TO WHOM S7 GROUP WILL SELL THE “SEA LAUNCH” FLOATING SPACEPORT

Information about the fate of the Sea Launch floating spaceport that leaked to the media suggests that the fate of the ambitious project might soon be sealed. S7 Group is going through a difficult time and is not able to continue working with non-core assets and perform the commercial launches of the satellites into outer space.

The Sea Launch project started 25 years ago. Then it was a powerful international project in which participated several large companies, including Boeing (USA), RSC Energia (Russia), Kvaerner (Norway) and others. The idea of ​​a floating space-rocket complex, which can be used to launch the rockets that allow delivering artificial earth satellites to near-Earth orbit, was relevant and quite attractive.

First of all, the participants were interested in the economic component of the project, since the placement of the platform in the equatorial zone of the Pacific Ocean allowed the satellite operators to deliver loads of much greater mass than the traditional launches from land.

Floating rocket carriers turned out to be much cheaper than the land transportation.

For this purpose, a special port was built on the coast of California. An Odyssey mobile platform for launching missiles and the Sea Launch Commander for the missiles assembly were designed as well. By 2014, more than 150 tons of payload were sent to low Earth orbit as a part of the project, and 32 of 36 launches were successful.

However, the events in the Ukraine (there were several Ukrainian companies among the founders of the project) and subsequent US sanctions against Russia changed the fate of the Sea Launch. The launches were indefinitely suspended. As a result, by the fall of 2016, the S7 Group became the owner of the entire complex. The plans of the S7 Space subsidiary included relocation of the platform and the ship to the Slavic Ship Repair Plant (Far East) for subsequent repair and reconstruction in 2020.

However, a pandemic intervened in the fate of Sea Launch; S7 managers decided to freeze the project in April this year.

According to the information, obtained from informed sources, it is highly likely that the floating complex will be sold to one of the structures of the state corporation Rosatom. Will the subsidiary of the state corporation find financial opportunities to create the infrastructure, necessary for the further functioning of the space-rocket complex? The experts estimate the cost of such a reconstruction as extremely high.