The satellite industry is ‘as stable as I have ever seen it in 20...

That doesn’t mean doing business is easy, he said: “I don’t think there’s too many other businesses out there that are one step away from catastrophe as this industry is.” Sea Launch saw disaster first hand when one of its rockets blew up at launch last January (CD Feb 1/07 p14). Sea Launch’s successful launch last week showed it overcame “two significant hurdles": regaining the company’s “launch tempo” and “understanding what the ocean is capable of.” That doesn’t mean it won’t happen again, he said. He’s satisfied with investigations conducted and improvements made, he said, but “anyone who says ‘never’ will be proven wrong.” This year, Sea Launch plans five more sea launches and three land launches, he said. It plans to launch another nine rockets in 2009 and ten in 2010. Sea Launch is also talking to NASA about providing a resupply service for the International Space Station, Peckham said. “As my predecessor used to say, why would NASA use their brightest minds to get toilet paper and run it up to the station?” Peckham isn’t concerned about rivals, he said. New launch systems mean innovation is occurring in the industry, he said. Meanwhile, there’s no point worrying about China’s reentry and India’s entry into the market because both are government-funded programs. “They're going to be in business whether there’s commercial business or not.”