Author Topic: Sea Launch Future  (Read 152137 times)

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Offline kq6ea

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #121 on: 01/22/2016 04:40 am »
And I'm sure they have newer than 1990's technology on them.....

-Jim

Offline Kryten

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #122 on: 03/30/2016 03:32 pm »
TASS reports that Sea Launch has finally been sold;
Quote
The Sea Launch project, using Zenit rockets for launches from a floating platform in the Pacific Ocean, has been sold, the head of the Roscosmos corporation, Igor Komarov has said.
"I cannot name the investor or disclose the value of the contract by virtue of certain circumstances. I do hope I will be able to say more by the end of April," Komarov replied to a question.

Offline Space Ghost 1962

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #123 on: 04/01/2016 05:41 pm »
Necessary cross-post from Russian side of forum ...

The Moscow Times: "Roscosmos Sells Troubled Commercial Space Company Sea Launch"
http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/roscosmos-sells-troubled-commercial-space-company-sea-launch/564042.html

Quote
Russia's space agency Roscosmos has found a buyer for a troubled commercial space project known as Sea Launch, the agency's director Igor Komarov was cited by the TASS news agency as saying on Wednesday.

“I cannot tell you who the investor is, or the value of the contract, due to certain obligations. I hope that we will have something to say about it by the end of April,” Komarov said. He did, however, say that investors from the U.S., Australia, China and Europe have expressed interest in the project.

Next Big Future: "Russia sells commercial space company Sea Launch"
http://nextbigfuture.com/2016/03/russia-sells-commercial-space-company.html

Quote
Russia sold the commercial space project known as Sea Launch. They would not say who the buyer was.

...

Most likely the buyer was Boeing, because they hold a judgment against Russians for $365 million.

In 2014, Sea launch faced procurement difficulties as relations between Russia and Ukraine collapsed in the wake of Moscow's annexation of Crimea. Sea Launch is designed to work with Zenit rockets — built in Ukraine, but some 70 percent of the components are Russian.

There are two possible ways this can develop from now -- either the Zenit rocket will get re-motorized to RD-815 engine to become an all-Ukrainian vehicle or Russians will try to renew the existing sourcing scheme with RD-170. Either way Ukraine wins. Russian plans to shut off Ukraine from commercial space have failed.
Roscosmos had to sort out if they wanted to sell at salvage value the asset, or well above salvage value as a premium asset.

They, in the end, wanted the 10x value of the latter over the former. Economics over bitterness.

The only possibility for higher value, after all the trash talk and fantasy deals mooted as a form of "mourning the past" and what could have been. There is a lot of that going on between these countries.

How else could a Ukraine LV with a US launch facility retain value as a provider? It would need to be re-engined, for exactly the same reason as Atlas. The tragedy for Russian interests is that the massive value built over decades is/has been taken out of international service, and the only way to go forward is to forcibly grow the capability elsewhere to match/exceed it.

Instead of developing/increasing the value of the launch system, vehicle, and the engine, the progression of events dropped the value of the vehicle to that of outsource level, the value of the launch system to that of salvage, the future value of engines (collectively RD-171, RD-180, and RD-181) to a fraction of prior NPV.

Not to mention the losses of personnel, operating function/equipment, knowledge base, and associated contracts/functional needed to bring about even a single launch to justify an acquisition/risk.

And also not to mention that by risking the only examples of export class Russian engines used by other nations launch providers, undercutting the export value of such, which shrinks the market size (currently to Antares only long term).

Actually understand the national economics behind this, but still ... going backwards fast in an area undergoing dramatic change with a new launch provider isn't a brilliant competitive maneuver, more like shooting ones self.

add:
Unfortunately, a very Russian outcome for this one. Which, when ILS/Sealaunch was mooted, some feared happening, not exactly though in this way ...
« Last Edit: 04/01/2016 05:55 pm by Space Ghost 1962 »

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Offline Mike Jones

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #125 on: 04/01/2016 07:08 pm »
Sea Launch will be sold to a Russian oligarch close to Putin & co 

Offline Hauerg

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #126 on: 04/01/2016 07:09 pm »

Offline Mike Jones

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #127 on: 04/01/2016 07:41 pm »
Sea Launch Will remain under Russian control : V. Filev from S7 airline group according to Kommersant

