MirCorp was a commercial space company created in 1999 by space entrepreneurs and involving the Russian space program that successfully undertook a number of firsts in the business of space exploration by using the aging Russian space station Mir as a commercial platform. Its actions were highly controversial as it created a roadblock to the International Space Station in creating a viable, low cost alternative.
In terms of business development, the company was able to launch the era of space tourism by signing American businessman Dennis Tito to his launch contract. It also signed with television producer Mark Burnett (producer of the Survivor reality show) and with NBC, to produce a reality show "Destination Mir", where the winner would travel to space. And it also was able to sign other media, entertainment and commercial space research projects. MirCorp's CEOJeffrey Manber later stated, "We failed to survive but proved the business model, and in the long-term that will be just as important."
Background
The company was formed as an idea by telecommunications and space investor Walt Anderson and space advocate Rick Tumlinson. Russia lacked the funds to upgrade and save the space station, and had concluded it had no choice but to deorbit the station. Several ideas were floated, including one to hand over the Mir to the United Nations. The idea proposed by Anderson and Tumlinson was to save the Mir space station by raising it to a higher orbit to gain time and developing a "space tether" to supply power to keep the space station in orbit while further funds were raised. This plan was never implemented by the MirCorp team, as the United States government barred the export of the space tether technology until after the deorbit of the space station was announced.
The founders recruited space entrepreneur Jeffrey Manber, who had helped negotiate the first contract between the Soviet Union and NASA on space interests, and had also represented the huge Russian space company RSC Energia in its American dealings during the 1990s. Manber created the business model for the venture which involved proving that space could be a platform for media and entertainment, as well as serious space research.
In February 2000, the agreement between the Russian space company RSC Energia, which had the commercial rights to the space station, and MirCorp, was announced in London. Present at the press conference was MirCorp CEO Jeffrey Manber and RSC Energia General Director Yuri P. Semenov. Also present at the press conference was co-investor Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria, and Andrew Eddy, recruited from the Canadian Space Agency.
As a result of the company's backing, the RSC Energia officials boosted the Mir into a higher orbit, thus postponing the deorbit that had been agreed to by the Russian Space Agency in discussions with NASA.[citation needed] Manber later explained that the business model for the venture was fashioned after that of air travel, where Boeing may build the planes but commercial agents such as United or British Airways sells the tickets. The intent was to have marketing experts sell the space program, and let the space manufacturer, RSC Energia, focus on the safe operations of the station. Manber explained that in the aviation world, it was not the manufacturers who sold the tickets; it was the marketing companies. MirCorp and RSC Energia were the first to use this strategy for space exploration, which has emerged again more recently with Sir Richard Branson's announcement to market Scaled CompositesStarShip suborbital flights.
It was also unusual as an international venture with Russia in the 1990s in that the Russians were given the operating control of the venture, reflecting the political realities of the importance of the Mir to the Russian society.[citation needed] RSC Energia owned 60% of MirCorp, whereas the financial investors controlled 40%. Investor Anderson explained that he was comfortable letting the Russians run the space component, and his team would run the business. Anderson said, "A lot of this venture is based on trust, pure and simple."[citation needed] Anderson was not so sanguine regarding NASA and he used the media interest in the venture to launch many critical comments towards NASA, the planned International Space Station and even the foreign policies of the American government.[citation needed] Anderson selected Holland as the headquarters for the company since he believed the country was far more ethical than that of his own.[citation needed]
Regardless of the controversy, a new era in space exploration was inaugurated on April 4, 2000, when the Soyuz TM-30, known as the MirCorp mission, carried two crew members, Sergei Zalyotin and Alexandr Kaleri, to the Mir space station.
The two man crew returned the dormant Mir space station to life, located the source of the leak, repaired the leak, and carried on commercial and basic research. Zalyotin admitted to being nervous when the hatch door was opened, not sure what exactly would be found in the station. While the mission was being undertaken, the management of MirCorp was able to announce a number of commercial contracts, including that of the agreement with NBC and Mark Burnett. NBC even began running commercials promoting its upcoming "Destination Mir" reality show.
