COLORADO SPRINGS -- The skies will become that much more crowded over the next 10 years with a total of 2,147 payloads -- half of them U.S.-built -- projected for launch around the world.
But the failure of Iridium’s 66-satellite constellation has put a crimp in the number of commercial communications satellites that are destined for orbit, according to a report released Monday by the Teal Group, an aerospace and defense consulting firm in Fairfax, Virginia.
"I think the best thing that can be said about the number 2,147 is that it is a reference point," said Marco Caceres, who compiled the report. He based it on numbers provided by aerospace companies around the world.
In fact, hundreds of those launches may not happen at all, he said, because companies simply won’t have the money.
Commercial communications satellite companies already have seen a drop in their number of launches.
About 65 percent of all payloads over the next 10 years are expected to be commercial satellites. That's down from the Teal Group's projection last year that put the number at 73 percent over a 10-year period.
Washington-based Iridium is a large part of the reason for the cutback.
It no longer will need to send up any replacement satellites now that it has pulled the plug on the 66 it has in orbit. Were it still in business, it almost certainly would have had to launch replacements as the constellation got older -- boosting the number of commercial payloads going into space.
"In the wake of the biggest marketing disaster since the Edsel and New Coke combined, I am surprised that you can have Iridium vaporize and not have it have an impact on the traffic model," said John Pike, space policy analyst at the Federation of American Scientists.
"A drop of 7 percent or 8 percent is a reflection of reality," said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at George Washington University.
Communications satellite companies have been in hard times since the industry suffered a meltdown last summer.
The first casualty was Iridium, which was the first to file for bankruptcy. Craig McCaw and his Eagle River investment group looked like they were going to bail out Iridium but decided instead to put their energy into ICO. That company later found itself short of cash and followed Iridium into bankruptcy court.
Industry experts looked to Loral-backed Globalstar to save the day. But Globalstar seems to have lost much of its luster in recent weeks.
The satellite telephone company has suffered from slower-than-expected sales of its service and the prospect of price competition. Since February, industry analysts have consistently downgraded the company's stock.
Meanwhile, satellite provider Teledesic of Bellevue, Washington is expected to launch a global broadband satellite service in 2004. The "internet in the sky" is backed by McCaw, Microsoft's Bill Gates, Motorola, Saudi Prince Alwaleed Bin Talal, the Abu Dhabi Investment and Boeing.
But industry analysts are not so confident that this 288-satellite venture is as strong as it seems.
"Teledesic is a moving target. When it started, it was 800 satellites," Logsdon said. "They don’t really have a defined constellation."
Caceres said he reduced the number of Teledesic satellites in this year's report to about 100.
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