August 11, 1998
State Dept. Halts a Pioneering Boeing-Russian Space Venture
By WILLIAM J. BROAD
Worried that sensitive aerospace data were being transferred overseas, the State Department has suspended all work between Boeing and its Russian and Ukrainian partners in a pioneering venture that would fire rockets into space from a floating platform at sea.
A State Department official said the department was working with the Defense Department and was passing along the results to the Customs and Justice Departments, which are looking into whether Boeing's transfers broke any American laws. Neither Boeing nor the government would spell out the nature of the offense that prompted the suspension, and it was unclear whether the trouble was more procedural than substantial.
The Boeing-led venture is known as Sea Launch. It seeks to adapt Ukrainian and Russian rocket technologies to tap an emerging market for the lofting of hundreds of communication satellites into orbit.
Boeing characterizes the work as turning swords into plowshares. Its Ukrainian partner, the Yuzhnoye design bureau and Yuzhmash production plant, once made the Soviet Union's deadliest missile, the SS-18.
A recent investigation in Washington over whether American aerospace companies aided Chinese rocket makers has brought the Boeing venture and similar endeavors under close scrutiny.
The suspension took place on July 27 and forced up to 40 Russian and Ukrainian engineers to leave the venture's home base in Long Beach, Calif., Timothy L. Dolan, a Boeing spokesman, said on Monday. Dolan had no estimate of how long the suspension might last or whether it would delay the sea rocket's inaugural launching.
"We're putting all our efforts into working with State to get these matters resolved," he said. "We want the suspension to be as brief as possible."
But a government official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, said: "This is a big project. We would not suspend it unless there were serious concerns."
Dolan said Sea Launch was responsible for about 10,000 jobs in Ukraine and Russia.
"It's very important from that standpoint," he said. "It's very good for economic stability in that region. And it's a program for which there was no existing template. Few of us have walked this way before."
The suspension imposed without public announcement and was first reported on Saturday in The Washington Post.
The State Department suspended Boeing's technical assistance agreement, a federal official said on Monday. This plan, agreed to by Boeing and the government in April 1995, spelled out the rules by which the company would work with foreigners while protecting sensitive data.
A new plan is now being worked out, Boeing and federal officials said.
Space experts said that the incident appeared to be part of a pattern of tightening in matters of national security, prompted mainly by the Chinese disclosures.
"Over the past few years, the climate has been to try to make these joint ventures work, with only secondary emphasis on concerns about technology transfer," said John M. Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute, at George Washington University. "Now the pendulum is swinging back to more of a balance between economic and security interests."
The mystery in this case is that Russians and Ukrainians are highly regarded as rocket makers, their work at times considered superior to that of the United States, especially their efficient engines. In contrast, Chinese rocketry is considered inferior.
Charles P. Vick, a rocket expert at the Federation of American Scientists, a private group in Washington, said the trouble might have arisen because of integration problems in Sea Launch's rocket, the Zenit.
Vick said that the Ukrainian rocket had flown out of Russia in a version with two stages but never with three, which is how Sea Launch wants it to fly for greater lifting power. Boeing's mistake, he said, may have been in supplying information to help tie an additional stage to the existing Zenit, a process that can be technically daunting. Boeing is an expert integrator.
"The security for these kinds of things has increased dramatically," Vick said. "The question is how far this goes before we start hurting ourselves" with broken promises and missed opportunities.
The team's Zenit rocket was originally scheduled for its first launching in October, Dolan said, but that date was recently pushed back to early 1999 by the satellite customer in a delay unrelated to the current investigation. The rocket's rise with a communication satellite from a floating platform in the Pacific would be a space-age first.
Copyright 1998 The New York Times Company
|
NEWSLETTER
|
| Join the GlobalSecurity.org mailing list |
|
|
|
