GAO: The DSN is actually falling apart Options

[Guest_BruceMoomaw_*]

http://www.gao.gov/docsearch/abstract.php?rptno=GAO-06-445

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

I agree, Kourou is strategically important, it would certainly be defended. The EU has very limited ability to project military power (except for Britain), but it doesn't sound like this is an issue to worry about.

Launching from the equator is energy efficient, but that's not really the important issue. It's all about getting comsats into geosychronous orbit, without having to develop expensive and complex technology to change orbital plane. That's where the money is too. Kourou is all about skimming the cream off the commercial satellite business, with cheap simple technology. An elegant solution, but very special-purpose.

Changing the plane of an orbit is complex and energy-expensive, and at the moment Arianespace lacks the technology to do those kinds of maneuvers. The Soviet Block-L stage was the first step taken there, but it could only supply one impulse -- which is enough to give you interplanetary escape or to give you a very eccentric high orbit like Molniya, but not enough to circularize a high orbit or change the plane. You really need something like Centaur or Fregat or Briz stages, which I imagine are full of closely guarded engineering secrets.

The ESA must be working on this problem, for the European ISS supply ship. But getting from Kourou to the highly-inclined ISS orbit seems like a bad idea. Military and Earth-resource satellites, which ideally have near-polar orbits, must be almost impossible (thus the remaining tie to the Soyuz system).