Claims by some market analysts that Arianespace is losing its lead in the international commercial-launcher market have been belied by the company's latest successes. Orders to launch the Intelsat K-TV and Eutelsat W3 satellites have swelled its orderbook to 39 spacecraft, worth $3 billion in launch revenue. The contract to launch the Koreasat 3 is also expected to go to Arianespace, with a multi-launch order is likely to be announced at the Paris air show in June.
Since the company first began operating in June 1984, Arianespace has launched 127 satellites. "There has been an increasing trend in the business towards providing services to international operators, such as PanAmSat and Intelsat," says Patrick Rudloff, vice-president for sales and marketing at the company's headquarters in Evry, south of Paris, France.
Telecommunications boom
"The telecommunications market is exploding," says Rudloff. "Eighty per cent of our business is still for telecommunications satellites and the trend is on the increase, particularly for mobile and Internet-related services," he adds.
Some of these new spacecraft will be operated in low-Earth orbit, or similar, rather than the traditional geostationary-transfer orbit. To meet immediate market demand, Arianespace and Russia have formed the Starsem company to market the Russian Soyuz rocket booster. The European Space Agency will sign a contract to launch two pairs of Cluster 2 satellites on two Soyuz boosters, replacing the four Clusters lost when the Ariane 501 exploded shortly after launch in June 1996.
Arianespace is also designing a range of payload fairings and support systems for the Ariane 5, to meet every possible market need, including the launch of small-satellite constellations. They will "-do the postman's job", Rudloff says.
With forecasts predicting a market of between 200 and 240 satellite launches over the next eight years, Arianespace "-wants to make Ariane 5 the best candidate for all missions", says Rudloff. The Ariane 5 will begin full commercial operations on flight V504 in 1998, provided that the 502 and 503 development flights later this year are successful.
Even if there is a limited delay to the Ariane 5, the company still has enough Ariane 4s to meet most of the manifest and to fly until 2000. All the payloads are compatible with the Ariane 5, and the vehicle is crucial to the company's maintaining its market position.
Arianespace claims to have 50% of the commercial-launcher market - and says that 60% of all operational telecommunications satellites in orbit have been launched aboard Arianes. The 50% figure is controversial. The company bases its claim on a comparison with the number of launch contracts by competitors, but ignores US Government-funded fights, while including its own Government-funded launches.
The comparison is not straightforward, however, because US Government needs are met by US launchers, but European needs are not always met by Arianes. For example, Eutelsat has flown satellites on the Lockheed Atlas (which is marketed by Russian/US ILS International Launch Services) and the European Space Agency is flying its Artemis on a Japanese H2. Arianespace may feel upset by this, but that is balanced by it having US satellite giants Hughes and Intelsat as major customers.
Monitoring the market has other pitfalls. For example, when is a commercial flight commercial? The Hughes-built UHF Navy communications satellites are launched on the Atlas booster, under a commercial deal, but the US Air Force's communications satellites are not. There are 25 bookings for the Atlas, of which six are for NASA, three for UHF craft, six for the USAF and ten for commercial, civilian, customers, not including two civilian and three military options. Of Arianespace's 39 firm orders for satellite launches, 32 are commercial civilian contracts and the others are for European government and military payloads.
Another area of controversy in market predictions concerns the Japanese H2, for which there are claimed to be 20 launch "orders" from Hughes and Space Systems Loral. Rudloff is sceptical about this. "What are the satellites? When will they be launched?" he asks. The H2 orders are just "paper launches", he says.
Many companies list launch orders which are in reality "options", and these are often included on the contract list, making a true comparison difficult. There has been an increasing trend for this bulk-ordering of options. McDonnell Douglas has 19 "contracts" for its Delta 3, of which just seven are firm, named, payloads. "We do not include options on our list. Our list is firm contracts," Rudloff says. If it added its options, Arianespace could claim 48 "contracts".
DISPUTED FIGURES
The market figures can be so deceptive that one launcher survey by Euroconsult puts Arianespace's share at 33%. Charles Bigot, Arianespace's outgoing chairman, calls this "ludicrous". Arianespace is aggressive, and proud of its achievements, but can sometimes be overly sensitive about competition.
Bigot has another hobby horse: the satellite-manufacturing industry. He is particularly annoyed with customers who book a launch, for example in 1998, with assurances that the satellite will be ready, in, say, 16 months. "But, when the 16 months are up, there is no satellite," Bigot says. "The manifest has to be changed." One would expect that this flexibility would be part of the service, but Bigot believes that it is a dangerous trend which is fast becoming the norm. "It penalises us, because no launch means no turnover," Rudloff concludes.
Source: Flight International
