Space corporation Energia has received preliminary approval fr om a U.S. court to pay the operating costs of bankrupt consortium Sea Launch, possibly with the intention of purchasing the company.
The specially created Energia subsidiary Energia Overseas Lim ited, or EOL, will help Sea Launch out of bankruptcy. Sea Launch, which launches satellites from an offshore platform, filed for bankruptcy in Delaware on June 22, 2009.
Energia said Wednesday that on April 27 the court gave preliminary approval to an agreement under which EOL would provide $30 million in additional financing for Sea Launch's operations. Of the sum, $19 million will replace a credit the consortium was expected to get from Space Launch Service and the Heinlein Prize Trust, created after the death of science fiction writer Robert Heinlein.
An Energia spokesperson declined to comment on the source of the funds.
Sea Launch was created in 1995, with Boeing taking 40 percent, Energia getting 25 percent, Norway's Aker ASA taking 20 percent and Ukraine's SDO Yuzhnoye/PO Yuzhmash holding the remaining 15 percent. From a Norwegian-designed platform built in Vyborg, Sea Launch launched satellites on Yuzhnoye-developed, Yuzhmash-built Zenit-3SL rockets, which used a booster from Energia and Russian engines.
The offshore platform and control vessel are based in California, with launches conducted near the equator in the Pacific Ocean.
Since 1999, Sea Launch has fired off 33 rockets, of which 30 launches were successful. The company's overall debt when it filed for bankruptcy was estimated at $1 billion, with assets of $100 million to $500 million. The cost per launch is more than $80 million.
Energia needs Sea Launch, since the Russian company is developing the booster for the Zenit, and the commercial success of the rocket and booster are linked to the future of the Sea Launch project, said Andrei Ionin, a correspondent member of the Russian Cosmonautics Academy.
The market for commercial space launches has been left with just three real players — Arianespace, International Launch Services, or ILS, and Sea Launch — and it is impossible to forecast how orders will be divided among them, he said.
The bankruptcy of Sea Launch could repeat what happened in 2007 with the Khrunichev State Research and Production Space Center, said an entrepreneur close to the management of the Federal Space Agency.
Lockheed Martin — Khrunichev's partner in the joint venture ILS, which conducted commercial launches from the Baikonur cosmodrome — sold its stake to a firm called Space Transport. To retain the right to launch Proton and Angara rockets on the international market, which belonged to ILS, Khrunichev had to buy out Space Transport's stake for about $200 million in 2008, using a loan from Sberbank.
Unlike Lockheed, Boeing is likely to leave the business through bankruptcy rather than selling its stake, the businessman suggested.
It was not by chance that Energia chief Vitaly Lapota said there was a plan to save Sea Launch without specifying how, a second manager in the aerospace industry said. They will have to seek state assistance — a loan for hundreds of millions of dollars from a state bank — to hang on to Sea Launch's rights to launch Zenit rockets.
Spokespeople for Energia and the Federal Space Agency declined to comment on that possibility.
A spokesperson for Boeing said only that it and other partners supported Sea Launch's efforts to study various restructuring methods in accordance with the bankruptcy proceedings.
Ionin said ILS and Sea Launch were started in the late 1990s in expectations of a growing market to launch communications satellites. But those hopes were unfounded as land-based technologies topped satellites, which explains why the U.S. companies are looking to leave the joint ventures.
In 2009, a total of 78 rockets were launched, of which 74 were successful. Russia conducted 32 launches, including 13 Soyuz rockets of all types, 10 Protons and four Ukrainian-Russian Zenit-3SL/SLB rockets, one of which was launched by Sea Launch.
Energia is 38.22 percent owned by the Federal Property Management Service, Energia subsidiary Razvitiye (17.32 percent), ZAO Lider (6.72 percent), DWS Investments (6.11 percent) and a nominee shareholder (30 percent).