The initiative leading to the foundation of the IAF occured on 22 June 1949, when at the summer meeting of the German Gesellschaft für Weltraumforschung (GfW) its Board of Directors adopted the following resolution:
“The development of the big rocket with liquid fuels has advanced so far that the question of the flight into space is to be arisen and affirmed with right.
The rocket is not only a weapon but also an instrument of peaceful research. Therefore the German Society for Space Research is considering it as one of its most important tasks to accent the peaceful possibilities of space travel and to promote the idea of space flight as a new means of research.
The push into the interplanetary space and the future research by space flight is an international task. The cooperation of scientists and engineers of all nations culminated with the successful present development.
The German Society for Space Research therefore recommends an international meeting of all societies for rocket development interplanetary connections and space research to foster friendly relations and a successful exchange of experiences, and to aspire to an international association for astronautics.”
This resolution was circulated to the known astronautical societies around the world.
The British Interplanetary Society (BIS), founded in 1933, which was the oldest and largest of the European groups, received this proposal favourably and agreed to organise the meeting in London in 1951, allowing adequate time for an exchange of ideas and views between the astronautical societies.
In September, Alexandre Ananoff, President of the Groupement Astronautique Français (GAF) offered to welcome the delegations to Paris. The advantages of such a meeting, over mere correspondence, was obvious and both BIS and GfW accepted Ananoff’s proposal.
This first meeting, which, on A. Anonoff’s initiative, was entitled Premier Congrès International d’Astronautique (First International Astronautical Congress) began on 30 September 1950 with a formal public gathering held in the great amphitheatre in the Sorbonne. In front of a large audience, representatives from each association briefly presented their activities. Unfortunately, logistic and administrative difficulties prevented several American associations and personalities such as Hermann Oberth or Guido von Pirquet from being represented.
On the following two days the delegates met in private sessions at the Aéro-Club de France, during which they exchanged information and ideas before unanimously voting a resolution expressing their intention to pursue these personal exchanges, within an “international organisation”. Because of the lack of time, discussions on the operating conditions of an “International Federation of Astronautical Societies” were postponed in order to be finalised during the following congress.
Even though the resolution was not perfectly explicit, the decision was taken in Paris to organise an annual congress during which scientific and technical papers would be presented. This was carried out in September 1951, during the second congress organised by the BIS that featured the first symposium devoted to “artificial satellites”. In one of the messages sent to the IAF on the occasion of its fiftieth anniversary Sir Arthur C. Clarke underlined the importance of these first texts in the development of future space activities.