On June 16, on schedule, the mission came to an end. It had lasted 73 days and the crew returned in good health. Behind the scenes, the MirCorp management and Energia space officials were both surprised at the technical and commercial success, but worried that the Mir would soon have to be shut for good. On June 19, 2000, a press conference was held at the Russian Mission Control Center TSUP, at which the MirCorp president, along with RSC Energia head of International Development Alexander Derechin, announced that Dennis Tito, a former US space program engineer, who founded Wilshire, Associated—the Santa Monica, California-based company that revolutionized the field of investment management consulting, was MirCorp's first "Citizen Explorer".
Tito would subsequently withstand intense pressure brought on him and on Russian space officials by NASA not to undertake his mission. The NASA administrator publicly rebuked MirCorp for their efforts during Congressional hearings.[citation needed] Tito went forward with his training and eventually, with the deorbit of the Mir, he transferred his efforts to fly on the International Space Station. With the help of RSC Energia, MirCorp and later Space Adventures, he became the first space tourist to visit the ISS.
Dennis Tito
Dennis Tito was not the first "amateur" to blast into space. Previously, Japanese TV journalist Toyohiro Akiyama had flown on a commercial mission to the Russian space station, Tito was the first to pay for his own ticket, thus earning the designation of the first space tourist.
The Tito mission took place in the context of the controversy over the decision by the major Russian space company RSC Energia to work with MirCorp to create a commercial space station.
NASA immediately cancelled planned high level meetings between the Russian and US space agencies. Their legal team declared that a bill would be sent for any damages caused by the flight of Tito. Suits and counter-suits were threatened in both Russian and American courts. The United Nations sought to intervene, to no avail. [citation needed]
Koptev stated: "In November 2000, we informed NASA that we planned to launch Tito to [Alpha]...".[citation needed] He did not recall NASA expressing any negative reaction at that time. That situation changed, however, as the two space powers entered into a standoff in which neither would back down.
Koptev, the head of the Russian Space Agency, later told reporters: “Our legal advisors told us that the fine for any misdoing aboard the station, including damage to morale, could exceed the money that we had earned from Tito's contract, and could even exceed Russia's space budgetary capacity."[citation needed]
The NASA administrator implied that Dennis Tito was not an American patriot,[citation needed] and U.S. Sen. Barbara Mikulski of Maryland compared the behavior of all those concerned with the space tourist program to that of "pimps".[citation needed]
In addition, on several occasions the Russians claimed that they had not been reimbursed by MirCorp for services.[citation needed] MirCorp founder Walt Anderson was later charged with federal tax evasion, plead guilty, and was sentenced to nine years in federal prison.
Aftermath
By the end of the 73-day MirCorp mission, the company enjoyed a $70 million backlog in customer orders. A decision was made by Russia, however, to yield to the American pressures and deorbit the station.[1] In addition, the two financial investors were late on their payments and new investors were frightened off by the negative publicity from NASA.[citation needed]
The company remained in business even after the Mir was destroyed. It handled the efforts of *NSync boy band Lance Bass's unsuccessful effort to fly to space, as well as that of former NASA official Lori Garver (former Deputy NASA Administrator), who also sought to use advertising as a means to be a space tourist, before finally closing the doors.
MirCorp attempted to demonstrate that a private company could manage a manned space station; that a business model could be developed around an orbiting space station. However, its failure to produce sufficient revenue to pay its modest expenses and the imprisonment of one of its founders for tax evasion indicate that its efforts were unsuccessful.
