TECHNOLOGY-CARIBBEAN: Rocket Launch on Hold

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Bert Wilkinson

GEORGETOWN, Oct 29 1999 (IPS) - It does not seem that a commercial satellite will blast off from an American rocket launching pad in northwestern Guyana anytime soon following mounting opposition from environmentalists.

Beal Aerospace Technologies Inc, a Texas-based company was planning to build a 75 million- dollar rocket manufacturing facility in St Croix in the U.S Virgin Islands from where it would send rockets for final assembly in Guyana and then fire them into space for commercial clients paying between 75 and 125 million dollars per launch.

Observers say from all indications the plan was an excellent one as launch pads worldwide are booked solid months in advance and the 50 billion-dollar industry has room for takers.

If everything had worked as planned, the project would certainly have leap-frogged the English-speaking Caribbean into the space age, observers say.

But so far there have been mostly stumbling blocks in the way of Beal Aerospace.

The latest word from St Croix is that environmentalists are stepping up their action against the presence of the company. In fact, Dennis McKinney, Director of the St Croix Environmental Association is preparing a lawsuit to stop the deal, while rich Americans and Europeans claiming to have already escaped life’s daily hassles back home, are guarding their new found ‘peace’ on the Caribbean island.

They argue that the intended site would ruin an environmental and historical enclave containing relics from the slave era. But Beal says the site is a garbage dump and they could make better use of it.

In the meantime, authorities in Guyana are watching the developments closely as the government had high hopes for this investment deal.

Guyana was chosen because of its location. Its proximity to the equator allows companies to send greater payloads into space, hence their choice of this English-speaking South American Republic on the continent’s northeastern shoulder.

If the St Croix project is scrubbed it might well mean that a greater level of assembly might be required at the Guyana end and the U.S. State Department is not expected to approve this as Guyana is not on the list of countries earmarked for such transfer of technology..

Originally, the company had planned to do 90 percent of the assembly work at the St Croix plant, then just slap the few remaining components together in Guyana where it would be ready for launching.

“They may have to get into a larger assembly project than planned because all they would have done in Guyana if the manufacturing plant is in the Virgin Islands, was to mate the few components together and get ready to fire it from the site, but if the Virgin Islands project fails then it could get more complicated, ” Prime Minister, Samuel Hinds told IPS.

” It would bring tremendous benefits to Guyana, but there will be greater concern about the whole project as far as the spread of such technology is concerned, ” says Hinds, a Canadian-trained engineer who in 1997 served as president of Guyana.

Despite his concern, Hinds says his government and Beal are preparing to sign at least a provisional agreement by late November.

Months of negotiations had been set back by the apparent insistence of Beal to purchase, instead of lease, a large area in the Waini District near the border with Venezuela.

Hinds, reluctant to say that Guyana had caved in under pressure, suggests only that important compromises were made on both sides and that the red carpet is there for Beal and related industries likely to follow.

Beal, founded by Texas billionaire Andy Beal, a commercial banker and mathematician, has also run into problems with conservationists in the UK and on the tiny Caribbean island of Anguilla,

a British dependency. It had asked London for permission to lease a portion of Sombrero Island, a wave-battered piece of rock and limestone, 38 miles off Anguilla. Sombrero was the first choice for the launch pad.

Home to the masked Bobby Bird, it is said to be the first area of land that ships see when approaching the region from Europe. It is largely deserted but the British Royal Society and the Anguilla Trust have teamed up to oppose Beal which wants to pave a few hectares of the island to carry out its project.

Like in St Croix, the government there is behind the project and was getting ready to hand the company a 49-year lease, collect 280,000 dollars in taxes and a further six million in other charges. But this was not to be.

Observers say Anguilla has a population of about 10,000 earning an average 7,300 dollars per year and could do with the investment.

Nearby St Croix, is being described as sinking under the strain of nearly 1 billion dollars in debt, including massive payroll shortfalls for government workers. That country too could do with the investment.

” It is going to be a good fight (to get the project started),” suggests Senator Anne Golden from St. Croix.

Meanwhile, Governor Charles Turnbull of St. Croix says the project would provide jobs for some 150 persons while the government of Guyana estimates that it could bring in a few thousand jobs, especially during the period of construction.