Tonga Boosts Russian Space Program

BAIKONUR COSMODROME, Kazakhstan -- A Russian Proton rocket ship shoots off the launch pad, pushes through the cloud cover and disappears into space.Another small step for the Tongan space program.If you thought that the small South Pacific island kingdom of Tonga has no place in the secretive and high-powered world of Russian rocketry, you were wrong.Tonga is now playing a vital role in a consortium which is almost alone in matching foreign capital and marketing with the huge potential of the Russian space industry.Tonga became involved in space in the late 1980s, as the result of a clever use of an international treaty which says that every sovereign nation, no matter how small, has the right to apply for orbital locations in which to place satellites.Realizing that satellite slots could one day be in hot demand, Tonga applied for all the vacant slots over the Pacific and was granted seven of the prime locations, right over the equator. "The mainstream companies thought it was outrageous," said Sione Kite, Tonga's ambassador to Europe and the former Soviet Union.In exchange for a cut of the profits, Tonga ended up granting the licenses to a consortium of U.S. entrepreneurs, Rimsat.This group of relatively unknown entrepreneurs had the unlikely idea of using Russia's cheap and underused rocket launching capacity to develop an Asia-Pacific satellite telecommunications network.In 1992, when other businesses were cowering from business in Russia, Rimsat went to Russia and negotiated a deal to launch six telecommunications satellites.Financing this unconventional idea remained a problem. "Wall Street was not interested in talking to us," said James Simon, Rimsat's managing director.But the group managed to attract $38 million from Malaysian investor Tajudin bin Ramli. With this funding, Tonga and Rimsat launched into a long-term relationship with the Baikonur cosmodrome and the Russian rocket industry.Rimsat plans to pay Russia $140 million to put up satellites in five of Tonga's seven slots, with the goal of establishing a telecommunications system with a satellite footprint from Europe to the west coast of the United States.For the Russian space industry, this contract, which covers both construction and launching of satellites, is one of only a very few commercial sales of high technology to the West.The U.S. government has promised to pay Russia up to $400 million for work on a joint space station, but this contract is still being debated in the U.S. Congress.Several firms, including Lockheed, Motorola and Inmarsat, have signed deals for the use of Russian rockets as launchers for sophisticated Western satellites.But only Rimsat has actually started launching. This is partly because it is using Russian-built Gorizont and Express satellites which do not have to be adapted to fit Proton rockets.The satellites are basic but they carry out the task of transponding signals -- picking up messages and rebroadcasting them at a different frequency.The income from Rimsat is a useful boost for the Russian space industry, which is in a state of deep financial crisis due to the reduction of government funding.The uncertainty in the industry was all too apparent in May when a group led by Crown Prince Tupouto'a of Tonga traveled to Baikonur to watch the launch of the second of Rimsat's satellites.Kazakhstan and Russia have been haggling over the base since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Because they cannot agree on who will pay for the water supply, the base town of Leninsk is practically without running water. Leninsk's streets are littered with burned-out buildings which no one will rebuild, and shops are empty because the Russian military administration of the town cannot guarantee supplies.But the cosmodrome itself, made up of launch pads, rocket assembly plants and tracking stations spread over 600 square kilometers of desert, still works.Russian rockets, in particular the renowned Proton SL-12, are the most powerful in the world and can blast a satellite straight into orbit without the elaborate maneuvering in space that Western launch vehicles require.