[Satellite News 10-02-09] Launch services and access to space are at the forefront of discussions in the satellite sector, particularly in light of Sea Launch’s bankruptcy filing.
    SES CEO Romain Bausch spoke to Satellite News about his view on the launch services situation and what SES might be prepared to do to ensure there remains a plethora of launch service options available to operators.

Bausch: Launch services could be at risk. If Proton or Arianespace were to experience a launch failure in the current situation, then the industry could be in trouble. In theory, you could only have only one launch vehicle available, and that would not be a good situation. While ILS (International Launch Services) has proved to be quick to recover from failures, it can still take anywhere from three to six months. If they were out for six months, there would be a gap. It would dramatically reduce the launch service capacity.
    If Sea Launch were to be rescued, that would be good news for the satellite industry. We fully support whatever initiatives are out there for Sea Launch to remain in the market. As to whether they remain in the market, that really depends on the Russian and Ukrainian companies involved. They are the shareholders together with Boeing. We see good signs that they are interested to keep Land Launch and, hopefully, Sea Launch as well, on the market.

Bausch: We are in a slightly different situation. SES currently has no launch contracts with Sea Launch. We did have a launch contract with them, but we decided to cancel it after they were unable to do the launch within the timeframe we needed. This, however, has nothing to do with the current situation. They still owe us some money, which we would like to get back, but we don’t have as much as stake as Intelsat. As a company, we are not really impacted, as we also have multiple launch agreements in place, both with Arianespace and ILS, which give us guaranteed access to space.
But there is a second perspective and that is the industry perspective. We want to have a competitive landscape in terms of launch services. It is in the best interests of the industry to make sure there are a number of different launchers available.

Bausch: We are working together with some other satellite operators to do some lobbying in the United States in order to ensure their political support to have commercial satellites launched on multiple vehicles. We would want to have the launch alliance of Boeing and Lockheed Martin, i.e. United Launch Alliance (ULA), being incentivized to make their vehicles available for commercial launches. Right now, they are providing so many services to the U.S. government that they are not really interested to do business with commercial satellite operators. Making the two U.S. launch vehicles available for commercial launches would be one way to diversify the launch industry.
    You also have China. You have the potential for ITAR regulations to become more flexible and to allowing U.S. satellites or satellites with U.S. components to be launched on Chinese launch vehicles. We would want to see the market open up.

Bausch: It is difficult for me to see why the U.S. Department of Commerce allows such an alliance because in the United States you only have two launch service providers. I think it would be in the interest of consumers and operators to have some competition in the U.S. launch market. We definitely want to have more competition in this area.

Bausch: We had planned ahead. We thought it would be good to have multiple launch agreements with the two strongest launch service providers available, i.e. Arianespace and ILS. We also had discussions with the ULA, and we would be pleased if we could have an agreement with them, but their terms and conditions and not what you would expect.