Today[when?] the situation has changed. Former NASA administrator Michael D. Griffin has voiced full support for commercialization of manned space activities and the Russian operated space tourist program is fully accepted by the United States.[citation needed]
A space station, also known as an orbital station or an orbital space station, is a spacecraft capable of supporting a human crew in orbit for an extended period of time. It lacks major propulsion or landing systems. Stations must have docking ports to allow other spacecraft to dock to transfer crew and supplies.
Space tourism is human space travel for recreational purposes. There are several different types of space tourism, including orbital, suborbital and lunar space tourism. To date, orbital space tourism has been performed only by the Russian Space Agency. Work also continues towards developing suborbital space tourism vehicles. This is being done by aerospace companies like Blue Origin and Virgin Galactic. In addition, SpaceX announced in 2018 that they are planning on sending space tourists, including Yusaku Maezawa, on a free-return trajectory around the Moon on the Starship.
PAO S. P. Korolev Rocket and Space Corporation Energia, also known as RSC Energia, is a Russian manufacturer of ballistic missile, spacecraft and space station components. The company is the prime developer and contractor of the Russian crewed spaceflight program; it also owns a majority of Sea Launch. Its name is derived from Sergei Korolev, the first chief of its design bureau, and the Russian word for energy.
Dennis Anthony Tito is an American engineer and entrepreneur, most widely known as the first space tourist to fund his own trip into space. In mid-2001, he spent nearly eight days in orbit as a crew member of ISS EP-1, a visiting mission to the International Space Station. This mission was launched by the spacecraft Soyuz TM-32, and was landed by Soyuz TM-31.
Talgat Amangeldyuly Musabayev is a Kazakh test pilot and former cosmonaut who flew on three spaceflights. His first two spaceflights were long-duration stays aboard the Russian space station Mir. His third spaceflight was a short duration visiting mission to the International Space Station, which also carried the first paying space tourist Dennis Tito. He retired as a cosmonaut in November 2003. Since 2007 he has been head of Kazakhstan's National Space Agency, KazCosmos.
Private spaceflight is spaceflight or the development of spaceflight technology that is conducted and paid for by an entity other than a government agency.
Soyuz TM-30, also known as Mir EO-28, was a Soyuz mission, the 39th and final human spaceflight to the Mir space station. The crew of the mission was sent by MirCorp, a privately funded company, to reactivate and repair the station. The crew also resupplied the station and boosted the station to an orbit with a low point (perigee) of 360 and a high point (apogee) of 378 kilometers. The boost in the station's orbit, which was done by utilizing the engines of the Progress M1-1 and M1-2 spacecraft, made transit between Mir and the International Space Station impossible, as desired by NASA. The mission was the first privately funded mission to a space station.
Walter C. Anderson is an American telecommunications entrepreneur, philanthropist, investor, and space advocate.
The Soyuz-TM crew transports were fourth generation (1986–2002) Soyuz spacecraft used for ferry flights to the Mir and ISS space stations. It added to the Soyuz-T new docking and rendezvous, radio communications, emergency and integrated parachute/landing engine systems. The new Kurs rendezvous and docking system and the new KTDU-80 propulsion module permitted the Soyuz-TM to maneuver independently of the station, without the station making "mirror image" maneuvers to match unwanted translations introduced by earlier models' aft-mounted attitude control.
Rick Tumlinson is the co-founder of several space companies and non-profits including Deep Space Industries, Orbital Outfitters, the New Worlds Institute, and the Space Frontier Foundation. He is an active space entrepreneur and space activist. He has testified on space-related topics before the U.S. Congress six times since 1995. In 2004, Space News magazine listed Tumlinson as one of the 100 most influential people in the space industry, stating:
Part agitator, part operator, Tumlinson has spent the past two decades advocating human exploration and settlement of the solar system and has been a strong advocate of creating commercial opportunities at the Russian Mir space station and at the international space station.
