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Aviation History
2003
2003 - 1231.PDF
ADVERTISER CONTACTS - P7 EDITORIAL +44 (20) 8652 3842 Quadrant House, The Quadrant, Sutton, Surrey SM2 5AS, UK Fax +44 (20) 8652 3840 email flight.mternational@rbi.co.uk Editor Murdo Morrison +44 (20) 8652 4395 murdo.morrison@rbi.co.uk Editorial Assistant Andrew Costerton +44 (20) 8652 3835 andron.costerton@rbi.co.uk News Editor Andrew Doyle +44 (20) 8652 3096 andrew.doyie@rbi.co.uk Commercial Aviation Editor Max Kingsley-Jones +44 (20) 8652 3825 max.kingsleYJones@rbi.co.uk Defence Aviation Editor Stewart Penney +44 (20) 8652 3834 ste>iart.penney@rbi.co.uk Operations/Safety Editor David Learmount +44 (20) 8652 3845 david.learmount@rbi.co.uk Business Editor Alexander Campbell +44 (20) 8652 3990 alexander.campbell@rbi.co.uk Business & General Aviation Editor Kate Sarsfield +44 (20) 8652 3885 kate.sarsfield@rbi.co.uk Reporter Justin Wastnage +44 (20) 8652 3863 justin.mstnage@rbi.co.uk Technical Reporter Michael Phelan +44 (20) 8652 3843 michael.phelan@rbi.co.uk Spaceflight Correspondent Tim Furniss +44 (1237) 471960 tim@spaceport.co.uk Senior Technical Artist Giuseppe Picarella +44 (20) 8652 W54joe.picarella@rbi.co.uk Editorial Artist Tim Brown +44 (20) 8652 8043 tim.brown@rbi.co.uk EUROPE/MIDDLE EAST European Editor Christina Mackenzie +33 (1) 64 23 68 89 christina.mackenzie@rbi.co.uk Israel Correspondent Arie Egozi +972 (3) 9413132 AMERICAS Washington DC Office Fax +1 (703) 836 8344 Americas Editor Graham Warwick +1 (703) 836 3448 graham.warmck@rbi.co.uk East Coast Editor Paul Lewis +1 (703) 836 3084 jpaul.lewis@rbi.co.uk West Coast Editor Guy Norris +1 (949) 252 8971 Fax +1 (949) 252 8972 guy.norris@rbi.co.uk Brazil Correspondent Jackson Fiores Jr +55 212439-6062 Fax +55 212349-6090 fubar@uol.com.br Canada Correspondent Brian Dunn ASIA/PACIFIC Singapore Office Fax +65 6789 7575 Regional Managing Editor Nicholas lonides +65 6780 4311 nichotas.ionides@rbi.co.uk Deputy Asia Editor Brendan Sobie +65 6780 4309 brendan.sobie@rbi.co.uk Regional Reporter Leithen Francis +65 6780 4314 leithen.francis@rbi.co.uk Australia Civil Aviation Correspondent Emma Kelly +61(8)92861724 Fax+61 (8) 92861724 emmajketty@bigpond.com Australia Military Aviation Correspondent Peter La Franco +61 (0) 419 246 620 Fax +61 (2) 62312795 nulka@ozemail.com.au EDITORIAL PRODUCTION Group Production Editor Graeme Osborn +44 (20) 8652 3828 Group Art Editor James Mason +44 (20) 8652 4994 Chief Sub-Editor Chris Thornton +44 (20) 8652 4997 Deputy Production Editor Jackie Thompson +44 (20) 8652 3850 Sub Editor Megan Turner +44 (20) 8652 3848 Photographer Mark Wagner +44 (20) 8944 5225 WWW.FLIGHTINTERNATI0NAL.COM Webmaster Sheena Buchanan +44 (20) 8652 4432 SUBSCRIPTIONS +44 (1444) 445454 rbl.subscrlptions@rbi.co.uk THE FLIGHT COLLECTION kim.hearn@rbi.co.uk © and Database Rights 2003 Reed Business Information Ltd. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission in writing of the publishers J--\j J online service at www.rati.com, contains the full text of Flight r^m. International and Airline Businessmen 1996. Full text of the magazines can also be found online with Lexis-Nexis, Dialogue, FT Profile, IAC and Reuters. Editor Kieran Daly +44 (20) 8652 3837 Reed Business Information COMMENT Saving space The commercial launch industry both sides of the Atlantic is in a mess. But Europe could have more to lose if it does not get its act together Almost 80 years after Robert Goddard launch ed the first liquid-propellant rocket, and 35 years after Stanley Kubrik created 2001: A Space Odyssey, it is hard to comprehend the mess the space industry on both sides of the Atlantic has got itself into, requiring hundreds of millions of dollars of state support just to survive. The commercial airtransport industry can put some of the blame for its parlous condition on factors outside its control, including terror attacks and the SARS virus. But the commer cial space industry largely has only itself to blame. Overcapacity fuelled by over-optimism has brought satellite and launcher manufactur ers to the brink of extinction. The overambitious business plans of the telecommunications