World Bank Backs Controversial Satellite Project
The World Bank is putting its financial muscle behind an innovative but controversial project to launch satellites from sea combining US., Russian and Ukrainian know-how, bank officials said Wednesday.
The multi-million dollar Sea Launch project will use a converted and mobile oil drilling platform to launch the satellites from a remote location in international waters about 1,000 miles (1,600 km) south of Hawaii. Sea Launch exemplifies a new, groundbreaking era in industrial cooperation in which former Cold War enemies are now working together in a non-military context to put commercial satellites into orbit, World Bank Vice President Johannes Linn said.
At a meeting of the lending agencys board last week, France objected to World Bank participation in the project because of concern that some of the rocket technology involved might be used for military purposes.
But it was outvoted by the banks other member nations, including the United States, bank officials told reporters.
Boeing Co. the Seattle-based aerospace company, has a 40 percent stake in the project. RSC Energia, Russias leading manufacturer of booster rockets for its manned space programme, has a 25 percent interest and Ukrainian rocket producer Yuzhnoye, a 15 percent stake.
The remainder is held by Anglo-Norwegian construction firm Kvaerner. Kvaerner is modifying the drilling rig to serve as a moveable, self-propelled launch pad and is building a command ship that will act as a floating rocket assembly plant and mission control centre.
The World Bank is not lending any money directly to the project. Instead, it will be guaranteeing two separate $100 million commercial bank loans to Energia and Yuzhnoye against political risk, such as the imposition of new taxes or limits on foreign currency transfers by their governments.
Linn defended the Banks participation in the project, saying that it would help create 30,000 high-paying, high-technology jobs in Russia and Ukraine. He said the lending agency went to extarordinary lengths to ensure the technology involved was not used for military purposes. Ukraines Yuzhnoye was one of the main producers of intercontinental ballistic missiles for the former Soviet Union, but no longer makes them, bank documents said. Energia has no known links to the Russian military.
All launches will be licensed, regulated and monitored by the U.S. government, the bank added.
Linn said that the project makes use of the competitive advantage that Russia and Ukraine have in missile production and taps into the rapidly growing launch market for satellites to provide telecommunication links such as e-mail worldwide. The Sea Launch Co. consortium plans to send the satellites into geostationary orbit from the equator because that is the spot where the earths rotational speed is the strongest. You get a sling shot effect, bank official Alfred Watkins said.
The company said it already has landed contracts for 18 launches. The first launch is due in fall 1998.