Cold War Foes Find Harmony in Satellite Launch Partnership
In the Port of Long Beach, in the belly of a gleaming 667-foot vessel bristling with radar dishes and transmission towers, American and Russian scientists are building a powerful Ukrainian rocket.
Sometime in the next month or so, the rocket and its payload, a communications satellite, will be hoisted onto a massive floating launch platform. Then, with seasoned Norwegian sea captains at the helm, the ship and the platform will each cruise across the Pacific Ocean for a launch from the equator about 1,400 miles southeast of Hawaii.
If all goes as planned, the scientists who honed their skills amid the imperial anxieties of the Cold War will mark their seventh such feat with vodka toasts and a Mexican version of borscht whipped up by the ship’s Norwegian chef. The world’s only floating commercial satellite launching operation has cobbled out an unusual working relationship among former international adversaries in a high-security environment softened by ethnic foods and music.
Since its inaugural blastoff in 1999, the Long Beach-based private venture known as Sea Launch has placed six heavy communications satellites into orbit on behalf of customers who each paid about $75 million.
Sea Launch was not always an easy model of mutual support. Its early operations were punctuated by culture clashes and by a federal fine of $10 million resulting from violations of American rules safeguarding technological information.
During a test of a countdown protocol devised by the Americans, for example, the Russians fell into a mysterious funk. Sea Launch’s mission control director Steve Thelin eventually asked, “What’s wrong?”
The Russians, recalled Thelin, “wanted to know who ‘Roger’ was. When we explained that it was an American expression meaning ‘got it,’ we all had a good laugh.”
Some Americans grew weary of the Russians’ copious vodka toasts, and their superstitions against launching on a Monday, or on Friday the 13th, or if anyone on board the command ship was clad in black, or even if crewmen had failed to catch a “good luck shark” on the high seas.
Nevertheless, with only one failed launch to apologize for, Sea Launch has evolved into a major player in one of the world’s most brutally competitive markets.
“It’s totally unique and quite an endeavor,” said Paul H. Nisbet, aerospace analyst for JAS Research Inc. in Newport, R.I. “But by blazing a trail, they have had to experience quite a few trials and errors in getting started.”
At its home port in Long Beach, not far from the Queen Mary, about 250 Russians and Ukrainians, 80 Norwegians and Filipinos, and 150 Americans are assigned to tasks ranging from rocket preparation to maintaining the company’s gigantic Liberian-registered vessels: Sea Launch Commander and Odyssey launch platform.
Russians at first were alarmed by the youth--and what they perceived as the arrogance--of many of the American scientists, as well as how often they switched employers.
Sea Launch’s Valeri Aliev, who previously worked on the Soviet version of the space shuttle and the Mir space station, was particularly irritated by the Americans’ habit of dispatching seeming “fresh-faced university grads who lacked the broader picture” to the company’s initial strategy sessions.
Russians always assigned their most senior and capable experts to such meetings.
Most of the staff’s disputes were resolved over time through familiarity and compromises. American contingents at staff meetings routinely include seasoned rocket scientists and engineers these days. And the company never launches on a Monday or under a full moon.
Tod Milton, who is in charge of security and speaks fluent Russian, said: “Having worked against the Russians for so long, I’m routinely fascinated by how well we all get along.
“I speak more Russian these days than I did in downtown Moscow,” joshed Milton, who spent 27 years in the U.S. Army as a specialist in Russian affairs. “But also I’ve learned how to nurse one shot of vodka all night long.”
The Sea Launch partnership includes Boeing Commercial Space Co., which is in charge of capsules holding payloads; the Anglo-Norwegian Kvaerner Group, Norway, which built the command ship and turned an oil rig into a launch platform; RSC Energia, Russia, which handles the rocket’s third stage, and SDO Yuzhnoye/PO Yuzmash, Ukraine, which builds the booster rocket.
At least $500 million was initially invested, experts say. But Sea Launch officials declined to provide details about the financial status--or their investments--in the privately held company. Industry analyst Nisbet speculated, however, that “although the company is doing fine, the investment put into it will take years to recoup.”
Sea Launch’s workhorse is the 200-foot Zenit rocket, developed two decades ago by the Soviet Union in response to President Reagan’s Stars Wars program. The Zenits’ original mission was to launch Soviet satellites as quickly as the United States could shoot them down.
Now, the sleek war machines are shipped in pieces from Ukraine and assembled in Long Beach. Then they are used to lift commercial satellites weighing as much as 12,000 pounds into geostationary orbits for customers that include Boeing Satellite Systems and Space Systems/Loral of Palo Alto.
“The noble nature of former Cold War adversaries working together for peaceful purposes, I find very attractive as do our partners,” said Amy Buhrig, vice president of marketing and sales. “But we are in a cold and vicious marketplace.
“Our customers, who are making costly, risky decisions, don’t care who made the rockets,” she said. “All they want to know is whether or not we can get their spacecraft into orbit on the day they want to get it there.”
Competing With French Company
Sea Launch executives regard their main competitor to be Arianespace, the French-led company that sells cargo space aboard Ariane rockets, and has snared 58% of all competitive contracts for launching telecommunications and other nonmilitary satellites.
From his ninth-floor office overlooking supertankers and tugboats in the Port of Long Beach, Sea Launch President Will Trafton, who was involved in 13 Space Shuttle launches, said the project has “brought together the best and brightest minds in the space industry in Russia, Ukraine and America, combined them with terrific seafaring men and women from Norway and ended up with an ideal launch system.”
