Sea Launch has filed for bankruptcy
Pat Flannery
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=28522
This is really sad, as they did come up with a very clever concept for
the whole operation, but I guess the payloads just weren't there to make
it work from a economic point of view.
Pat
David Spain
> Filed for Chapter 11 on Monday:
Watch closely to see if they can restructure the terms of their liabilities
to stretch them out. I wonder if the recent economic collapse caused them
to loose enough flight bookings to make its run-out plan not workable?
Perhaps with some debt forgiveness or re-negotiation they can come out
intact.
Since they cannot rely on larger payloads to offset costs, aren't they
highly sensitive to launch rates / payload bookings?
If the world economy swings back might they be in a good position?
Watch to see if in six months they move from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7.
Let's hope not.
Dave
Pat Flannery
David Spain wrote:
> Watch closely to see if they can restructure the terms of their liabilities
> to stretch them out. I wonder if the recent economic collapse caused them
> to loose enough flight bookings to make its run-out plan not workable?
>
> Perhaps with some debt forgiveness or re-negotiation they can come out
> intact.
>
> Since they cannot rely on larger payloads to offset costs, aren't they
> highly sensitive to launch rates / payload bookings?
>
> If the world economy swings back might they be in a good position?
>
> Watch to see if in six months they move from Chapter 11 to Chapter 7.
> Let's hope not.
They have another article about this with more details now; apparently
the explosion during launch in 2007 caused some customers to jump ship,
and the world financial crisis didn't help either.
So now they are around 1.5 billion dollars in the hole:
http://spaceflightnow.com/news/n0906/24sealaunch/
Surprisingly, they have been losing launches to Proton, so one ex-Soviet
booster is taking business away from another ex-Soviet booster.
Pat
BradGuth
If cost and continued pollution were no object; why do we need Sea
Launch?
Small but powerful and extremely capable satellites can be launched
from a Russian submarine. Otherwise, strap on a few more SRBs and
launch from Antarctica if you like.
~ BG
MODERATOR'S COMMENT:
We're drifting from the technical into policy. I'll allow this last post, but let's get this back to sci.space.tech after all. GdM
Pat Flannery
> ....I suspect it had more to do with the pad EPIC FAIL. Prior to this I
> heard they were doing otay insofar as balancing the books go.
>
If you check the follow-up posting I made, that was one of the main
reasons...after the one blew on the pad, their customers started jumping
ship on them, and headed for Proton instead.
Pat