Texas company makes splash with plans for Caribbean spaceport

Web posted May 4, 1999

By James Anderson
Associated Press Writer

SOMBRERO ISLAND, Anguilla -- It's an audacious plan: Take over a desolate, wave-battered Caribbean island, launch commercial satellites and make a lot of money.

That's Texas entrepreneur Andy Beal's vision for Sombrero Island, a crusty patch of rock and limestone that is the first sight of land for many ships approaching the Caribbean from Europe.

Skeptics question the site choice. Over the years, rough seas and insistent salt spray have flattened boulders, carried away tombstones and destroyed buildings from a 19th-century mine that shipped phosphate to farmers in the U.S. Midwest.

And Sombrero's brittle coral rock is pocked with pits exposed to water below -- hardly ideal for a launch pad, critics say.

Beal Aerospace Technologies Inc. says Sombrero will work fine as a site to join the $50 billion commercial space industry. It plans to build a spaceport for a three-stage, 223-foot rocket similar in size to the European Space Agency's Ariane 5.

Officials see a windfall for Anguilla, a British territory of 10,000 people dependent on tourism. The local government has agreed to a 49-year lease of Sombrero, 38 miles north of Anguilla, if Britain approves.

But opponents, including Britain's influential Royal Society for the Protection of Birds, say Sombrero is a key nesting ground for Caribbean seabirds, including the masked booby.

They ridicule Beal's offer to find another bird sanctuary.

Beal's plan also has pitted Anguilla's government against those who warn that rocket launches would chase away tourists seeking peace.

``God help Anguilla if they decide to go elsewhere,'' said a former chief minister, Sir Emile Gumbs.

But the current local government chief, Hubert Hughes, contends many critics are wealthy expatriate landholders -- white Americans and Europeans among an overwhelmingly black population that earns on average about $2,700 a year.

``They have this attitude that the island shouldn't develop because they have come to live a quiet and peaceful life in their tropical paradise, in their little castles, and they don't see finding jobs for the people of Anguilla as a priority,'' Hughes said.

More than 50 commercial satellites were launched in the United States alone from 1995 through 1998, and most spaceports worldwide are booked.

Enter upstart Beal, created in 1997, which considers Sombrero ideal. A launch pad near the equator makes it easier to put payloads in certain orbits, it says. With open seas all around, launches won't endanger human settlements, Beal says.

British Virgin Islanders, however, question whether rocket exhaust and fuel spills could reach them 65 miles away.

Currently in development, the Frisco, Texas-based Beal's BA-2 rocket is designed to carry 13-ton payloads. Its first test launch is set for December 2000.

Ultimately, Beal plans 12 space shots annually in a market that charges $75 million to $125 million a time.

The company wants to pave over less than 10 acres of Sombrero's 90 acres for a launch pad, fuel storage, control buildings and airstrip.

Finance Minister Victor Banks said it could make Anguilla $6.1 million a year -- one-fifth its current budget -- including the lease starting at $280,000 a year.

``Here is an opportunity to do something with an island that has no value,'' Banks said.

Robert Harris, Britain's governor on Anguilla, said that Beal's technology appears sound and that a review might be completed by year's end.

``If Britain isn't satisfied, then the thing's not going to be built,'' Harris said. ``Indications are that that is not going to be the case.''

Sombrero's only residents, a handful of lighthouse keepers who spend weeks alone, consider Beal's vision for ``The Rock'' with disbelief.

Only by scrambling inside the lighthouse, perched atop 40-foot cliffs, did they survive hurricanes that have periodically swamped the island.

Beside the June-to-November hurricane season, ``ground seas'' reaching 60 feet can pound Sombrero. Lesser seas can stop boats from landing, sometimes for weeks.

A Beal vice president, David Spoede, said, ``We'll work around the weather in terms of launches.''

Anguilla's National Trust is trying to come up with an alternative use for the island. With its aging buildings and tombstones, old lighthouse and mining equipment, some say Sombrero is a ready-made museum.

``It really comes down to our cultural heritage,'' said the trust's executive director, Ijahnya Christian.

Banks, the finance minister, said few Anguillans seek out that heritage. ``I think that 95 percent of the people of Anguilla have never seen Sombrero,'' he said.