sec tor in the 1990s are mainly to blame, causing manufacturers to invest and expand when they should have been consolidating and streamlin ing like the rest of the aerospace industry. The crisis has come to a head, precipitated - Europe has a remedy to hand, and is making a merry mess of it in Europe, at least- by December's failure of the Ariane 5 ECA launcher on its first flight. The uprated booster is Arianespace's latest weapon in the intense competition for the commercial launch market - able to launch two large satel lites simultaneously and so undercut its US rivals. The failure has brought Europe's space plans tumbling to Earth, like a launch tower built of cards. In the USA, the collapse of the commercial satellite market has been cushioned by the growth in military space business. Manufactur ers that invested in new boosters to meet the expected boom in commercial demand have restructured their businesses around military launches, but still struggle to make money. As a consequence, the two major US launch providers, Boeing and Lockheed Martin, have been discussing combining their competing businesses into a joint venture to reduce costs. Europe does not provide Arianespace with a steady subsistence diet of military launches, and the loss-making company's commercial competitiveness is staked to the Ariane 5 ECA. The booster's failure, therefore, has had a fun damental effect on European space, bringing public attention to a crisis across the sector, and not just in launch vehicles. Deadlock on begin ning the Galileo navigation-satellite programme has simply compounded the problems. Europe's response to the Ariane failure is to "Europeanise" the programme, wresting control from France's cash-strapped space agency CNES. If ministers approve the rescue plan this week, the European Space Agency will take over responsibility for Ariane development and EADS will become the single prime contractor, selling ready-to-fly launchers to Arianespace. ESA will pick up most of the cost to redesign and requalify the Ariane 5 ECA, EADS has agreed to cut the launcher's price by 30%, and governments will cover Arianespace's over heads until the company is profitable. This may reek of subsidy, but is little different to the situation in the USA, where the US Air Force helped pay for development of the latest launchers from Boeing and Lockheed Martin, and is helping pay the companies' overheads, at least until the commercial market recovers. The USA should not complain too loudly about Europe rescuing Arianespace. Nor should Europe look too enviously at the flow of defence research, development and procure ment dollars into the US space industry. It has a remedy, and is making a merry mess of it. In the absence of a strong military market, it is civil projects like Galileo on which Europe's space industry will depend. Dismissed as unnecessary duplication by the USA, Galileo is Europe's alternative to the global positioning system. The project has been mired in contro versy from the outset, but has persevered for one compelling reason. Some time in the future, position, velocity and timing information from satellites will be fundamental to how we live - and Brussels does not want the infrastructure of everyday European life to depend on a US- owned and controlled constellation. Galileo is a far-sighted technological project, but near-sighted political thinking threatens it with extinction. First Germany and Italy fought over who controls it. Now Spain is blocking the release of ESA funding because it objects to the German and Italian agreement to share programme control. Galileo must begin soon, or Europe will lose its orbital slots. And if Europe loses Galileo, it will lose more than indepen dence from GPS. It will lose a programme, jointly funded by ESA and the European Union, that could be the model for future civil space ini tiatives. It will lose a programme that the European space industry needs, badly. Or it will forfeit the space race, perhaps forever. SEE HEADLINES P7, BUSINESS P25, AND SPACEFLIGHT P29 wvyw.fliqhtinternational.com FLIGHT INTERNATIONAL 27 MAY - 2 JUNE 2003 5
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