Tim Furniss / Paris
The market for launches of communications satellites into geostationary transfer orbit (GTO) is heating up. With US/Russian company ILS International Launch Services claiming a 50% share in the commercial-launcher market alongside Arianespace, its European competitor, there is also confusion over just how big the market is, and what it consists of.
Vance Coffman, president and chief executive of Lockheed Martin, which, with Russia's Khrunichev and Energia companies, runs ILS, says that the company has reached its 50% market share target "two years earlier than planned". Lockheed Martin's claim seems to ignore the presence of others in the market in addition to itself and Arianespace - McDonnell Douglas (MDC), the Boeing-led Sea Launch consortium and companies in China claim bookings for 17 civilian GTO launches, while Japan is also generating interest in the market.
Launch backlogs
ILS has a backlog of 49 launches, says president Charles Lloyd, with 20 launches for the Russian Proton booster and 29 for the US Atlas vehicle. The latter consists of 24 firm civil commercial launches and compares with the backlog of 43 Arianespace satellites, he says. Thirty four of these are civil commercial GTO aircraft.
These figures are misleading, however. They do not include an increasingly important area of the market - launches to low-Earth orbit which generate a lot of activity for proven launchers, such as MDC's Delta 2, as well as attracting new companies to the market.
Also, some of the Ariane 44L and 44LP launches will boost two large communications satellites into geostationary orbit, whereas the Atlas and Proton carry only one each. ILS therefore claims "launches", while Arianespace claims "satellites".
ILS's figures include several "guaranteed" US military and Government payloads - although three launches for the US Navy are part of a commercial contract with Hughes. Others on the ILS list are mere reservations of unidentified satellites. The list does not include Russian national launches, such as those of Gorizont and Express satellites.
Arianespace includes only named spacecraft, its reservations and launch options being consigned to footnotes. The European company is also keen to add that what could be considered as "guaranteed" satellites do not necessarily fly on Arianes. For example, the European Space Agency's Artemis satellite is being carried on a Japanese booster.
If commercial success is to be better gauged, then a comparison of civil commercial satellite numbers may be more apt. On that basis, the score is Arianespace 34, ILS 24. "The policy we have maintained to keep our credibility is to list launches that involve only a signed contract, an identified satellite and not one that is a mandatory choice (such as a US Government launch)", says Patrice Albrecht, Arianespace's vice-president for communications and international relations.
Launch rates
LLoyd says that ILS is poised to attain a launch rate of 1.6 per month over the next 19 months, "the highest rate for a commercial launch operator." That equates to almost 18 launches a year. Arianespace had made 26 launches in 26 months with the lift-off of the V96 carrying the Intelsat 802 satellite on 25 June. Of the ILS launches over the next 19 months, there will be five more by the Proton (able to place 2,600kg directly to geostationary orbit), carrying satellites starting with the PanAm Sat5 in July, and six launches by the Atlas fleet, beginning with the Atlas 2AS launch of the Superbird 3. ILS offers four Atlas versions: the 2, 2A, 2AS and the new 2AR, to be introduced in December 1998. The 2AR will be able to place a payload weighing 4,040kg into GTO - making it the most powerful booster in the ILS fleet - compared with the 4,750kg of the Ariane 44L. it will be powered by a single NPO Energomash RD-180 liquid-oxygen/kerosene engine, a derivative of the motor which powers the Russian Zenit first-stage rocket booster.
That the days of the Cold War and "The Evil Empire" are well and truly over was emphasised when Lockheed Martin announced at the Paris air show that it was to buy 101 of the RD-180 engines from RD-AMROSS, the joint venture between Russia's NPO Energomash and Pratt & Whitney, in a deal worth $1 billion. Mel Brashears, president and chief executive of Lockheed Martin's Space and Strategic Missiles Sector says that the contract is exclusive. The engines are built by Energomash in Khimky and finished by P&W's in Florida.
Brashears also says that his company is investing an undisclosed amount in the building of a US-based RD-180 P&W production plant in Florida to be open by 30 April 1998, just 30 days before the expected announcement by the US Air Force of the winner of the $2 billion Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle (EELV) contract, which Lockheed Martin "is resolved" to win, Brashears says.
Lockheed Martin had intended that the new P&W plant would be opened in 2002 - if the EELV contract had been won. The opening of this plant will make the RD-180 the only engine in the world with parallel manufacturing lines. This business plan, Brashears says, is "…irrespective of whether Lockheed wins the EELV, the EELV is delayed or cancelled or the EELV contract is lost to McDonnel Douglas."
