Because of its position on the equator, a space base on a converted oil rig could have the international edge, writes Tim Radford
In October the first satellite launched from a pad in the open ocean is due to arrive in its orbit, 35 000km out in space.
Sea Launch, a once-unimaginable business consortium from Norway, Russia, the United States and the Ukraine, is poised to challenge Nasa at Cape Canaveral, the Europeans in French Guiana and the Russians at Baikonur by building a space base on a converted oil rig that will float in the Pacific on the equator, 2 250km south-east of Hawaii.
Satellites mounted on Ukrainian Zenit rockets with extra stages from the Russian Energia group will be placed on the rig, called Odyssey, at Long Beach in California. The crew will take the rig to the launch point, stabilise the platform and move to a Glasgow-built command ship to fire the payload into the highest orbit achieved by a satellite to date.
They will then pick up the spent booster stages before getting back on the rig and returning to California to pick up another launcher and satellite.
The operation will, the partners hope, work out cheaper than systems set up by the US or the Soviet Union during the Cold War, or by Europe’s more recent partnership.
The advantage of the sea is that it allows a launch on the equator, which, when compared with the poles, gives the rocket a “free” 1 600kph because of the spin of the earth, which means a saving in fuel.
Paul Murdin, of the British National Space Centre, said: “What is more, at the equator all of this extra half a kilometre a second is in the right direction: you don’t get launched at an angle, you get launched right into an equatorial orbit, which is right for commercial uses of space.
“The more fuel you have to take up, the smaller the satellite you can launch. So being on the equator is very important.”
Kourou, Europe’s launch pad in French Guiana, has the edge over Nasa at Canaveral because it is nearer the equator. In theory a floating launch pad on the equator would be best of all.
There is another advantage: rockets are loaded with highly explosive and toxic fuel, and have to be launched over the sea, preferably from a thinly populated hinterland.
“Launching rockets is a risky business,” said Dr Murdin. “Rocket fuel contains terrible things, and you don’t want them falling on people. You’ve really got to be careful to launch over the sea: a place you can control, and clear of anything except dolphins.”
Boeing, the US partner in Sea Launch, claims it will put five tons of satellite into a geo-stationary orbit – a distance so far away from Earth that the orbit keeps precise pace with that of Earth, and hence the satellite is always over the same spot and perfectly placed for television relay and telecommunications.
Space is now a huge worldwide business growing at 15 to 20% a year. In the next eight years, launchers will put 234 communications satellites worth more than R150-billion into high orbit.
The US, which dominated the launch business in the last decade, now has only 30% of the market. The European Space Agency, in which Britain is a partner, has 50%, but Brazil, Canada, China, Japan, India, Indonesia and Australia all plan launch programmes. In the US, the states of Alaska, Nevada, New Mexico, Virginia and California are building spaceports to compete with Canaveral.
But Sea Launch is the first off-shore co-operative: it already has 18 launch orders, and the first will fired in October.