Boeing's Expendable Launch Systems (ELS) people come to Paris with a mission - to persuade potential commercial satellite customers, governments and space watchers to keep calm.
This uncharacteristic message follows a spate of launch failures from US rockets in general, and to Boeing's embarrassment, the Delta III programme in particular.
After previous launch attempts in April were delayed by problems ranging from ground support equipment issues to a last-second halt to the countdown, Delta III lifted off successfully a month ago - but only for 21 minutes 51 seconds.
Orbit
Then, the second burn lasted just one second instead of nearly three minutes as planned and the Orion 3 spacecraft was placed in a lower than expected orbit.
This was the second failure in the two attempts to launch Delta III but Bob Cowls, director of the ELS Americas business, is not down-hearted.
"Of course we are disappointed but Space is a risky business. We are better than most.
"We have the heritage going back 30 or 40 years with a successful track record, we have the commitment to what we do and specifically the commitment to the success of the Delta III rocket.
Failure
"We are taking all the necessary steps to identify and correct the cause of the failure."
Cowls says Boeing has already investigated the components common to the ever-successful Delta II and Delta III and found they all performed properly.
The main concern for Boeing is that the Delta III upper stage is one of the key elements in the development of Delta IV.
Reports that Delta III may be abandoned to allow Boeing to wait for Delta IV were scuppered by Cowls.
"It's very important that we turn Delta III into a success," he says. "Because of the common components between Delta III and Delta IV we have to make it work."
Dr Russ Reck, the former director of engineering of the successful Delta II, is leading the investigation team and says he is concentrating on the second stage, rather than the first stage and is hoping to report positive results at any time.
But there is mounting pressure on the Boeing team and others in the US space industry following the unprecedented series of launch failures this year.
As well as the commercial Delta III failures, two of the failures involved military payloads carried on heavy-lift Titan IV rockets.
Titan is the largest rocket in the US space programme. The other failure was an Athena II vehicle.
Report
President Clinton has demanded that Defence Secretary William Cohen supply him with an urgent report on the causes and "actions required to ensure our future access to space."
The losses generated by the four failures are believed to have totalled about $2.5 billion.
This represents nearly $2 billion in lost government flight hardware, and more than $500 million in lost satellites.
"It is vitally important that we fully understand the causes behind the recent launch vehicle failures and take corrective action," Clinton said in a memo to Cohen.
Putting satellites into orbit has become a highly competitive international business and the Americans are well aware of the need to sort out the problems very quickly.
"The growth of the satellite communications industry has been phenomenal," says Cowls.
"The satellite companies are building bigger and bigger satellites. There has been a slight slowdown with the problems with Asian economies but the demand is returning."
Successor
Boeing had been hoping that Delta III, as a successor to the reliable Delta II, would help it win a larger piece of the lucrative space launch market, currently dominated by the French-led Ariane project
"Other countries and manufacturers are looking at launch vehicles but it isn't that easy. It is not just us in the States that have had a problem," says Cowls.
Boeing officials say there is order backlog of 16 launches through to 2002 with customers Hughes and Loral. There have been no cancellations.
Boeing developed the Delta III with its own funds. It provides a geosynchronous transfer orbit capability of 3,800kg (8,400 lb) twice the payload of the Delta II.
Bigger
Notable features of the new rocket include a new cryogenically-propelled single engine upper stage, bigger and more powerful strap-on solid rocket motors than Delta II and a larger, composite fairing to house bigger payloads.
Boeing and Hughes, which made the satellite that flew on the Delta III launch, are currently investigating whether the satellite's mission can be salvaged by using onboard rocket fuel to push it into its intended 22,300mile (35,700km) orbit.
Source: Flight Daily News
