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Boeing/SeaLaunch Loses British Satellite
koziarz wrote to us about the failure of
Boeing's SeaLaunch system yesterday. The rocket was actually a Ukranian-Russian rocket, being launched on the SeaLaunch system. It should be noted as well, however, that SeaLaunch has succesfully completed two launches. But losing a USD100 million satellite system is gonna hurt. Boeing has issued a
press release concerning the loss.
And they'll doubtless be looking to learn some things from the failure too, which may improve future chances of success...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Actually, we know because "SeaLaunch" is the name of both the launch platform and the rocket system, a specially modified version of the Zenit.
(currently testing something about signatures here)
While commercial satellite launches are a good starting point I'd like to see some manned vehicles, and that needs near 100% success. :)
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A much better solution for telecoms is stratospheric airships. They can be put on station for months and be brought back down for maintenance and upgrades. You'll need more of them than you would of satellites, but they don't cost half a billion dollars each.
All these satellites are silly. Good for the launchers though.
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It seems to be be a third stage problem with the rocket. The third stage is by the Russians. The first and second stages are by the Ukraine. There have been problems with both systems before. A failure investigation is being done now
They have Delta rockets which work well. The Lauch platform could be modified to for the Deltas ... timeframe unknown. In his mind its a better launch system anyways.
But there is the possibility that this could shutdown SeaLaunch.
-- WonderSlug@towles.com "Avoid the Salt!!"
Well, SeaLaunch is the name of the company, not just the launch method. Any failure would reflect badly on them and make it more difficult for them to get customers. This will definitely do nothing to decrease the insurance rates for using SeaLaunch! The risk vs. low-cost factor is the real question here, not "bad press". Only a string of successful launches will keep SeaLaunch, er, afloat.
... literally deliver them to orbit ... or it has failed.
Yes, it's a neat way to do it, but as long as they rely on the Zenit (one of the most failure-prone rockets in the business -- Zenit-2 was 81%), they will be a risky way to launch.
Remember, the customer didn't select their own rocket for launch on this platform, they bought an entire launch package. SeaLaunch has to deliver the goods
I have high hopes, too, but their customers are fully aware of the risks in the launch business, and are going to evaluate those risks closely. I don't think we need to worry about misinterpreted news articles.
----
lake effect weblog
{Network engineer in Chicago--looking for work!}
I guess there's no such thing as a free launch.
11.0010010000111111011010101000100010000101101000
IRRC China loses 1 in 4, Russia about 1 in 15 and the US about 1 in 30 (I cant remember the ESA rate but its somewhere around NASAs) so a success rate of 1 in 3 is not that bad for a relativly untested system. Its quite a neat idea (espeacially for those countries that dont have land on/near the equator) so I hope they get it sorted.
bil
Where you stand depends on where you sit...
Of course, this all goes wrong with with the standard GPRS system that will be introduced this year. That is a lot faster than GSM (120kbps vs. 9.6kbps) and allows mobile video applications and web access and all the other gubbins that will be cool to have when it is affordable, and phones have larger screens, like the Ericcson phone shown off at the Symbian stand at CeBIT.
Of course, I might be wrong with a few things here, but at least Europe can keep to a single standard for communications, unlike the USA. Digital Television is better in Europe, mobile technology is better, we have more freedom, no guns, etc. Okay, so taxes are higher, and the cost of living is higher, but America seems to be tending towards a view of life describes in the L. Ron. Hubbard Mission Earth series! :-)
A 1 billion pound system, 12 satellites providing around 115kbps links to mobile systems anywhere on the globe at any time!
This system will provide 100% Earth coverage. I doubt if you can get 10% coverage using normal ground based solutions, at most 30%. For most people this is okay, but there are a lot of people out there who need this kind of thing. It just depends on how competant the company is, and whether they want to do another Iridium...
Iridium will be deorbited because it is the only way that they can take the satellites as a tax write off, something which I just find damn funny.
If Iridium showed us anything, it's that the pace at which telecommunications technology is advancing is leaps and bounds beyond the pace at which you can build and put up a satellite constellation. Consider what we thought 5 to 10 years ago about the state of communications today and the problem becomes pretty evident.
More importantly though, Iridium clearly demonstrated that the market for cell phones on the top of Mt. Everest is not enough to support the huge overhead of putting up and maintaining a satellite constellation. I'm fairly confident that if the market in backwater Tibet was strong enought to support $5k phone service, Bell-South would have already run cable. The reality is If you look at ICO's target market, "Maritime, Remote fixed, Handheld, Transportation, and Government", it's no different than Iridium's. What Iridium found was that the only sub-market of any of these willing to fork over the cash for there service was the handheld market for relief workers. If none of these markets materialized for Iridium, I'm not sure why they will for ICO.
It turns out that ICO was insured against launch failure. Furthermore, they took out the policy before the recent round of launch failures, so they paid far less for insurance for all twelve of their satellites than a company would currently have to pay to insure just one - basically, they got such a deal.
Furthermore, one reason why nobody's interested in the Iridium constellation is that it can't move data, and doesn't move voice all that well - sound quality is pretty bad. ICO's satellites, while not exactly state-of-the-art, can at least move both voice and data. And at ten satellites instead of 66, their system's a lot simpler.
Result: Last I heard, McCaw is still interested in pulling ICO out of the weeds, but is not interested in Iridium any longer.
