With Eggers’ involvement, ERNO Raumfahrttechnik GmbH developed into a core centre of spaceflight in Germany. Work covered the Europa launcher (third stage) and later preparatory work for ARIANE. Cooperation partners were NASA, ESRO/ELDO and the DFVLR; guests in Bremen included Wernher von Braun and ELDO secretary-general General Aubinière.
The Spacelab contract of 1974
After the failure of Europa III the entire launcher sector in Bremen collapsed; ERNO shrank from 1,400 to 800 employees and fought for survival. In this situation the company staked everything on the European space laboratory Spacelab. Eggers – by then chairman of the ERNO supervisory board and technical director of VFW-Fokker – signed the offer personally and appointed Hans E. W. Hoffmann as project manager. Hoffmann later recalled it was the only time he experienced how „Professor Eggers mit der Faust auf den Tisch geschlagen und gesagt hat: Sie machen das!“ (“Professor Eggers banged his fist on the table and said: You will do it!”).
On 5 June 1974 the European space organisation ESRO selected VFW-Fokker/ERNO as prime contractor for the Spacelab programme – against the larger competitor MBB. The contract volume was 180 million units of account, equivalent to 579 million DM. The space laboratory, deployed under NASA leadership, flew aboard the Space Shuttle from 1983 and was Europe’s entry into human spaceflight – a milestone in whose achievement Eggers had a decisive share.
Spacelab consisted of two main components: the pressurised module in which the astronauts worked (built in a long and a short variant), and the uncrewed pallet for experiments exposed directly to space. Its development forced ERNO to engage deeply with human factors in spaceflight – from life-support systems and ergonomics to the effects of weightlessness on the human body.
The programme comprised 22 missions between 1983 and 1998; the first mission (STS-9/Spacelab 1) launched on 28 November 1983 with the German astronaut Ulf Merbold on board.
Significance
The Bremen line of spaceflight co-founded by Eggers continues to this day: ERNO became MBB/ERNO, then Daimler-Benz Aerospace, and finally the Bremen site of Airbus Defence and Space, where among other things the Ariane upper stages and the European Columbus module of the ISS were built – in direct succession to Spacelab.
Link to Human Health and Performance
The engineering of Spacelab created the infrastructural basis for European human spaceflight. Today’s work in Human Health and Performance builds directly on it: where ERNO developed the hardware and systems for humans in space, modern organisations such as DocSWISS and Eudippa focus on the health, performance and risk assessment of astronauts.
The connection is also a family one: Eggers’ granddaughter Kristina Anne Sabine Stange works today in precisely this field – Human Health and Performance Risk Qualification – contributing her expertise to the ethics of Eudippa, which cooperates with DocSWISS in space and aviation. → Family & private life
Next station: VFW-Fokker and retirement (1970–1998)