Uprating the Atlas
The Atlas 2AR will be the ILS workhorse for many years and will be complemented by an uprated version, with Thiokol solid-propellant strap-on boosters, called the 2AES. Lockheed Martin's EELV proposal is based on the Atlas 2AR and will consist of light, medium and heavyweight vehicles, with combinations of 2AR-based core stage and uprated upper stages.
The 101-engine purchase and investment in the P&W plant is designed to ensure a regular supply for the ILS 2AR and US-manufactured engines to fly government missions for the EELV, and to adhere to US Government rules. The winner of the EELV (the other contender is MDC with a proposed Delta 4-based fleet of boosters) will become the single-source supplier of US launch vehicles for 30 years, resulting in $40 billion-worth of potential business.
Brashears says that the scope of the EELV project is similar to having the US Air Force asking a supplier to "…supply every type of US military aircraft". If Lockheed Martin wins the EELV contest, the Atlas 2AR and 2ARS would be phased out and replaces eventually. Their commercial-market replacements would be medium- and heavy-lift versions of the EELV.
Four RD-180 development engines have been successfully test-fired, including one engine in the full-thrust range, for a total of 2,000s. Ten will have been tested for more than 20,000s before the first 2AR flight from Cape Canaveral in 1998, and for 16,000s before the EELV announcement, Brashears says.
There are concerns, however. A recent Zenit failure was the result of a similar RD-180 shutting down in flight, and one of the four RD-180 engines being tested caught fire in April during an exercise which involved stresses greater than those anticipated during a normal launch.
While Arianespace and ILS continue to dominate the commercial-launcher market with much hyperbole, it is ironic that MDC has taken more launch bookings for its Delta 2 and 3 fleet than either company - more than 50 launches, albeit mainly US Government orders and not much GTO business.
The Delta 3, with a 3,810kg to GTO capability, and scheduled for its first flight in 1998, already has orders from Hughes to launch seven satellites, with seven options, with five launches booked by Space Systems/Loral. It is considered by Arianespace and ILS to be a potential major competitor.
Japan's uprated H2A is scheduled for its first flight in 2000 and is intended to offer a more commercially viable service mainly for GTO customers, with a 4,000kg lifting capability. Japan already has 20 bookings but these are not comparable with the definitive listings from Arianespace or ILS, since they are merely "reservations" for unidentified spacecraft.
The trend towards mass reservations with a series of boosters is a means for satellite companies to ensure that they have launch capacity from at least one launcher in a competitive commercial schedule, should one booster become unavailable through technical problems or a failure. These reservations add further confusion when comparing launcher company business.
Other boosters in the lucrative GTO business are versions of the Chinese Long march (LM) fleet and the Sea Launch. India plans a GTO launcher, but it will not be operational until well after 2000.
China achieved the moderate success it set out to attain, launching largely Hughes-built satellites, until it suffered two similar failures of its Long March 2E boosters during the launch phase, with maximum dynamic pressure. These raised questions about both the rocket and the Hughes satellite being carried. The explanations for the failures were deemed unsatisfactory by the insurance community and the losses were followed by spectacular failure of the first Long March 3B booster in January 1996. Its errant guidance system sent the booster reeling the moment it cleared the tower at Xichang.
Off-shore first
This disaster was followed by a mass exodus of commercial customers but in 1997, after some consecutive successes with national and commercial launches, China and Hughes signed a deal covering five guaranteed launches of one HS-376 on an LM3 and four HS-601s or HS-702s on the LM3B.
The Sea Launch consortium - Boeing (40%), Kvaerner (20%), Energia (25%) and the Ukraine's Yuzmash and Yuznoye (15%) - will be the first to launch large liquid-fuelled boosters from an off-shore platform (Flight International, 19-25 March). The Zenit 3 booster to be used is a Zenit 2 with a Russian Proton DM third stage. It can place 6.900kg into GTO, the highest payload for a launcher in the market.
The rocket and its launch system are unproven, however, and many observers are awaiting its first launch, of the Galaxy 11 satellite in June 1998, with interest. Sea Launch has four identified satellites launches from Hughes, with six other options, plus five reservations by Loral. Ukraine is also attempting to market the Zenit 3 separately for launches from Baikonur.
Equal interest will be directed at the next flight of the Ariane 502 booster. Although the 6,800kg-to-GTO Ariane 5 is not yet an Arianespace operational launcher, this European Space Agency-funded flight will be critical for the future of success of Arianespace and for the European space programme.
Source: Flight International
