It was an ambitious attempt to prove that Japan could build a rocket capable of carrying commercial payloads. On Feb. 4, the H-2A test rocket lifted flawlessly off its launchpad on Tanegashima Island, Japan's answer to Cape Canaveral, and tilted into the morning sky. But then one of the rocket's two satellites failed to deploy, sending engineers back to the lab.
Japan's space program has a long way to go. Plagued by cost overruns, technical glitches, and faltering public support at home, the program has yet to recover from two failed launches in 1998 and 1999. Now, it has become a prime target for the budget cuts demanded by reformist Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi. Under more pressure than ever to prove its worth, the space program is scrambling to come up with a business strategy that will allow it to pay its own way. Given its own problems and the woeful state of the satellite business worldwide, crafting a successful program could still prove a hard slog indeed.
Central to the strategy is the H-2A. The National Space Development Agency (NASDA) says the rocket is dependable enough to handle four-ton commercial and government satellite payloads. If NASDA succeeds in convincing commercial customers of that, the H-2A will move into competition with the array of rockets vaulted into space by the U.S. and Europe, not to mention China's Long March 3A and the Russian Proton. NASDA plans a total of 13 launches over the next five years--but has no commercial orders so far.
The overwhelming challenge is to find new business. NASDA sees potential beyond commercial and scientific launches. One prospect: lifting the Japanese government's first set of four spy satellites into orbit, starting early next year. Since North Korea's surprise launch of a ballistic missile over Japan in 1998, spy satellites represent the only portion of NASDA's budget set to increase--to $385 million through 2004.
But first, NASDA will have to learn to do more with less. The agency's overall budget was cut 12% this year to $1.4 billion. By 2003, NASDA will be forced to merge with two other state-run space programs. Space veterans were long accustomed to being cosseted. "The belt-tightening came as quite a shock," says Tatsuya Shirai, a senior engineer at NASDA's R&D office.
So NASDA is cutting wherever possible. For starters, the agency has canceled the costly H-2, the H-2A's predecessor, and abandoned plans to build a reusable space shuttle. NASDA has also jettisoned a policy of using only Japanese-made parts and started sourcing from U.S. contractors Boeing Inc. and ATK Thiokol Propulsion. In redesigning the H-2A, NASDA plans to cut production costs in half--to $65 million per rocket--by simplifying the engine and other key components. That would put NASDA's launch costs on a par with rivals like Boeing's Delta III, Lockheed Martin Corp.'s Atlas III, and Arianespace's Ariane IV rocket.
Even these cuts may not be enough to get Japan's space program back on track. NASDA hit its nadir in March, 2000, when a government audit castigated the agency for draining $18 billion from public coffers and racking up $14 billion in liabilities during its 30-year lifetime--without having developed a commercially viable rocket. Then back-to-back launch failures drove Hughes Space & Communications International and Loral Space Communications Ltd. to call off 20 planned satellite launches with NASDA. Those were the only launch contracts ever landed by Rocket System Corp., the marketing consortium set up by the government to sell NASDA's services.
Before it can chart a new course, NASDA will also have to cope with other down-to-earth concerns. Because of protests from local fishermen on southern Tanegashima Island, NASDA only has two 90-day launch windows a year. And demand for launch services is hitting rock bottom due to the global economic slowdown and the widely publicized failure of satellite-based ventures such as Iridium, the global phone foray. "Investors are running scared," says Hideki Kanayama, a space business consultant at CSP Japan Inc., a research unit of engineering giant Shimizu Corp.
Given all these problems, does it make sense for Japan even to have a space program? Advocates insist the research payoffs are essential to Japan's aerospace industry, which is still dwarfed by its U.S. and European rivals. "Japan doesn't want to spend the next 100 years on the sidelines," says Yoshihisa Tsuda, president of Rocket System. But neither does it need to spend billions on a program that to date has yielded so little.
By Chester Dawson in Tanegashima, Japan
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Copyright 2002 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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