“And just think of this,” he said, “our hardware is built in Russia, the Ukraine and Seattle, assembled in Long Beach and launched at the equator from a converted oil rig that had burned in the North Sea.”
The concept was born in the thaw of the Cold War when U.S. State Department officials encouraged Boeing to develop projects that could involve Russian and Ukrainian aerospace scientists who might otherwise seek employment in unfriendly nations.
In the meantime, the U.S. Navy had pulled out of the Port of Long Beach, providing an ideal home base for Sea Launch. Anxious to replace some of the jobs lost when the Navy left town, Long Beach officials welcomed Sea Launch, after verifying the company’s credentials.
“When Sea Launch first approached us, we thought, ‘You want to do what? Where?’ ” recalled Long Beach Assistant City Manager Gerry Miller. “My boss even asked me, ‘Are you sure this is the Boeing company that wants to do this?’
“Of course, we’re delighted to have a Buck Rogers-type outfit here,” he said. “But they are also one of the best examples in the United States of turning swords into plowshares.”
Still, to ensure that federally protected secrets are protected, maintenance and launch technologies are supposed to be closely guarded.
Ukrainians, for example, have guards on duty in the command ship’s hull to protect their rocket parts from scrutiny by others.
In 1998, Boeing Co. agreed to pay a $10-million civil fine over federal government accusations that it passed unauthorized information to its Russian and Ukrainian partners in the Sea Launch program. Because national security was not breached, no charges were filed and the federal inquiry was concluded, officials said.
Given the sensitivity of their work, the Sea Launch staff is routinely supported by a cadre of translators. In addition, all of the company’s written materials--from safety posters to “no smoking” signs--are in English and Russian.
Inside the command ship, the mission control room is divided into two sections, each mirroring different working attitudes.
On one side, the Russians work at computer terminals on horseshoe-shaped tables that, by design, encourage conversation. On the other side, Americans, who tend to rely more on e-mail communications, man desks and computer monitors arranged side-by-side in long rows.
Essentially, the Americans’ side is a model of the Kennedy Space Center’s control room. The Russians work in a mini-replica of their own Baikonur cosmodrome in Kazakhstan. And no one ventures to the other’s side without being accompanied by government chaperons from the respective countries.
The burden of smoothing out employee relations often falls on ship translators such as Katya Peppler, whose father was a Russian rocket scientist.
“The challenge is learning where to draw the line in disputes,” she said in a telephone interview, “and deciding whether they involve some national or ethnic peculiarity, or a feature of an individual’s personality.”
Given the propensity for confusion during their three-week ocean missions, Sea Launch officials close the command ship’s bar three days before a launch.
Minimizing Wind and Wave Effects
The Sea Launch command ship and the Odyssey launch platform travel separately to the launch site, a location known as “the doldrums” because it is all but devoid of serious weather disturbances. The site also uses the spin of the Earth at the equator for a more direct, cost-effective route to geostationary orbit.
The Odyssey is ballasted to minimize wind and wave effects. A few days before launch, the 68 people aboard the Odyssey move to the Commander, which operates the launch platform by remote control from about three miles.
Customers watch the process unfold from the ship’s so-called “fishbowl,” a room enclosed in plexiglass. Even ship cook Lars Thoresen drops his knives and dashes to a top deck to watch the blastoff and, as he put it, “feel the sound.”
Operating under American rules, the flight path of Sea Launch’s rockets are regulated by the Federal Aviation Administration. The orbital positions of its satellites are licensed by the Federal Communications Commission.
Once a satellite is in its proper orbital slot, mission control director Thelin said, he strolls out on deck, unfolds a plastic lounge chair and “stares up at the stars, searching for satellites--having just launched one.”
During the voyage home, the Russians and Ukrainians record each launch by painting a red star on the Odyssey’s rocket mast. The company’s single failure was noted with a star and a small red tear dangling beneath it.
The failure in March 2000 stemmed from a software problem in the second stage, which prevented the satellite from reaching orbital velocity. The mission was terminated. The rocket and its payload vaporized in the atmosphere.
“Everyone was devastated; the Russians were practically in tears,” recalled Sea Launch spokeswoman Paula Korn. “But as a result of the experience, we improved all processes before launches.”
Having watched six rockets hit their mark, Aliev said, “I’m extremely proud to be part of this operation.
“It is becoming more and more obvious how silly were many of the initial problems among us at Sea Launch, and between us as nations,” he said.
(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)
From Sea to Space
Sometime in the next month or so in the South Pacific, a rocket carrying a communications satellite is scheduled to blast off from Sea Launch’s floating platform. It will be the company’s eighth launch at sea.
*
THE SHIP: Sea Launch Commander, 667 feet long. Contains launch control center, rocket
assembly facilities, living quarters and work spaces.
*
THE PLATFORM: The Odyssey, 437 feet long and 20 stories high. It is partially submerged for stability during launch operations.
*
LAUNCH SITE: On the equator, about 1,400 miles southeast of Hawaii. From this point, launch takes full advantage of Earth’s rotational speed of 1,000 mph. With a shorter distance to travel into orbit, the satellite can operate for a longer time.
*
LAUNCH: Before the rocket is launched, the crew is evacuated to the control ship, which moves 3.5 miles away.
Source: Sea Launch Co.
