Just twenty days into his new role as president, Leo Mondale is gearing up to manage the sales, marketing and customer relations for Arianespace Inc. Succeeding Doug Heydon, who led the U.S. operations for 16 years, Mondale plans to keep the company’s mission on track while maintaining the launch provider’s marketshare. Prior to joining Arianespace Inc., Mondale spent nine years at Iridium LLC. Mondale told SPACE BUSINESS NEWS Editor Nick Mitsis what his views of the U.S. market currently are, how he hopes to overcome significant industry challenges, and what his overall business strategy will entail. Here is what he had to say:

SBN: Why did you decide to join Arianespace?

Leo Mondale: I was impressed with the management team and found a good common ground of interests. The launcher industry faces significant challenges, but the thing that interests me now is that Arianespace recognizes that the industry is changing. Arianespace recognizes that it has to take some very creative approaches to maintain the excellent position that they have developed in the market over time against the kinds of offerings others are providing which will be very hard for certain clients to resist. The competition for launch services is an overall business relationship more today than the technical beauty pageant it used to be.

SBN: What are some marketing and sales strategies you plan to implement within Arianespace that differ from strategies you implemented in the past?

Mondale: While our competitors seem to be strongly moving into vertical operations, I think that gives us a position to offer something unique. We are independent not only in the launch business but we are willing to take equity stakes or provide financing at the critical pre-launch period when these projects face the toughest time to gain financing. We are trying to offer a strong partner for launch services and leaving our clients free to choose the satellite manufacturer. So we come in with a relatively unconflicted viewpoint and we are finding that project sponsors like the freedom instead of being all wound up in an overall Boeing or Lockheed Martin relationship.

SBN: So Arianespace will continue to take equity in companies in return for launch contracts?

Mondale: Everyone in the business is doing that to some degree. We do it in a way that is not conflicting. We play a role without having to become the dominant shareholder or competitor with new industry projects that come up.

SBN: What is your near-term business plan for Arianespace in hopes of maintaining its marketshare?

Mondale: For the foreseeable future, we have the benefit of having started our investment in our Ariane 5 several years before our competitors have begun. Although we are still in the early phases of Ariane 5 commercial launches, we have been very pleased with the performance of the vehicle and are confident that we will move into a full commercial phase in the coming months. Even though the competition has not transitioned yet into these next generation vehicles, all of them offer lower cost basis that means higher competitiveness on the pricing. Therefore, we can envision a phase in which pricing levels will come down and exactly when that phase starts and how you transition between these older generation vehicles to the newer generation vehicles is of critical importance to us.

SBN: How are you marketing the Ariane 5 in hopes of transitioning reluctant customers into using this vehicle?

Mondale: That is really the heart of the challenge right now. Yes, we have a challenge making a transition, and yes, people are going to prefer that mission-critical payloads be on Ariane 4 because there is no alternative to a successful track record. We already have a significant backlog for Ariane 5 so I am confident that as we move forward, our competitors who do not have a record behind them are going to suffer because they will have to prove their reliability. No matter how good the developer is, there is risk in the early stages of a project like this but we have secured enough business to establish an Ariane 5 track record.

SBN: What is the payload trend that you see emerging?

Mondale: They are getting bigger, but not everything is going in the same direction. Likewise, we are seeing large fleet operators buying small satellites for certain applications. I think the availability of Ariane 5 and these other vehicles in the future to lift larger satellites is very important for the manufacturers developing them and the customers being interested in them. The major trend is in much more efficiency. Operators are squeezing much more capacity out of a given satellite in orbit.

SBN: Any plans to partner with anyone in the RLV community?

Mondale: Well, RLV refers to government development programs. Arianespace does not anticipate gaining any sort of space into the U.S. government market. So if it is in the context of a government program, I believe such a partnership is highly unlikely. We are not a launcher technology company so we have no plans in taking a substantive role in what is generally technology development programs.

SBN: Do you think there are any areas within U.S. government programs that would not be endangered if launched by a foreign provider?

Mondale: There could be cooperative programs say in the weather or navigation areas. Furthermore, these two areas are more international in nature and not military or security in focus. These types of projects are an area Arianespace could participate in but they are few and far between and do not exist in any significant number today. Furthermore, we have not been disadvantaged by companies needing export licenses to launch with Arianespace. If non-discriminatory access goes away, that could turn into a very major issue between Europe and the United States in terms of overall trade and military relations.

SBN: What industry relations tactics do you plan on implementing in order to ensure satellite manufacturers meet their deadlines so your launch schedule is not hindered?

Mondale: Again, you’ve hit on another very difficult industry issue. One of the things that has contributed to this problem has been these integrated payloads meet up with integrated buses only a few weeks before the whole thing is to be shipped for launch and that is not going to change. I think, like it or not, there is always going to be some risk in the final integration of satellite construction. We can give a customer a very specific amount of time for our portion of the placement into orbit by isolating the late satellite delivery from the problem. It never goes away.