PlanetSpace was a privately funded Chicago-based rocket and space travel project founded by Geoff Sheerin, CEO of the Canadian Arrow corporation and owner is Dr. Chirinjeev Kathuria
Jeffrey Manber is regarded as one of the pioneering commercial space entrepreneurs. As CEO of NanoRacks, from 2009, Manber has steered the growth of the first company to own and market its own hardware and services on board the International Space Station. Manber has been involved in several of the key breakthrough commercial space projects, principally those revolving around the commercialization of space assets as well as the integration of the Russian space industry into major space programs, including that of the International Space Station. Manber is believed to be the only American to be an official part of the Russian space corporation, RSC Energia, during their privatization period of the 1990s.
Soyuz 7K-OKS is a version of the Soyuz spacecraft and was the first spacecraft designed for space station flights. Its only crewed flights were conducted in 1971, with Soyuz 10 and Soyuz 11.
The Soyuz-T spacecraft was the third generation Soyuz spacecraft, in service for seven years from 1979 to 1986. The T stood for transport. The revised spacecraft incorporated lessons learned from the Apollo Soyuz Test Project, Soyuz 7K-TM and Military Soyuz.
The International Space Station programme is tied together by a complex set of legal, political and financial agreements between the sixteen nations involved in the project, governing ownership of the various components, rights to crewing and utilisation, and responsibilities for crew rotation and resupply of the International Space Station. It was conceived in 1984 by President Ronald Reagan, during the Space Station Freedom project as it was originally called. These agreements tie together the five space agencies and their respective International Space Station programmes and govern how they interact with each other on a daily basis to maintain station operations, from traffic control of spacecraft to and from the station, to utilisation of space and crew time. In March 2010, the International Space Station Program Managers from each of the five partner agencies were presented with Aviation Week's Laureate Award in the Space category, and the ISS programme was awarded the 2009 Collier Trophy.
The Russian Orbital Segment (ROS) is the name given to the components of the International Space Station (ISS) constructed in Russia and operated by the Russian Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos). The ROS handles Guidance, Navigation, and Control for the entire Station.
Progress M1-5 was the Progress spacecraft which was launched by Russia in 2001 to deorbit the fifteen-year-old Mir space station before it naturally fell from orbit, potentially landing in a populated area. The Russian Aviation and Space Agency, Rosaviakosmos, was responsible for the mission. Launched in January 2001 after a short delay due to a problem with Mir, on 27 January Progress M1-5 became the last spacecraft to dock with the station. It spent two months attached to the Kvant-1 module before deorbiting the station on 23 March 2001. Mir re-entered the atmosphere with Progress M1-5 still docked, disintegrating over the Pacific Ocean, with debris falling into the ocean at around 06:00 GMT. During the early stages of the uncrewed Progress M1-5 mission, a crewed Soyuz was placed on standby to launch in order to complete the mission if a problem occurred. The decision to deorbit Mir attracted both praise and criticism for Rosaviakosmos, while several campaigns to save the station were conducted.
The deorbit of Mir was the controlled atmospheric entry of the modular Russian space station Mir which was carried out on 23 March 2001. Major components ranged from about 5 to 15 years in age, and included the Mir Core Module, Kvant-1, Kvant-2, Kristall, Spektr, Priroda, and Docking Module. Although Russia was optimistic about Mir's future, the country's commitments to the International Space Station programme left no funding to support Mir.
The Orbital Technologies Commercial Space Station is a proposed orbital space station intended for commercial clients. The station was initially proposed in 2010 by Orbital Technologies, a Russian aerospace firm, who is collaborating to develop the station with Rocket and Space Corporation Energia.
Orphans of Apollo is a 2008 documentary film directed and produced by Michael Potter, co-directed by Becky Neiman and edited by Todd Jones, which describes how a band of entrepreneurs tried to privatize the space station Mir and tells the story that led to the development of MirCorp. It features prominent NewSpace entrepreneurs and space advocates, backed financially by Walter Anderson.
This page is based on this Wikipedia article Text is available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 license; additional terms may apply. Images, videos and audio are available under their respective licenses.
