Mircorp, the multinational company that sent cosmonauts to refurbish the Mir has plans to finance the ongoing re-manning from November
Like a phoenix rising from its grave, the aging Russian space station Mir recently came back to life, when a team of Russian cosmonauts reached it for 45 days on April 6, and at the time of writing, their mission may be extended until June 16. They flew to fix the constant oxygen leak - one of the results of the severe collision in 97. The American entrepreneur Walt Anderson Anderson committed in early 2000 to invest 20 million dollars in the establishment of Mircorp, a private company that would finance the continuation of manned missions to the space station.
With the end of the mission, no more cosmonauts will return to the station for the time being - until funding is found. "Due to the financing problems of a new country and the uncertain future, it is only logical that we now move to the status of visiting missions and not permanent residence" says Viktor Blagov, deputy director of the MIR program.
Mir, which was designed to stay in space for five years, is already serving nearly three times its planned life, but Russia refuses to eliminate the last ambitious reminder of the Soviet-era space program despite a chronic shortage of cash. Russia's refusal to abandon the damaged space station is felt by the US, which suspects that Russia is diverting budgets and resources from the 60 billion dollar budget intended for the International Space Station, where it is one of the main partners in building the parts - towards Mir. The heads of the Russian space program insist that the Mir program is financed entirely by private money, and this has no effect on the International Space Station, which is also behind schedule mainly due to long delays on the part of the Russians.
Balagov promises that the two cosmonauts, Sergi Zalyotin and Alexander Kaleri, will abandon the spacecraft in mid-June after they have finished preparing it for the months of winter hibernation. "When we get a budget and prepare a plan again, a new mission will come out," he says. However, there is still the fear that if the money is not found by August 2000, the heads of the Russian space program will be forced to smash Mir into one of the oceans. President Putin promised Mir a budget in 2001, but space program leaders aren't sure if they'll be able to keep the spacecraft until then.
Balagov says that the station is in normal working order despite a short in the solar panels (made in America by the way), which caused the destruction of several cables and caused Mir a lack of energy supply. According to him, the crew members found and sealed one of the cracks left after the collision with the cargo spacecraft in 97. The accident caused air to leak from the spacecraft, forcing the crew to use more of the depleted energy resources to maintain air pressure inside the cabin.
Sergei Avdeev who "turned off the light at Mir with its (temporary) abandonment last year, even though at the time everyone thought it was the last flight to the station, he prepared it for future visits. "I closed the station only temporarily, so that other people who return to Mir after me, will feel comfortable and can work and live there."
"It's like the custom of a forest ranger, who leaves his cabin empty during the winter, and leaves bread and salt on the table, so that whoever comes to visit his cabin always has something to eat. That's what I did. I didn't know if Mir would be repopulated, but it was reasonable to assume that a new team would arrive at some point."
During 14 years of stay in space, Mir (not including the last team) was visited by 27 teams that included 103 people. 62 of them were not Russian - they represented 11 countries and the European Space Agency. Seven American astronauts and 34 Russian cosmonauts visited Mir. NASA representatives stayed in Mir continuously between March 24, 96 and June 8, 1998 (including at the time of the accident). Among the 11 countries that sent a representative to Mir were Syria, Bulgaria, Afghanistan, Japan (television reporter), Great Britain, Austria, Canada and Slovakia, the representative of the European Space Agency was German and France also independently sent an astronaut, who was the first non-American and not Russian to perform a space walk. It should be noted that the non-Russian cosmonauts are the ones whose countries participated in the financing of the journey. Israel was also offered a partnership in Mir in exchange for launching an astronaut, but the director general of the space agency, Avi Har-Evan, said about a year ago, during the visit to Israel of the astronaut Shannon Lucid, who spent about six months in Mir, that the amount in question was higher than Israel could afford, and that of an Israeli astronaut's week did not justify such a large sum.
An old Russian proverb says "You don't throw away a pair of shoes until you have a new pair". This explains why the managers of the space agency feel these days about Mir. Obviously this is a dangerous adventure, but until the International Space Station is completed, why throw away Mir? Despite all the problems, Mir is still humanity's only forward outpost in space.
"Leaving Mir in space is part of the national pride of the Russians," says Charles Vick, an expert on space affairs at the Federation of American Scientists in Washington. "Mir was equivalent to landing man on the moon for us. It's hard for them to give it up because it's the flagship, which shows that Russia is still in the game." According to him, during these years, Mir suffered from malfunctions that could have crippled younger spaceships."
In 1997 Mir suffered a fire and damage resulting from a collision with an empty supply spacecraft. This collision caused a large hole in the "Spectra" residential component, forcing the Russian-American team to seal off the component from the rest of the station.