Offline Kabloona

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #128 on: 04/01/2016 07:47 pm »
Sea Launch sold.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/roscosmos-sells-troubled-commercial-space-company-sea-launch/564042.html

According to this post, it seems Roscosmos has sold Sea Launch to Vladislav Filev of S7 Aircraft Group in Russia, but I couldn't find the referenced article.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39181.msg1510558#msg1510558

It seems Mr. Filev is the Richard Branson of Siberia.

http://siberiantimes.com/business/opinion/features/f0173-i-once-lived-in-a-country-where-we-only-had-aeroflot-i-didnt-like-it/
« Last Edit: 04/01/2016 08:15 pm by Kabloona »

Offline input~2

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #129 on: 04/02/2016 07:00 am »
Sea Launch sold.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/news/article/roscosmos-sells-troubled-commercial-space-company-sea-launch/564042.html

According to this post, it seems Roscosmos has sold Sea Launch to Vladislav Filev of S7 Aircraft Group in Russia, but I couldn't find the referenced article.

http://forum.nasaspaceflight.com/index.php?topic=39181.msg1510558#msg1510558

It seems Mr. Filev is the Richard Branson of Siberia.

http://siberiantimes.com/business/opinion/features/f0173-i-once-lived-in-a-country-where-we-only-had-aeroflot-i-didnt-like-it/
Here is the referenced article (in Russian):
http://www.kommersant.ru/doc/2951522


Offline FinalFrontier

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #130 on: 04/02/2016 09:10 am »
There's a lesson to be learned here. No matter how great the idea is if the LV blows up constantly and there is never a real success the idea will fail.

SL failed not because of the platform's or the idea, but because the Zenit booster constantly failed when flying from SL, IMO.

Launch failures break you.


We'll see if anything happens to the hardware once it goes to Russia but my bet is they scrap it.
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Offline D_Dom

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #131 on: 04/02/2016 06:37 pm »
Not sure what you would consider a "real success" but we didn't fail constantly. Many GEO customers satisfied with our delivery. Make no mistake, it is a challenging environment.
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Offline Sam Ho

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #132 on: 04/02/2016 07:05 pm »
Saying Sea Launch failed constantly is rather unfair. While not in the Atlas 5 class, it's certainly comparable to Proton.

I would say the bigger issue is the number of countries involved. SL flies a Ukranian-built rocket with Russian engines from a US home port. As such, it doesn't get the baseline of institutional launches to help pay the bills when commercial business is slow.

Admittedly, having only Proton reliability and not Ariane reliability doesn't help.

I'm not sure if the new SL will have a lot of institutional business. It looks like it will be all-Russian, but it seems to duplicate existing capabilities.

Offline kq6ea

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #133 on: 04/03/2016 11:24 pm »
This will be interesting to watch play out.

- Jim

Offline Danderman

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #134 on: 04/03/2016 11:49 pm »
The reality is that Zenit was not a mature system when SeaLaunch started, and the expected dozens of launches for the Russian government never really materialized, so SeaLaunch itself was the development program for Zenit.  Also, RSC Energia had some quality control issues with Blok-DM.

Offline elvis

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #135 on: 04/04/2016 05:37 pm »
There's a lesson to be learned here. No matter how great the idea is if the LV blows up constantly and there is never a real success the idea will fail.

SL failed not because of the platform's or the idea, but because the Zenit booster constantly failed when flying from SL, IMO.

Launch failures break you.


"Blows up constantly"  Really?  3 failures out of 36 launches, while not ULA or Ariane rates, is certainly not "blows up constantly".  I think 33 customers would argue we achieved "real success".

I argue the failure was the lack of a government entity to pay the upkeep between launches.  Lots of countries involved, but no government contracts.

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #136 on: 04/04/2016 08:32 pm »
There's a lesson to be learned here. No matter how great the idea is if the LV blows up constantly and there is never a real success the idea will fail.

SL failed not because of the platform's or the idea, but because the Zenit booster constantly failed when flying from SL, IMO.

Launch failures break you.


"Blows up constantly"  Really?  3 failures out of 36 launches, while not ULA or Ariane rates, is certainly not "blows up constantly".  I think 33 customers would argue we achieved "real success".

Four failures in 36 flights.  Apstar 5 had to make up the difference for the lower than planned insertion apogee (~21,000 km versus ~36,000 km).


