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Hey everyone! This is something that's been rolling around in my head for a while now and I can't find enough info on my own so I'm coming to you...

Would it be conceivable during the Carter administration of the late 1970's that in order to earn some income for NASA (and perhaps for a stagflated U.S. as a whole,) for the U.S. government to arrange some sort of sale of all or most of our surplus, damaged, experimental, obsolete, incomplete, or otherwise 'useless' space equipment to other nations' space agencies?

Rockets, landers, satellites, test equipment, plans for unused programs, etc.

The idea could be that the surplus could be sold to other agencies or to a proposed international cooperative space agency for a bargain, with perhaps a deal to renegotiate a potential buy back after a set number of years for shared research and display in museums.

This would he perfectly in line with the Carter years' characteristic lack of interest in space; and it may also have the effect of providing quick income for NASA for the upcoming STS years, with any leftover funds going to help with the failing American economy.

If an international cooperative space agency is formed to actually buy and use this surplus material it could be easily affordable by them, as well as having the added benefit of being actually used in the late seventies and into the eighties and beyond.

It seems like too good of an idea to not have actually ever been considered. Does anyone know if it was?

And if not, why on earth not? Is this at all plausible?

As a bonus question:

Was there ever a proposal for an international cooperative space agency in those years like the one I've suggested here? Maybe a cooperation between the British and European Space Agencies, China, Saudi Arabia, Japan, etc?

Thanks in advance for your input.

P.s.,

A list of 'surplus' NASA 'junk' courtesy of @Archibald :

https://www.ibiblio.org/apollo/hrst/archive/1690.pdf
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