Upon arrival, the Odyssey's captain will flip the switch on a sophisticated system involving both GPS and dynamic positioning, which will keep the ship within 10 meters of the imaginary line. Anxiously putting the three-stage rocket through an exhaustive preflight test, they and other Sea Launch crew members will soon embark on an 11-day voyage to an ocean site on the equator at 154 degrees west longitude, about 1,400 miles south of Hawaii. On the morning of my first visit late last summer, the Odyssey and the Commander are easily recognizable from miles away, thanks mostly to a Zenit rocket, which stands erect on the Odyssey's deck as a group of Russian and Ukrainian scientists pace back and forth beside it. (The Defense, Commerce, and State departments all exercise oversight on the project.) The partnership is designed to integrate the best of the two sides and their technologies, but the US government precludes them from sharing anything that might help the former Soviets develop their technical know-how. With four languages and two former adversaries in the mix, the collaboration has to overcome crossed linguistic wires and outdated Cold War bureaucratic hassles. The Russians and Ukrainians supply rockets and launch systems, the Norwegians manage the ships and navigation, and Boeing personnel oversee satellites, systems integration, and marketing. An unusual partnership involving Boeing Commercial Space, Russia's RSC Energia, the Ukraine's SDO Yuzhnoye/PO Yuzhmash, and Norway's Kvaerner Group, the international consortium is one of the first commercial endeavors to bring together veterans of the Soviet space industry and their Western counterparts. Sea Launch's ability to successfully blast satellites into orbit from midocean - four out of five tries by the end of last year - is unprecedented. Military vessels can launch missiles from their decks, but those never leave Earth's atmosphere.
In place of a warhead, the Zenit is topped with a $210 million communications satellite that was designed, in part, to extend the Internet into space. But instead of an army inside its belly, there's a 200-foot-long Zenit-3SL rocket, a modified version of a Soviet-era intercontinental ballistic missile. An elongated hangar and a beaklike crane jut out from one end, making the ship look like a postindustrial Trojan horse. Resting on two submarine-sized pontoons, the Odyssey's 10 elephantine legs stand 20 stories tall and support a deck the size of two football fields. Across the dock is its sister ship, the Odyssey, a mammoth deep-sea oil rig that has been converted into a waterborne rocket launchpad capable of sailing anywhere under its own power. On one side of the pier is the Sea Launch Commander, a 660-foot cargo vessel that, despite its conventional exterior, houses a rocket assembly plant and launch control center.
They are manned by the company's team of Russian and Ukrainian rocket scientists, American satellite experts, and Norwegian mariners, and specially equipped to blast satellites into orbit from a deepwater site on the equator. There at the end of Pier 16 - smack in the middle of a former US Navy base - is a floating Cape Canaveral of sorts, an extraordinary pair of vessels. Together, they slingshot satellites off a floating platform on the equator - and set the stage for a new kind of company, built on international brainpower.ĭrive along California's Long Beach Harbor, and as you pass the dozens of supertankers and container ships lining the shore, you'll have no trouble spotting Sea Launch's home port. Ships from Norway, rockets from Russia, techspertise from Seattle.