PARIS - Major commercial satellite fleet
operators said the June 22 Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing by Sea Launch Co. LLC
is bad news for the health of the industry despite repeated claims by some
launch service providers that the
global market is oversupplied with rockets.
Industry officials said that while
the oversupply situation often detailed by Arianespace Chief Executive
Jean-Yves Le Gall and International Launch Services (ILS) President Frank
McKenna is technically true, it is often at variance with the market’s day-to-day
reality.
Adding up the raw numbers for
launchers based in the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan, China and India does
suggest that too many launch vehicles are chasing too few commercial customers
— one reason why some commercial
rocket operators have never generated much profit.
But the two principal U.S. rockets, Atlas
and Delta, have in effect removed themselves from the market to focus on more profitable U.S. government business.
International
rockets
China’s
Long March vehicle, which has demonstrated its technical reliability in the
past decade, continues to be subject to a de facto ban from the commercial
market because of a U.S. policy prohibiting U.S.-built satellites and satellite
components from being shipped to China.
Japan’s H-2A rocket cannot
lift the heavier commercial telecommunications satellites and in any event is restricted
to limited launch periods each year.
India’s rockets have won some
commercial business, but it will not be until the upgraded Geostationary
Satellite Launch Vehicle has been flying regularly before it
can attract the bulk of the commercial market,
which is to launch satellites weighing more than 4,000 kilograms each into
geostationary transfer orbit. Similarly, Space Exploration Technologies of
Hawthorne, Calif., is positioning its future
Falcon 9 vehicle for the commercial market, but the market is still
awaiting the rocket’s first flight.
The result has been that, for many
commercial satellite competitions, it is only Reston, Va.-based ILS, the
Arianespace consortium of Evry, France, and Long Beach, Calif.-based Sea Launch
that are able to field a serious bid.
Launch
service concerns
All the
major satellite fleet operators in recent months have voiced concerns about
being able to secure launch services on a timely basis. They all remember the
weeks following Sea Launch’s January 2007 on-pad rocket failure, which
sent commercial satellite operators the world over scrambling to secure launch
slots in what one launch services provider referred to as
“a panic.”
Romain
Bausch, chairman of SES of Luxembourg, the world’s largest commercial
satellite operator in terms of annual revenue, has said launch-service
availability remains the single biggest near-term threat to the stability of
the satellite telecommunications industry.
David
McGlade, chief executive of Intelsat of Bermuda and Washington, the
second-largest commercial operator, has made similar comments and recently was
obliged to pay Sea Launch’s Russian partners additional cash to assure that
previously contracted launches would actually occur. McGlade has defended the
move, which has trimmed Intelsat’s earnings this year, as being necessary
to maintain a robust launch services sector.
Giuliano Berretta, chief executive
of Eutelsat of Paris, has gone out of his way to stimulate the market entry of
new launch services suppliers. Eutelsat was the
first operator to use the Lockheed Martin Atlas 5 and Boeing Delta 4 rockets,
placing commercial telecommunications satellites on both vehicles’
inaugural flights in 2002.
More
recently, Eutelsat has booked a 2010 launch with China’s Long March, saying
the Chinese have made the kind of schedule guarantees that other launch
providers cannot make.
Sea
Launch comeback possible
Asked to comment specifically on the
Sea Launch bankruptcy filing, satellite operators all said they assume Sea
Launch will find a way to emerge from the process and continue operations.
“Having a robust pool of
launch service providers is essential to the satellite industry,”
Intelsat spokeswoman Dianne J. VanBeber said. “The launch sector should
have broader participation — from the U.S., Japan and India to name a
few. We have demonstrated our commitment to keeping the launch industry
healthy, and to promoting a global pool of providers.”
Christopher
McLaughlin, spokesman for London-based satellite operator Inmarsat, said the
company relied on Sea Launch in late 2005 to launch the second Inmarsat 4
satellite after Inmarsat could not find suitable launch dates from ILS and
Arianespace.
“We
were very happy to have them there and available for us,” McLaughlin
said.
Eutelsat
spokeswoman Vanessa O’Connor said Eutelsat seeks to maintain the widest
possible supplier base among launch service providers. “That
has always been our policy,” she said.
SES
spokesman Yves Feltes said SES has no Sea Launch missions on order but that
“it is in our interest to have as many launch options available as
possible. So the [bankruptcy] of Sea Launch is certainly not good news. At
least the French now seem to be determined to keep Ariane 5 and 6 available for
commercial launches.”
Feltes was
referring to French President Nicolas Sarkozy’s June 20 statement during
the Paris Air Show that urged European governments
to begin, in 2011, design of a rocket to succeed Ariane 5.
But a
recent French government report for French Prime Minister Francois Fillon
concluded that the successor to today’s Ariane 5 rocket should limit
itself to carrying one 6,000-kilogram satellite at a time into orbit.
After
Ariane 5, the report concludes, Arianespace should seek to perform only the
minimum number of commercial launches needed to sustain the rocket’s
reliability for the European governments who will pay for its development.
Seeking commercial market share above that, the report concludes, is not worth
the investment.
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