But it must be remembered that during the time of its operation, Mir positioned itself as an important laboratory for examining the long-term effect of the lack of weight on the body. NASA funded her with a lot of money to conduct tests before launching the International Space Station. The Americans paid the Russians almost half a billion dollars to get the astronauts experience. Now the Americans are trying to convince the Russian government and the RKK ENRGIA company that operates the spacecraft to crash it in order to direct the resources towards the new station. Mir's operation costs a quarter of a million dollars, and it was abandoned since August 1999 until the repair team arrived in mid-May. The spaceship was cold when the cosmonauts arrived, the air was slowly leaking out of it (probably the second habitable component - Quantum-2) but its orbit remained stable.
NASA Director General Dan Goldin expressed anger to reporters and said that the Russians should focus. "The main focus must be meeting their commitments to the International Space Station. If Mir exhausts their strength from fulfilling the obligations, then we have a serious problem."
The cost of launching two Progress cargo spaceships, a Soyuz spaceship for the crew and a three-stage rocket needed to launch the spaceship together cost $19 million. Russia announced that it budgeted a similar amount to build a Soyuz spacecraft and rockets for launch - for the task of establishing the space station. Russia has already reserved 42 million dollars for its share in the construction of the space station out of the station's budget of 60 billion dollars. While Goldin says NASA doesn't get to decide for the Russians how to manage their space station, NASA has an obligation to the taxpayers of the US and the 14 other partner nations who want to see the station assembled. "In no way are we ready to accept the claim that the operation of Mir does not interfere with their commitment to the space station," he said. "We are now in the moment of truth."
When the station is completed, in 2005, NASA says that it will be much more advanced and will be able to do things that Mir could not. The weight of the station will be 470 tons, 4 times the weight of Mir, and its length will be 110 meters, the length of an (American) football field. It will be able to carry a crew of 6 or 7 people in a volume of 1,300 m747, and the volume in which there will be air will be equal to two Boeing 4 airplanes, 7 times the maximum living space that was possible on Mir. The six laboratories, the two residential components, and two logistical components, will consume XNUMX times more power than Mir could produce. It's in the future. At the moment there is only the core of the station in space (and this was put together by the Atlantis team) - a Russian-made energy and communication component and an American transit tunnel. The third part - the residential area made in Russia, is supposed to be launched in July on a Russian rocket.
Until the three components are connected and enable the manning of a limited initial crew towards the end of the year, Mir is still, despite all its problems, the only outpost where people can live for long periods in space.
"I don't think the Russians will send a team to a place that is not safe," says Marsha Smith, a space expert in the service of Congress. "I haven't heard from anyone who said the conditions are unsafe." According to her, the Russians have money to maintain the spacecraft, and it's just a matter of resource allocation. Vick, on the other hand, is less optimistic about Mir's future: "If the money was there, they could have continued to manipulate her for the past year." He says. Although Russia's new president, Vladimir Putin, said he would support a strong space program. "I would like to know where the money comes from," says Vic. "Unless they're going backwards into science fiction economics, I don't see how they can continue past this year."
The president of Mircorp, Jeffrey Manber, who prevented the spacecraft from becoming space junk, said that he is preparing financing for another flight in September. Mircorp will also finance the continued stay of the cosmonauts who went up to carry out the renovation of the spacecraft until the arrival of the new cosmonauts in September. "If the opening of Mir's airlock opened the way for a new era of business in space." Manbar said. The statement was made during the signing of the contract between Manbar and Yuri Semenov Semenov, president of RKK ENERGIA, the leasing and operating company of Mir.
During the next mission - this one in September, the cosmonauts will carry computer hardware to Mir to establish a space web portal on it. Chirinjeev Kathuria, an investor in Mir-Corp and owner of a start-up company in the field of Internet and communication, says that the Internet portal is a prototype for the spacecraft that the company is going to develop in the coming months. The portal will allow data transfer, as well as live images of the Earth from space.
"We have built successful Internet companies in Europe and Japan with a stock market value of billions of dollars" says Katoria, and we feel that the first space portal on Mir will have value in itself."
Mircorp is an international company founded by the holding company Gold and Apple and the Russian rkk ENERGIA (which owns 60 percent of its shares). The company's base is in the Netherlands, and it brings Western financial and management support, along with Russian space expertise in operating manned space stations. The company's official goals are: "To preserve the legacy of Mir - the first international space station, in the course of commercialization and entrepreneurship in space." In February Mircorp received from rkk ENERGIA the franchise to lease Mir to users and private individuals around the world. According to the Russian newspaper Kommersant, Mir Corp paid rkk energia 21 million dollars for the current mission, approximately 7 million dollars were transferred to Energia's account after the liftoff of the Soyuz spacecraft with the astronauts in it.
