Proving that the big do indeed get bigger, Teledesic Corp. and Boeing Corp. on Tuesday finalized a deal that will make the aerospace giant an equity partner in the former's ambitious US$9 billion plan to launch the Internet skyward.
Boeing will invest up to US$100 million, granting it a 10-percent stake in the Bill Gates- and Craig McCaw-backed Teledesic. At the same time, Boeing will become the hub of the satellite-building and launch operations for Teledesic, tasks familiar to the Seattle-based aerospace company.
As the largest government and commercial aircraft company in the US, Boeing has a long history of building planes and other craft by working with government agencies and small and large subcontractors worldwide. The company will use the same tactics when it comes to designing and building satellites and securing launch vehicles, said Dave Ryan, Teledesic program manager for Boeing.
The deal does not mean that all the spoils in the effort to design, build, and launch more than 840 low-Earth-orbiting communications satellites will go to the Seattle area, said Russ Daggatt, Teledesic president. "Boeing is a large, systems engineering company that has a lot of experience in working with global industrial alliances. We want to take advantage of that," Daggatt said.
And Teledesic's plans to develop a new high-speed data and communications network that will orbit in space will need all the partners it can get. The company's schedule calls for sending up the satellites beginning in 2001 and for the network to be ready to transmit bits and bytes in 2002. To do this, Ryan estimates the operation will need to keep to a manufacturing schedule of producing 20 satellites per month - three or four every week.
Then there's a small matter of launch space, a growing commodity that will grow scarce come the millennium, said Dominick Barry, director of business development for Spaceport Systems International, a commercial launch firm that calls Vandenberg Air Force Base its home.
Launch vehicles - converted Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles such as the Russian SS-18 - are not a problem. It is the availability of the launch pad itself that will be an issue, mostly because of the positioning of the satellites. Teledesic and other low-Earth-orbiting satellites are polar, meaning they travel between the Earth's poles. By traveling this route - as opposed to a geosynchronus one that takes a trip around the equator - the satellites can better blanket the Earth. equator-traveling satellites serve the densely populated areas, said Dominick Barry, director of business development for Spaceport Systems International.
To attain the polar track, however, only one launch site is available - California's west-facing Vandenberg Air Force Base, where a satellite launched due south won't risk an accident over land.
Nonetheless, the Boeing deal will help Teledesic make its goal. "Boeing has a lot of resources at its disposal, and its presence lends a lot of credibility to the Teledesic project," said Barry.
