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.

Comments

Re:How do we know this is SeaLaunch's fault?

[RocketRay]

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.

Moonraker..

[EasyTarget]

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..'

Are low orbit comms doomed to failiure?

[matthew.thompson]

Iridium is heading for liquidation after Teledesic's McCaw pulled out of the funding and Nippon Iridium ceased their funding and now ICO Global have suffered a launch failiure on a $100million pound satellite.

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.

Re:A few million dollars vs a few billion dollars?

[stras]

The problem with the satellites is the launch costs. The satellite itself is $100 million, the launch is another $300 million.

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.

How do we know this is SeaLaunch's fault?

[Phizzy]

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