Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. has received a contract to supply Sea Launch — an international consortium — with liquid oxygen (LOX), liquid nitrogen (LIN), bulk helium (BHe) and high-pressure gaseous nitrogen (GAN) and the associated cryogenic delivery system for launching commercial payloads into space from a semi-submersible platform. An assembly and command ship will serve as a floating rocket assembly factory and control center for the sea-based satellite launches in the Pacific Ocean.
Air Products will begin supplying liquid and gaseous product for
18 separate launches which are currently scheduled to take place between
October 1998 and December 2001. On average, each launch campaign will require 600 tons of LOX, 440 tons of LIN, over one million standard cubic feet of BHe, and 16,000 pounds of GAN which will be loaded onto the command ship and launch platform at Sea Launch’s Long Beach, Calif. operations center during a limited delivery window.
Air Products will supply the LOX and LIN for the launches from both its El
Segundo and Santa Fe Springs, Calif. air separation plants; BHe from its Long Beach, Calif. facility; and GAN from its mobile pumping units at 6,000 psig. The LOX will act as the oxidant for the launch rocket’s kerosene propellant while the LIN will provide pre-cooling and drying of the launch platform and command ship as a pressurizing agent and process gas, respectively.
Commenting on the contract, Bruce E. Snyder, marketing manager in Air
Products’ General Industries Group, said, “For over 30 years, we have supplied
the rocket propellant requirements for all of the National Aeronautics and
Space Administration’s space shuttles. Now, as Sea Launch enters the
commercial satellite launching market, we are pleased to supply the private
sector with the industrial gases to help them meet their demanding launch
needs.”
With the power to place up to five tonnes payloads into geo-synchronous
transfer orbit, Sea Launch was created by an international partnership of the
world’s leading aerospace and shipping companies — Boeing Commercial Space
Company (Seattle, Wash.), RSC Energia (Moscow, Russia), NPO Yuzhnoye
(Dnepropetrovsk, Ukraine), and Kvaerner Maritime a.s. (Oslo, Norway). Boeing
serves as overall system integrator, providing customer support, fairing and
adapter design, spacecraft integration and mission operations.
Air Products has had a long association with the aerospace industry,
including existing industrial gas contracts with Boeing in the Puget Sound,
Wash. area and Boeing Helicopter Division in Philadelphia, as well as a long-
standing association with the federal government and prime contractors.
Air Products and Chemicals, Inc. is an international supplier of
industrial gases and related equipment, and selected chemicals. An active
participant in Responsible Care(R) initiatives, Air Products is a leader in
safety performance and is the first industrial gas company in the U.S. to have
successfully completed a third-party Management Systems Verification of its
environmental, health and safety processes. With corporate headquarters in
eastern Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley, near Allentown, Air Products has sales
approaching $5 billion, operations in 30 countries and more than 16,000
employees around the globe.
