KOUROU, French Guiana -- It must be one of the best-protected sites in South America. To the north is the ocean, full of devious currents and deadly sharks. To the south is dense rain forest, unforgiving to those who enter unprepared. The site's most important buildings are ringed with electronic fencing whose jolt may do more than just hurt. On and behind those fences are layers of rolled barbed wire. And for anyone still intent on mischief there's the French Foreign Legion to consider.

The Centre Spatial Guyanais, or Guiana Space Center, is a high-tech marvel in a relatively remote and underdeveloped land. Handling over 50 percent of today's commercial satellite launches, it is the big boy on that block. Other locations that compete for this billion-dollar business include America's Cape Canaveral, the Russian-run Baikanur and Plesetsk Cosmodromes, China's Taiyuan Satellite Launching Center and Sea Launch, an upstart company that launches in the Pacific from a floating platform. Also, there's Japan's Tanegashima Space Center, site of the successful H-2A lift-off on Aug. 29. However, that site has a limited launch season, in part to avoid conflicts with fishing interests, and will find it a tough challenge to grab any significant share of the satellite-launch business.

The CSG Spaceport occupies a 900-sq. km chunk of coastal French Guiana, an overseas "departement" of France once primarily known for its notoriety as a penal colony. Political factors influenced the spaceport's establishment in the late 1960s: France was determined to have a space program independent of American or Russian control, but had to give up its Algerian testing range after 1967. New locations such as Trinidad, Somalia and Polynesia were considered, but in the end French Guiana was chosen. It was sparsely populated (good for security and safety), did not experience hurricanes or earthquakes, was under French control and, best of all, was close to the Equator -- scientifically and economically the best place for launches.