Now that all the ITAR controlled equipment has been pulled off the ships, and presumably accounted for, the State Department has signed off on letting the ships leave.
The entire (very short) article is located here.
The FarceBook group I'm a member of has been talking reunion and bon voyage party, so there might be a trip back to Sunny Kalifornia in the future.....
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What port will they operate from? They have no ice free ports except Siberia.
ReplyDeleteI don't know where they'll base it. I've heard either in Vladivostok, or possibly North Viet Nam.
DeleteY'all did good, all things considered!
ReplyDeleteThanks! It ran much smoother when Boeing was in charge. We bent over backwards to keep the customers happy, and they loved us.
DeleteWhen the Russians ran things, not so much.....
Holy smokes, I had no idea this even existed. I believe I may be more underinformed than I thought I was. ;-) Very neat idea and wickipedia entry is a bit thin on details but makes it look like a successful endeavor. Odd that they want to move it but I clearly don't understand any of the background. I'll have to do some readin' up now. Cool post, thanks.
ReplyDeleteSea Launch was originally started in the mid 1990's. Boeing owned 49% of it, although they dumped much more money into it. It worked well, and allowed a smaller rocket to put a heavier payload into Geosynchronous Transfer Orbit because of the launch location.
DeleteThere were some "issues" leading to a Chapter 11 bankruptcy filing in the middle of 2009.
Energia, one of the 4 partners, came in with a business plan and financing that the court found acceptable, and operations resumed in 2010.
T'was a whole different ballgame under the Russians, and we weren't treated very well.
They cut corners everywhere they could, including the quality of the food on the ships. As expected, morale went into the toilet, and after our shift was over, we made ourselves scarce to avoid getting hooked into working what was basically unpaid overtime.
Very sad end to an amazing project.