3/12/2000  Zenit-3SL/DMSL         POR      ICO F-1          2nd stg control 7 min (prelaunch error)     FTO 
6/29/2004  Zenit-3SL/DMSL   SL20  POR      Apstar 5         3rd stg 2nd burn off 54s early (electrical)(EEO)
1/30/2007  Zenit 3SL/DMSL   SL16  POR      NSS-8 (5.92t)    RD-171 eng failed at T-0, turbopump FOD     FTO
2/1/2013   Zenit 3SL/DMSL   SL48  POR      Intelsat 27      RD-171M engine TVC failed, cut off 23 sec.  FTO


In my opinion, the end of Sea Launch was partly due to the failures, but mostly due to the simple fact that the enterprise lost money.   Sea Launch only averaged 2.4 launches per year during its 16 year run.

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 04/04/2016 08:45 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline elvis

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #137 on: 04/04/2016 09:07 pm »
Quote
Four failures in 36 flights.  Apstar 5 had to make up the difference for the lower than planned insertion apogee (~21,000 km versus ~36,000 km).


3/12/2000  Zenit-3SL/DMSL         POR      ICO F-1          2nd stg control 7 min (prelaunch error)     FTO 
6/29/2004  Zenit-3SL/DMSL   SL20  POR      Apstar 5         3rd stg 2nd burn off 54s early (electrical)(EEO)
1/30/2007  Zenit 3SL/DMSL   SL16  POR      NSS-8 (5.92t)    RD-171 eng failed at T-0, turbopump FOD     FTO
2/1/2013   Zenit 3SL/DMSL   SL48  POR      Intelsat 27      RD-171M engine TVC failed, cut off 23 sec.  FTO


In my opinion, the end of Sea Launch was partly due to the failures, but mostly due to the simple fact that the enterprise lost money.   Sea Launch only averaged 2.4 launches per year during its 16 year run.

 - Ed Kyle

Yup, I was there for every one of them, lets not speak ill of the dead (programs).   3 failures and a in-flight anomaly for maximum accuracy.

For Apstar 5, "The spacecraft did not reach the planned GTO, as the upper stage of the launch vehicle underperformed, reaching an apogee of only 21000 km instead of 36000 km. The spacecraft was put into a geostationary orbit by its thrusters, with even enough fuel left to exceed the planned 13 years lifetime." 

So while an IFA, the spacecraft still achieved target orbit with plenty of fuel to accomplish the mission due to the benefits of launching where and how it did.  Not perfect, but not a failure.

All about the money is correct though.
« Last Edit: 04/04/2016 09:09 pm by elvis »

Offline edkyle99

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #138 on: 04/04/2016 09:21 pm »
Not perfect, but not a failure.
Apstar 5 (Telstar 18) itself made it to GEO, so it did not ultimately suffer an outright mission failure, but there can be no question that the Blok DM upper stage, and therefore the Zenit 3SL/DMSL launch vehicle, failed.  Blok DM cut off 54 seconds early during its second burn.  An electrical system failure (a short circuit in a control cable) caused the engine to burn fuel too fast, leading to a propellant depletion cutoff.  The planned orbit was 756 x 35,929 km x 0 deg.  The achieved orbit was only 722 x 21,618 km x 0 deg.     
http://www.spacetoday.net/Summary/2440

 - Ed Kyle
« Last Edit: 04/04/2016 09:24 pm by edkyle99 »

Offline kq6ea

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Re: Sea Launch Future
« Reply #139 on: 04/04/2016 09:23 pm »
I was on the NSS-8 and Intelsat 27 missions. I don't think anybody expected us to come back so fast after NSS-8.

While the incident was spectacular, the damage wasn't really all that bad. It probably would have been much worse had the LV ascended further (it actually rose a couple of feet) and then fell back and "landed" on the LP.

The Intelsat failure was a different matter. The LV landed between the LP and ACS, about a mile away from the ACS.

It rattled the windows pretty good, and had it been a daylight launch, probably would have caused near panic on the decks of the ACS where a lot of the marine crew was watching the liftoff.

Had it splashed down much closer, there could have been some damage to contend with.


In the end, it's always about the money......
« Last Edit: 04/04/2016 09:32 pm by kq6ea »

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