Beal will not abandon Guyana for Sombrero Island - Spoede By Gitanjali Singh Stabroek News June 14, 2000 Guyana might very well have been Beal Aerospace Technologies' only real option to establish the world's first private commercial spaceport, but Beal Vice-President, David Spoede, denies this. What Spoede did say, however, was that the company had no intention of abandoning Guyana in favour of Sombrero Island as the latter was not "sufficiently superior" to Guyana. Spoede also said that it was unlikely that the British government would grant Beal permission to launch rockets from Sombrero Island, a British dependent territory. "The UK government has not given any indication that it is willing to take any action on Sombrero, either pro or con," Spoede said this week. SeaLaunch, a joint-venture satellite operation recently changed its location for its seaport from the UK overseas territory of the Cayman Islands, to San Diego, California. This was reportedly because the company could not get the British government to make any decision on the project despite significant lobbying by SeaLaunch in the UK itself and the operation would have had to come under UK oversight. Beal Aerospace had initially been keen on Sombrero Island and had entered into an agreement with the Anguillan administration to use the island. However the environmental impact assessment led to much criticisms over the proposed venture and the British government has not given the nod for the project to move ahead. During the negotiations with the government, Beal had indicated that it had options in Brazil and Florida as alternatives to Guyana but Stabroek News had questioned whether the company was bluffing and whether its only real option was Guyana thereby strengthening this country's negotiating position in the much maligned deal. Spoede told Stabroek News that a senior delegation from Brazil had visited Beal after the US and Brazilian governments had signed a treaty to allow for the transfer of satellite technology to Brazil. "The Brazilians sent a very senior delegation to visit us and other launch companies a few months ago to try to attract launch business to Alcantara," Spoede stated. Alcantara is located closer to the equator than Guyana (two degrees south) and construction was largely complete. Spoede said the Brazilians were starting to work on a major pier/docking facility which would conclude most of the major infrastructure construction. "Alcantara's pricing has also been fairly well known, that is, between US$500,000 to US$2 million per launch, depending upon the services requested. Those prices are turn-key prices. That is Alcantara will provide all services, including construction, housing, food, radar, vehicle assembly facilities, processing facilities for the satellite payloads [a very expensive facility] and so forth," Spoede said, noting that this information was readily available on the internet. Asked why the company did not choose Brazil to launch rockets over Guyana where it would have to invest US$100 million initially, Spoede asserted: "Yes, we did decide to pursue Guyana at this time rather than Brazil, for a number of reasons. However, that certainly did not nor does it make Guyana our only option." He likened the issue to shopping for a new car and selecting one, though it did not mean that there were no other choices. Observers argue that Beal wanted its own spaceport because of the potentially lucrative deals to be made from providing the complete range of services in the launching of satellites for other companies. As to Florida, Spoede said that his company will launch satellites from Cape Canaveral no matter what happens with the investment in Guyana. He said Beal has an agreement with the US Air Force to use Launch Pad 15 at Cape Canaveral for its launches and an official of the firm was currently at Canaveral working on the project. "We will launch from Canaveral even if we are also launching from Guyana because there are some US government payloads that have to be launched from the US for security reasons. Examples are classified military payloads," Spoede stated. And he said that if the company had to, it could launch all payloads from Canaveral, even commercial ones. "However, Guyana does offer benefits as a launch site because of its proximity to the equator. That proximity is not indispensable, rather, it is economically advantageous." Follow the goings-on in Guyana in Guyana Today