was perceived by Europe as this unfavourable trend in Spacelab cooperation. Soon afterwards, in a direct meeting between Mr Gibson and NASA Administrator Robert Frosch, it was made clear by the latter that NASA's main concern ‘was concentrated on the fact that Mr Gibson had written rather than telephoned’.

However, Mr Gibson had needed to give a written form to his requests to NASA, to appease ESA Member States during a difficult period in which they had to decide whether to approve yet another increase in the cost of Spacelab. It was here again that Mr Gibson’s diplomacy skills paid off, when he successfully defended Spacelab and the space industry against the attacks of the then German Science Minister Volker Hauff.

But under his blunt, no-nonsense management style, hid a special, self-effacing sense of humour, which sometimes surfaced in official documents. On one occasion, while involved in the restructuring of ESA’s Headquarters building in Paris between 1975 and 1976, he commented in an internal memo, “I cannot come to terms with the façade and, despite some considerable intellectual effort, the resemblance to the public lavatories in Victoria Station still remains with me.”

Mr Gibson’s tenure was also notable for the launch of the first Ariane rocket from Europe’s Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana, and for his lead of the first ESA delegation to visit China in early spring of 1979.

After leaving ESA in 1980, Mr Gibson served as an aerospace consultant to ESA and the EU Commission and worked on the setting up of the European Environmental Agency. He was the first Director General of the British National Space Centre from 1985 to 1987.  From 1987 to 1992 he worked at Inmarsat and then Eumetsat.

Mr Gibson is an honorary fellow of the British Interplanetary Society and has received various awards and accolades from around the world, including the Grand Decoration of Honour in Silver with Star, for services to Austria in 1977, and the Allan D. Emil Memorial Award from the International Astronautical Federation in 1983.

The Roy Gibson Building at ESA’s ECSAT site in Harwell is named after him.

References

Roy Gibson
A History of ESA, 1958-87, Vol.2
André Lebeau, Mémoires/Recollections, IHFE/Édite, 2011
Nature Vol. 255 June 5, 1975
H. Hoffmann, Twenty Years of the ESA Convention, Proceedings of an International Symposium, 4-6 September 1995. Edited by T.-D. Guyenne and Bruce Battrick. ESA SP-387.