WASHINGTON -- The year 1999 was predicted to continue the explosive growth in commercial space transportation ignited by the emergence of wireless satellite networks and the growing demand for communication bandwidth.

But the only explosion during the year was in launchers of every stripe and nationality falling from the skies or staying rooted to the launch pad.

The worlds space launch providers conducted 74 commercial, military and scientific launches during 1999. There were seven failures. Those failures would include the major U.S. rocket families Delta and Titan.

This was the largest number of rocket failures in a single year in more than a decade.

The year in space transportation got underway with promise and on the wings of a proven launcher.

With the new year just three days old, a Boeing Delta 2 blasted off from Cape Canaveral carrying the NASA Mars Polar Lander to what became a mysterious rendezvous with the Red Planet.

NASA, the U.S. Air Force and industry heavily used the small Delta rocket for a wide variety of payloads and satellites.

An unbroken string of 15 more successful launches followed, including the U.S.' Delta and Atlas, along with Russia's Soyuz and Proton rockets. Boeings international Sea Launch project conducted its first launch, a test flight from a converted oceangoing barge parked in the mid-Pacific Ocean.

But in April, the first indications of major trouble ahead for the U.S. launch industry appeared.

On April 9, a Lockheed Martin Titan 4-B blasted off from Cape Canaveral carrying a military missile warning satellite. The launch was a crucial return-to-flight for the militarys biggest rocket, which had exploded in August 1998 on its last launch attempt.

At first, all seemed to go well with the rocket. But hours after liftoff, the Air Force reported that the satellite was in the wrong orbit. Something had gone wrong with the rockets final stage. The mission was a complete failure; the satellite a total loss.

Disaster struck again on April 27. This time a Lockheed-built Athena rocket sped aloft from the military spaceport at Vandenberg, California.

The payload was a high-resolution commercial reconnaissance satellite for industry. But minutes into the flight, the covering atop the satellite malfunctioned and failed to drop away. The added weight sent the rocket and satellite crashing back to Earth.

Three days later on April 30, a Lockheed Titan 4-A rocket took off from Cape Canaveral with a military communications satellite aboard. This time an upper stage of a different design than the one in the April 9 mishap malfunctioned, marooning the satellite in the wrong orbit.

Five days later, on May 4, a Boeing Delta 3 also launched from the Cape, carrying a commercial satellite.

Its upper-stage rocket engine failed catastrophically, making its payload a total loss. In the short span of a month, four major U.S. rockets, all built by the two largest U.S. rocket makers, had failed.

A Delta 3 and a Titan 4 had also failed in August 1998. All totaled, the failures had cost the industry in excess of $20 billion. With each of the companies launching their own investigations into the accidents, the White House ordered a top-level government review as well.

Headed by former Air Force Chief of Staff Larry Welch, the review board found a combination of unrelated technical gremlins and internal procedures at the root cause of the string of mishaps. An electrical problem with a nosecone separation system had doomed the Athena.

The nozzle of the malfunctioning Delta 3 rocket had a manufacturing flaw that would require a new welding and checkout procedure.

Since that part of the Delta was common to the Lockheed Atlas, that rocket, too was grounded for months during the review. The Titan 4s had been felled by unrelated rocket engine and motor problems, one of which was a design flaw that had gone undetected for 20 years.

But the review had also uncovered management problems with both companies that threatened the future of U.S. commercial rockets.

It made a series of 19 major recommendations, including more manpower and resources being devoted to the space launch operations of the two firms.

It said that Boeing had underestimated the technical challenge of its transition from the smaller Delta 2 to the new Delta 3 and future Delta 4 rockets.

And it said that Lockheed needed a greater transition plan from the phaseout of the Titan 4 to the new Atlas vehicles. It also found engineering and factory workmanship deficiencies.

The problems uncovered by the Air Force review mirrored similar findings of internal investigations of the two firms. And a separate company-wide Lockheed review of its space sectors also recommended extensive management restructuring of the companys space organizations.

By late 1999, the cause of the Delta 3 failure was sufficiently understood to allow the Atlas using the same upper-stage engines to return to flight, with a pair of back-to-back successes.

While the Delta 3 hadnt yet flown again, the smaller Delta 2 continued to fly and the Delta 3 was to return early in 2000. Both Boeing and Lockheed Martin pledged to swiftly begin to implement the changes needed to strengthen their launch businesses.

While the main U.S. providers were beset with failures, France-based Arianespace had other sorts of troubles during 1999.

The inability of satellite customers to have their payloads ready on time caused Arianespace to have a four-month hiatus in launches through the summer.

The late payload deliveries threatened the carriers entire 1999 launch plan. But when the satellites began arriving at the dockside near its South American spaceport, Arianespace embarked on an unprecedented recovery effort to fly off its backlog.

They conducted seven launches since the August hiatus, three launches alone between October and November, and Ariane 5s first commercial mission in early December. Another launch went off successfully on December 21 . They ended the year with a total of 10 Ariane flights, all but two being launched since August.

Twice during 1999, Arianespace moved customers from contract to launch in a record three months. One of those customers, GE Americom, had been planning to launch aboard a U.S. Lockheed Martin-International Launch Services Proton rocket.

But Boeing raided Arianespaces European customers as well, winning a six-Delta rocket order to orbit 40 Skybridge satellites in November. Skybridge is a majority-French owned satellite consortium. The win marked the first sales of Boeings Delta 4 to a European customer.

Thus, as 1999 drew to a close, the competition for launches was continuing unabated, in a process of advantage and renewal as old as the rocket itself.