[FPSPACE] Russians disappoint South Africa once too much

[Sven Grahn]

Only money helps!

Sven
----- Original Message ----- 
From: "Keith Gottschalk" <kgottschalk at uwc.ac.za>
To: "Friends & Partners FPSPACE" <fpspace at friends-partners.org>
Sent: Friday, February 15, 2008 1:34 PM
Subject: [FPSPACE] Russians disappoint South Africa once too much


>   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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