Posted on 08/28/2002 5:40:56 AM PDT by Tancred
French Guiana Turns Satellite Site Tue Aug 27, 8:30 PM ET
By IAN JAMES, Associated Press Writer
KOUROU, French Guiana (AP) - The thunderous roar of a rocket often rattles windows in this corner of South America that is the world's busiest launch site for commercial satellites.
It has changed the face of Kourou which, before the inaugural launch in 1968, resembled other poor villages in the forested and sparsely populated region.
Today, the town is filled with condominiums, convenience stores and night clubs. New Renaults and Peugeots line the streets. And poor immigrants from Brazil, Suriname and Haiti come to the remote town on the Atlantic coast seeking a piece of the wealth.
"We are the big industrial center of French Guiana, this is clear," said Jean-Charles Vincent, Kourou director of Arianespace, the France-based company that runs the launch program.
The program employs about 1,600 people and generates spin-off jobs for thousands of others in French Guiana. Yet nearly one in five people in the French department is unemployed.
Officials from the space program say they also donate $6 million a year to community programs.
But the commercial satellite market has become sluggish on the back of a lagging telecommunications market and larger economic troubles following the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, officials say.
Arianespace, the commercial arm of the European Space Agency, lost money for the second year in 2001, reporting a loss of $176 million on sales of $736 million. Partly to blame was an Ariane-5 launch a year ago in which a satellite was lost. Since then, there have been two successful launches.
A launch scheduled for Tuesday was delayed until Wednesday after officials detected a problem in electrical links between the rocket and control equipment.
The newest and most powerful Ariane-5 rocket is to carry two European satellites in the launch: the Atlantic Bird 1 telecommunications satellite and the MSG-1 weather satellite.
The rocket held a payload of 7.2 tons. By the end of the year, the Europeans plan to strengthen the rocket to carry heavier and more sophisticated satellites, hauling up to 11 tons.
The European Space Agency also is to decide by the end of the year whether to launch satellites from Kourou on Russian Soyuz rockets, said Fernando Doblas, an agency representative.
If the Soyuz proposal takes hold, the Russian rockets — which carry lighter loads — could be soaring from Kourou by 2006, Doblas said.
No human has ever been launched into space from French Guiana, and there is no such formal proposal. But because the Soyuz can carry astronauts, it's possible humans could someday blast off from Kourou.
Last year, the space center launched 11 of the world's 16 commercial satellites into orbit, using Ariane-5 and the less powerful Ariane-4. There have been eight launches this year.
"The space center is everything for Kourou," said baker Chantal Anselm, who sells French pastries to space center employees.
France chose the site 5 degrees north of the equator partly because the area was so sparsely populated. The base stretches across 290 square miles of coastal forests and wetlands.
It competes for business with launch sites in the United States, Kazakstan and the Pacific.
But some complain they've seen little benefit from the program.
"Nobody knows where the money goes," said 34-year-old Paul Kwasiba, an unemployed plumber. "Some get jobs, some don't."
In 1970, shortly after the space center opened, 22 Kali'na Indian families living inside the danger zone agreed to move when officials promised beachfront land nearby.
Jean-Auberic Charles, 41, said he resents that families received less land than promised. Nevertheless, they now live in modest houses along the beach.
Another Kali'na man, 60-year-old Roger Francois, said he has no complaints about the launches, even though they make his house tremble. His walls bear a photograph of French President Jacques Chirac and a poster of a rocket in flight.
"I'm proud it's launched from the Amerindians' land," he said.
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