You may wish to mention this to a certain Gary Powers.
Powers had engine problems. He dropped to a lower altitude to get enough air into his engines to restart them. (though I guess when your engines are out, dropping to a lower altitude is inevitable). Eventually he dropped into range of the routine fighter jets that the USSR had trailing him. I don't remember if he was shot down by a chase jet or a ground missile, but he wasn't flying at the intended altitude at the time.
Putting a highly delicate instrument on a giant firecracker is still a dangerous business folks - and its likely to stay that way for a very long time.
While Iridium does use Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellites about 800 kilometres up, ICO are using Medium Earth Orbit (MEO) satellites about 10,000 kilometres up. That's why they can get away with using less of them (12 as opposed to Iridium's 66) but each needs to be larger.
ICO are insured against the loss of up to two satellites and are using Proton, Delta III, and Atlas IIAS as well as Sea Launch. So they should still be able to get a functional network up in a reasonable time (no, I don't work for them).
All the information came off the websites: ICO, Iridium
Gamma Testing - Where testing is extended to the full user community (AKA Shipping the Program)
Though they don't know what went wrong, it seems pretty clear that it was the Russian/Ukrainian rocket, not the launch pad itself, that was problematic.
See the space.com article
"There is no night so forlorn, no mood so bleak, that it cannot be infused with pleasure by tender meat..." - R.W. Apple
It's the Zenit, which has (I believe) only a 60 or 70 percent success rate. It was a Zenit that failed for Globalstar that got us (Delta II) a lot of business. But it's a cheap rocket that has a medium-heavy launch capability, so customers are willing to risk it.
BTW, I'm not speaking for Boeing, I just work here, blah blah blah.
I'm sorry, but everytime I see a picture of the Launch platform I just want to stroke a white cat and say 'Good Evening Mr.Bond..'
It just looks like a 60's Bond evil genius's secret base..
EZ
-'Press Ctrl-Alt-Del to log in..'
"Oops, I always forget the purpose of competition is to divide people into winners and losers." - Hobbes
Now call me a cynic but doesn't this tell you something about the immediate future of LEO communications? Craig McCaw efectivelly controls all the cards now that Iridium is gone He was there from the beginning in Teledesic and has stepped into ICO effectively making the market a monopoly. In my experience monopolies do nothing to drive prices down so ICO and Teledesic are going to be far from affordable for a good long while - and what if both fail to meet expectations?
I just don't want to see 100 odd LEO birds up in the sky with no one paying for them to be brought to earth safely and their orbits decaying and either disrupting other services or burning up in the outer atmosphere. I saw a quote saying that these satellites are the size of a Volkswagen Beetle so that's quite a lot to burn up safely.
Don't get me wrong, I'm all for wireless fast Internet access but I feel strongly that earth based UMTS or 3rd Generation GSM is going to be the way to go - it offers speeds around 3 times that of ISDN while moving and upto 2Mbps while stationary and doesn't need handsets that take us back to the old Motorola brick phones.
Matt Thompson - Actuality - Insert product here.
Where are you getting these figures from? The launch costs that you are quoting are almost an order of magnitude too large!
Modern launch vehicles range from the Orbital Sciences Pegasus XL, which will put 300 lbs into LEO for $15 million, to the Russian Proton, which, IIRC, will do like 30 tons to LEO for $75 million. Even the Shuttle, which is the most expensive way to fly these days, is only $100 million per launch.
Each airship is a few million dollars.
Don't forget development costs. We have nothing like this now --- you'll have to shell out big bucks for R&D.
Each airship itself is an unmanned drone which flies at 20Km, there isn't a surface to air missile in existence which can fly that high.
You may wish to mention this to a certain Gary Powers.
What do you do when some space garbage hits a satellite at 50km/hr?
Nothing. You design it to take low-speed impacts -- you build robustly, and include sufficient redundancy to ensure you can take a failure. I haven't heard of any LEO satellites which got taken out by impact with debris. Sure, the LEO environment is quite dirty, but most of it consists of very small particles (paint flakes, etc) which probably won't do too much damage to a suitably redunant satellite. And anything larger is tracked by NORAD anyways, so you can figure out if you're going to hit, and maneouver around it if necessary.
As to the technology to keep it up there.
And how are you going to keep it in place? Don't forget that stratospheric winds can get quite fast.
Engines? What about powering them? Maybe a tether? The FAA will love you, as will the pilots who have to avoid them.
The blimps are a nifty idea, but not really practical. Satellites are proven technology, and work.
Now, as for the feasibility of the LEO comsats, that's an entirely different issue.
The article says nothing as to the cause of failure for this launch. I don't think everyone should be jumping to conclusions about the SeaLaunch's effectiveness. But.. of course they are : "The international Sea Launch program suffered a major setback Sunday"
I'm by no means a rocket expert, but just from a troubleshooting point of view, I would think that if the rocket got off the ground/SeaLaunch and flew for a little while before having problems, it would seem to point to the Rocket as a more likely point of failure than the Launch Pad. The SeaLaunch seems to be some pretty sweet tech, from the safety factor of launching things in the middle of the ocean to the ability of it to carry larger loads due the physical advantages of being at the equator. I hope it doesn't get abandoned/given a bad name because of bad press.
//Phizzy
"Most European technology just isn't worth our stealing," -- Former CIA chief James Woolsey, referring to Echelon