Will Sea Launch End Up in Brazil?

Hello reader!

It follows an article published on the day (12/24) in the website “Parabolic Arc” asking if Sea Launch Company will end up in Brazil?

Duda Falcão

News

Will Sea Launch End Up in Brazil?

By Doug Messier
December 24, 2014, at 1:08 pm

Russia’s efforts to find a new home for its failure-prone has taken officials to rising South American power — and charter BRICS member — Brazil.

That’s the word from Russian Deputy Prime Minister Dmitry Rogozin anyway.

“A quite remarkable dialogue at the level of experts is currently in progress; possibly, the idea may take shape within the BRICS group, or in our bilateral relations with Brazil, of carrying out such joint launches and furnishing assistance to Brazil in developing its space industry and making its own spacecraft,” he said, adding that Brazil already had its own space site close to the ocean that would fit in well with such tasks.

“The first network of signal calibration for our navigation system GLONASS is already in place there. In a word, we may establish a long-term friendship with Brazil in the area of high technologies,” Rogozin believes.

Sea Launch’s mobile platform and command ship are now based in California. The platform is towed to an equatorial location where it serves as a launch pad for the Zenit-3SL booster, which is jointly produced by Ukraine and Russia. The rocket’s primary payloads are communications satellites.

Sea Launch is majority owned by Russia’s Energia, which is in the process of being folded into the state-owned United Rocket and Space Corporation as part of the re-nationalization of the nation’s space industry.

Russian media have previously reported on proposals to move launch operations to Vietnam. More recently, there was a report that Sea Launch might be sold to an Israeli company.

Sea Launch was initially a joint venture of American, Russian, Ukrainian and Norwegian partners. The company struggled to win launch contracts as it suffered launch failures. Sea Launch entered bankruptcy, eventually emerging with Energia as the majority partner.

The company has continued to experience launch failures and difficulty in winning contracts. In August, Sea Launch announced a series of cost-cutting measures in response to a gap in planned launches. The measures involved layoffs and the temporary mothballing of the launch platform and command ship.

Brazil’s coastal Alcantara Launch Center is not far from the equator. It could potentially serve as the home port for the seagoing launch platform providing it has sufficient port facilities.

Sea Launch could greatly enhance Brazil’s space effort, which has struggled for decades to expand beyond sounding rockets. The nation’s Southern Cross program, which aims to develop a family of launch vehicles, has been scaled back and suffered repeated delays.

Alcantara Cyclone Space, a joint Brazilian-Ukrainian venture, plans to launch upgraded Soviet-era Cyclone-4 boosters from Alcantara. The maiden launch has been slipping for years; the most recent estimate is for sometime in 2015.

The table below shows the capabilities of the Cyclone-4 and Zenit-SL3 launch vehicles as well as the two-stage Zenit-2 booster operated out of Baikonur. I’ve also added a couple of launch vehicles under development in Brazil to show the range of launch vehicles that might end up operating from the nation in the years ahead.

* Figures for launches from Baikonur Cosmodrome.

The VLM rocket is a joint project with Germany. VLS-1 is a domestically produced small satellite launch vehicle.

Sea Launch’s Zenit-SL3 rocket is a three-stage vehicle specifically designed for geosynchronous communications satellites. It’s possible that these boosters could be used for launching other types of payloads. Brazil’s ability to orbit a range of payloads would be enhanced if a Sea Launch deal included provisions for land operations of Zenit-2 boosters from Alcantara.

There are several potential drawbacks from Brazil’s standpoint. Like the Cyclone-4, the Zenit launchers are produced abroad. That doesn’t leave very much room for Brazil to develop its own booster technology.

Brazilian and Ukrainian officials have talked about upgrading the Cyclone-4 rocket into the Cyclone-5 in order to launch larger payloads. It’s unclear how a deal with Sea Launch might affect those plans, if at all.

Finally, Zenit boosters have been plagued by failures and low market penetration. Sea Launch has struggled and already went through bankruptcy once.  Any Brazilian investment in the program would likely be contingent on credible assurances about quality control and  Sea Launch’s commercial potential.


Source: Website Parabolic Arc - http://www.parabolicarc.com/

Comentário: Olha leitor não há ainda informações seguras de como realmente seria esta possível iniciativa com a SEA LAUNCH company, mas inicialmente eu temo que este foguete Zenit-SL3 seja tão tóxico quanto o CYCLONE-4, além do mais não me parece que se envolver com uma empresa que vai mal das pernas seja uma boa ideia, mas enfim... vamos aguardar os acontecimentos. Aproveitamos para agradecer ao leitor André C. Castro pelo envio desta notícia.

Comentários

  1. Vou pesquisar mais tarde apenas para ter certeza, mas pelo que sei o Zenit-SL3 Não utiliza proponentes Tóxicos ! ! !

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  2. Olá Duda!

    Não há duvidas que o a Família Zenit é mais seguro em termos de toxidade, pois o primeiro estagio é usado o motor RD-171 que deriva do RD-170 usando no potente foguete Energia que impulsionava o ônibus espacial soviético Buran.

    Zenit era um dos quatro booster usado no Energia, a família de motores RD-170 usa querosene como combustível e oxigênio liquido como oxidante.

    Outra variante o RD-180 é usado no Atlas V, RD-191 é usando na família de lançadores Angara, e o RD-151 impulsiona o sul-coreano Naro-1.

    No segundo estagio do Zenit é usado o RD-120 que também usa os mesmos combustíveis do RD-171.

    Já no terceiro estagio quase todas as versões do Zenit usa o Block DM-SL, como estagio satelitizador, é também usa os mesmos combustíveis dos estágios anteriores.

    Porém a versão Zenit 3F (G), usa como terceiro estagio o Fregat-SB, que usa dimetil-hidrazina assimétrica como combustível, altamente toxico, pelo que eu notei esta ultima versão só é usado para cargas cientificas russas.

    Uma das duvidas sobre a ACS , o Clyclone-4 usa motores RD-261 e RD-262, como todos que acompanham a ACS sabe que usam combustíveis tóxicos,mas a questão que mais me chama a atenção é que todos esses motores são produzidos pela Russa NPO Energomash, e a Ucrânia esta sobre embargo Russo, Os americanos com Atlas V já esta correndo para substituir o RD-180, pois a Russia só vai entregar os motores que estão no contrato, e não ira fornecer mais.


    Não vou colocar aqui questões ideológicas,que cercam Ucrânia, Brasil e Russia, mas por questões econômicas creio que o Zenit traria mais benefícios para o Brasil do que a Clyclone-4.

    É tudo muito complicado se tratando de ACS e SeaLaunch, ambas empresas estão passando por momentos nadas animadores.

    Abraços.





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  3. Acho que isso podera mesmo ir adiante. Digo isso sabendo que nosso governo tem muita intimidade com paises com alguma ou total indole socialista. Glonass, ACS, CBERS...

    Acordos com paises nao socialistas que parecem ter algum futuro, creio que somente mesmo o VLM... e mesmo assim o desejo parece ser maior por parte dos Suecos e dos Alemaes do que do nosso governo.

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  4. Lá vai o Brasil torrar mais dinheiro com lançadores estrangeiros... já não basta o quanto foi jogado fora com aquela porcaria ucraniana?

    Enquanto isso, nossos lançadores continuam só papel.

    Tem momentos que penso que isso é feito de propósito pela Rússia, para que não desenvolvamos nossos próprios lançadores e concorrer com eles.

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