Semanov, president of Energia, called the 28th mission to Mir a milestone in the history of the conquest of space because the funding was private and non-governmental. Mircorp had previously paid 20 million dollars to save Mir from the damages caused by the abandonment in August 99. The Russian government said that it would not finance any more flights to Mir. Semanov emphasized that there is no connection between the launch of the private missions to Mir, and between the financing of Russia's share of the space station. Mir does not interfere with the new station." he emphasizes. On the contrary, Energia invested from its own money, and not from government payments from some of the commitments to the space station.
"We invested 460 million rubles, about 15 million dollars, in the new station," says Semanov. "And the state still owes us 570 million rubles (about 19 million dollars) for the years 1997-1999. We also invested about 4 million dollars in building new Progress and Soyuz spacecraft. According to him, Mir is now helping the energy to continue sustaining the Russian space industry. Semanov ruled out any possibility of Mir being crushed this year. The Progress spaceship currently anchored in Mir was supposed to help with its engine to land Mir in the ocean, instead, we are checking the possibility of raising Mir's orbit.
At a press conference after the launch, one of the control room personnel opened an envelope from a Chinese boy containing a donation of $25 for the continued operation of Mir. "If I can convince a Chinese boy to send money to save Mir, then I hope I can convince the Russian government to support as well," joked Samonov. By the way, at the last minute it was decided not to include the Russian film actor Vladimir Steklov in the current launch. Initially it was planned to cover part of the financing of the project by shooting a film inside the space station with the participation of a professional actor. But this did not come to fruition because the production company was unable to raise the intended funds.
Andrew Eddy, senior vice president of Mircorp, says that the company plans to provide 100 to 200 million dollars per year for the operation of the spacecraft. According to Eddy, MirCorp hopes to keep Mir permanently manned starting in November, when a new Baikonur crew will be launched aboard a Soyuz spacecraft every three months. "Three or four Progress-class cargo spacecraft would be required to support such an ambitious schedule." (It should be noted that the Russians preferred the flights for profit because launching a crew costs a lot of money, and there is almost no difference whether it stays in space for three months or a year).
At the beginning of May, the company announced that it was planning a test of an exotic cable on board Mir. This is an 8-10 kilometer long cable of conductive material that will be strung from the launch station to demonstrate the ability to generate electricity on the spacecraft when it crosses the Earth's magnetic field. The cable, to the end of which a small spaceship will be attached, will also be used to raise Mir to a higher orbit thanks to the forces of attraction created between two spaceships flying in different orbits.
Rick Tumlinson, Tumlinson one of the investors in Mircorp, is the main promoter of the thread experiment. He heads a non-profit organization for the non-governmental development of space, an organization of space activists, scientists and engineers. If the experiment is successful, a much longer cable will be launched into the spaceship to provide electricity to the energy hungry station. The energy company said that they received a request from Mircorp to start preparations for such an experiment. The US State Department has lifted restrictions on the transfer of hardware used in a similar NASA experiment. Select Energy officials say that it will take between 10 and 12 months to develop, manufacture, test and launch their portion of the equipment for the station.
Until a multi-kilometer cable provides electricity to Mir, energy engineers will try to check what caused the short that cut Mir's energy output from the station's main solar panel. The cosmonauts discovered the malfunction during the spacewalk carried out on May 12. The prevailing theory now is that too long exposure to the sun caused a higher than designed electric current to be transmitted in the cables, and finally caused a short. Since December, Mir has been flying in a route that allows a long exposure of the panel to the sun. At about the same time, flight controllers (from Earth) began to notice malfunctions. In March, the solar collectors stopped supplying electricity to the spacecraft. This is the American panel whose electricity generation process is more efficient. The Russian panel, which is less efficient, continues to function at normal length.
As long as the spacecraft is operating at reduced power, with the vessel-devouring equipment such as the furnace or the remote sensing radar turned off, the spacecraft has enough power, but if the spacecraft returns to full operation, the power heads will need to rewire the cables leading to the reluctance panel.
They will have to find a solution to this, because one of the roles expected of the spacecraft will be a hotel in space, for now only for millionaires. It is not pleasant to house millionaires in a hotel whose electricity supply is poor.
* Site editor's note, as mentioned these efforts were unsuccessful and on March 23, 2001, the space station was introduced into the atmosphere in a controlled manner and burned up. Her remains sank in the South Pacific Ocean not far from the Fiji Islands.
