Report forecasts decline in commercial launch market
BY JEFF FOUST
SPACEFLIGHT NOW

Posted: May 14, 2001

  Delta 3
Boeing's Delta 3 rocket has been hit by the ailing satellite launch market with no firm launches scheduled this year or next. Photo: Boeing
 
A report issued last week by government and industry officials forecasts sharply reduced demand for launches of some types of commercial satellites over the next decade and only modest growth in geosynchronous communications satellites, the staple of the commercial launch industry.

The "2001 Commercial Space Transportation Forecasts" report, compiled by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and the Commercial Space Transportation Advisory Committee (COMSTAC), estimates that an average of 32 commercial space launches will take place each year for the next decade, two-thirds of them carrying spacecraft into geosynchronous Earth orbit (GEO).

The biggest change in the 2001 report over past years is the sharp decrease in the number of launched into low Earth orbit (LEO) and other non-geosynchronous orbits (NGSOs). The 2001 report forecasts as few as 151 commercial spacecraft will be launched into such orbits over the next decade, down from 552 forecast just one year earlier.

The reason for the sharp decline, the FAA concluded, is a reaction to the problems faced by companies like Iridium, Globalstar, and ORBCOMM, the only three companies who have deployed extensive constellations of satellites in LEO. Both Iridium and ORBCOMM filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection and operate today under new ownership, while Globalstar faces continued financial problems and the threat of bankruptcy.

"High startup costs, investor skepticism after bankruptcies, market uncertainty, and competition from other sectors all confront companies seeking the commercial promise of NGSO," the FAA report noted.

The FAA's forecast was based on a baseline model that predicted the launch of one "Little LEO" constellation like ORBCOMM and one "Big LEO" constellation like Iridium or Globalstar over the next decade, as well as replacement launches for existing constellations and a handful of remote sensing and other commercial spacecraft launches. A more optimistic model, which forecasts 252 NGSO spacecraft launched in the next decade, adds two more Little LEO and Big LEO systems as well as one "Broadband NGSO" system, like Teledesic. That estimate is still far below the most optimistic estimate of 685 spacecraft from last year's forecast.

The number of launches needed to place those spacecraft in orbit is considerably less than the number of spacecraft because of the ability to launch multiple spacecraft on a single booster. The baseline FAA estimate forecasts an average of eight launches a year for NGSO spacecraft while the robust model forecasts 10.4 launches a year. The bulk of those launches will be made by small boosters, such as the American Pegasus, Taurus, and Athena vehicles and the Russian Cosmos, Dnepr, and START 1 rockets.

In contrast to the declining fortunes of the low-Earth orbit satellite industry, the prospects for the GEO satellite launch market are somewhat more optimistic. The 2001 forecast by COMSTAC, an industry advisory panel for the FAA, estimates an average of 30.5 spacecraft a year will be launched into GEO over the next decade, an estimate almost identical to last year's forecast and only slightly below the forecasts from previous years.

The COMSTAC model predicts modest growth in the number of GEO spacecraft launched over the next decade, from 24 in 2001 to 33 in 2010. That growth comes almost exclusively from one class of GEO spacecraft: new, heavy communications satellites weighing more than 5,445 kg (12,000 lbs). The number of such spacecraft launched is forecast to grow from none in 2001 to eight in 2010, as the satellite communications industry demands spacecraft with more power and more transponders.

The number of launches is not expected to grow as much as the number of spacecraft: from 20 launches in 2001 to 25 in 2010. The predicted introduction of new heavy-lift launch vehicles, such as the Delta 4 and Atlas 5, will increase the number of dual-payload launches later in the decade, allowing more spacecraft to be launched without a corresponding increase in the number of launches.

Most of the growth in GEO satellites and launches is forecast to take place in the next few years, with little increase or decrease in demand later in the decade. The COMSTAC report believes that several factors may cause this, including the growing size and increasing lifetime of communications satellites, consolidation in the commercial satellite industry, and increased scrutiny of new satellite-based ventures.

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