This week, you may have heard several different reports about the bankruptcy declaration made recently by Sea Launch, Co., a partnership between the United States, Norway and the Ukraine to launch rockets into space using a floating platform. Based in Long Beach’s Middle Harbor, that platform travels down to the Equator for each launch along with a scout ship that carries the crew.
The platform – officially deemed Sea Launch Commander – itself is a marvel. Basically, the massive floating structure consists of a giant platform more than 50 feet above the surface of the water, jerry-rigged to two submarines that act as pontoons. Up close, it looks like a floating skyscraper on skis. During launch missions, the Commander travels south to the Equator – for optimal trajectory – and the submarine-pontoons fill themselves up with water so the structure will sink lower into the ocean for greater stability. Then, blastoff!
The first-ever launch occurred in March of 1999, and the Commander has added more than two dozen to its belt since then.
Why is Sea Launch even significant? Besides it being a ten-year-old boy’s dream come true, Sea Launch is also the only American-based commercial satellite provider, and as Andy Pasztor of the Wall Street Journal explains today, their bankruptcy could potentially mean relinquishing control of the industry to European companies.
Pasztor writes:
The filing underscores the financial weakness of the commercial satellite launch business in the U.S. The partnership’s woes are in stark contrast to the expanding, government-supported launch operations aggressively marketed by Russia and the European launch consortium Arianespace.
I’m certainly not qualified to argue for the strength of the commercial satellite launch business in America, but I also think it would have been worth mentioning that Sea Launch has had difficulty coming up with $52 million it owes to Hughes Network Systems after an arbitration ruling.
Sea Launch has declared that they plan to continue with operations and follow through with at least eight scheduled launches at sea in the near future. Boeing owns 40% of the company, and the Seattle Times reports that Boeing stands to lose about half a billion dollars in the bankruptcy.
Photos by Russell Conroy