[FPSPACE] Russians disappoint South Africa once too much

[Keith Gottschalk]

   A sad tale.

   A few years back, South Africa's Department of Science & Technology
invited tenders to launch a micro-sat made by a university spin-off. It
got a few offers for piggy-back lifts with other customers' launches.

    But only the Russian  military offered a dedicated launch. A
sub-launched missile to whatever orbital inclination & altitude South
Africa wanted. This was using the same type of missile from the same sub
that failed in trying to orbit the Solar Sail for the [U.S.] Planetary
Society led by Bruce Murray, I think. SA's DST signed up for that.

    The original launch date was set for 16 December 2006. A school
kiddies competition baptized the microsat Sumbandila, meaning "Lead the
Way" in Venda, one of our eleven official languages, also spoken across
the border in southern Zimbabwe. Then, the SA side postponed the launch
from Dec 2006 until April 2007, so as to upgrade an experimental remote
sensing system into a fully operational system.

      But after that, the relevant Russian authority kept postponing &
postponing the launch for "administrative requirements". After TEN
MONTHS of further postponements, last week the Russian authority
"withdrew authorization to launch" seven days before the most recently
re-re-re-scheduled lift-off. 

      This was the last straw for South Africa. The SA DST has now
ended the arrangements with the Russians. A Moscow friend emailed me
that RosaviaKosmos told the media that the agreement was not with them,
but with a Russian military authority.

     We can only speculate what went wrong. After the contract was
originally signed, oil and gas prices have roughly quadrupled, so the
Russian armed forces budgets are no longer squeezed. Therefore they no
longer care so much about earning a bit extra off-book? Neither the U.S.
Planetary Society, nor South Africa's DST, will again hire a Russian
missile-firing sub. 

     South Africa's DST is now negotiating with other countries and
companies. It's back to the piggy-back seat under the payload faring, &
dropping off our microsat into whatever orbit the main customer wants.
There is apparently more than one opportunity during what's left of
2008, where a SLV has a 100 kgs of payload to spare. Otherwise it'll now
be 2009...

Keith
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