The Daily Briefing

BOEING’S SEA LAUNCH FILES FOR BANKRUPTCY

Theo DouglasWed. June 24
 

The Boeing Company’s Long Beach-based Sea Launch, which launches rockets at sea from a floating platform, has filed for bankruptcy, the Los Angeles Times reports.

“The unusual company, which includes Russian, Norwegian and Ukrainian partners, said lower demand for lifting commercial satellites into space and a recent inability to secure financing to pay a $52-million arbitration ruling against it led to the Chapter 11 filing,” the Times‘ Peter Pae writes.

Bankruptcy finds the company with several launches still scheduled this year. Writes Pae:

“A company spokeswoman said Sea Launch has a backlog of 10 rocket launches, eight of which are slated to happen at sea. The remaining rockets are scheduled to launch from its land facility at the Baikonur space center in Kazakhstan.”

Kazakhstan? Indeed.

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  • lbresident
    The satellite industry is tough. The demand never came to fruition as there really are only a few uses that favor satellites over terrestial communication. The consolidation of the early 2000s helped but ultimately there is still too much capacity.
  • The Toad
    Hi, Theo--Can you (or anyone else) tell us more about the "$52-milion arbitration ruling" that supposedly led to this? I am totally in the dark about that; I wonder if that is a story the print media failed to cover in the (recent?) past. Sea Launch always impressed me as pretty cool, what with the partnering of former Cold War enemies.
  • howardx
    Hughes Wins Arbitration Against Sea Launch - t134aa - 04-28-2009 02:51 PM

    Hughes Wins Arbitration Against Sea Launch
    April 28, 2009 | Satellite Today | Staff Writer
    [Satellite Today 04-28-09] An American Arbitration Association panel has ordered Sea Launch to pay Hughes Network Systems about $52 million in a dispute over whether Hughes had the legal right to cancel its Sea Launch contract and use an Ariane 5 rocket to launch the Spaceway 3 satellite in August 2007, according to an April 22 U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission report filed by Boeing.
    The arbitration request was filed in August 2007 after Hughes argued that the company was within its rights to cancel the contract because of launch delays following a Sea Launch failure in January 2007.
    Sea Launch argued that failure-related delays in its schedule were covered by the launch agreement with Hughes and could not be used to terminate the contract.

    http://fridgefta.emenace.com/forums/printthread...
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