First sea launch scheduled for March 25.
MOSCOW, March 5 (Itar-Tass) - The first international sea launch, the preparations for which
took several long years, is now scheduled for March 25. A Ukrainian Zenit carrier-rocket, which
will be launched from a sea platform, is to orbit a demonstration model of a space vehicle,
Itar-Tass was told on Friday at the Energia Rocket Space Corporation (Russia).
The floating cosmodrome will be put up on the equator, 152 degrees western longitude, to the
south of the Hawaiian Islands. Lying next to it will be a command vessel, which will take aboard all
the sixty-eight members of the launch crew and servicing personnel and move five kilometres away
from the platform when everything is be ready for the start. The launching of the Zenit rocket will
be fully automated.
Although the Sea Start has already received more than eighteen orders to orbit various satellites
(primarily from the American Hughes and Loral companies), the first to be launched from the
floating cosmodrome will be a model space vehicle. True, experts say that it will be a working
model, which will transmit signals to the Earth.
This means that a full-scale rehearsal of the forthcoming launchings of satellites will take place.
Experts say that up to eight satellites will be launched from the sea platform yearly. The cost of
each launch will be approximately 90 million dollars. The cost of the entire Sea Launch project is
estimated at two billion dollars.
The joint Sea Launch enterprise was set up in 1995 by the Russian Energia, the Ukrainian
Yuzhmash, the U.S. Boeing, and the Norwegian Kvarner Shipbuilding Company. The Energia,
Yuzhmash, and Kvarner are responsible practically for all the technical problems, while the duty of
the Boeing Company is to finance the project and to exercise overall supervision.
The first launch was originally planned for the autumn of 1998, but it had to be put off due to
delayed preparation of the necessary documents by the American side. Moreover, the American
satellite Galaxy-11, which had to be orbited from the sea platform first, was not ready, too.
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