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starship-design: Investors plan Russian space hotel



Investors plan Russian space hotel
September 4, 2001 Posted: 3:17 PM EDT (1917 GMT)

MOSCOW, Russia (Reuters) -- A group of Western investors announced plans
Tuesday to launch the first commercial space station, a Russian-built home
in the heavens specially designed to host fare-paying space tourists.

Jeffrey Manber, head of MirCorp, told Reuters by telephone his company had
signed a deal with the Russian space agency and Russia's leading spacecraft
builder Energiya that could put a station in orbit by 2004.

Russian space agency spokesman Sergei Gorbunov, however, accused MirCorp of
jumping the gun.

"All that has been signed is an agreement that opens the way for a
feasibility study, one that will be conducted by Energiya and not MirCorp.
Nothing has been decided yet," he said.

"No one can say the station will be built. We won't make a decision about
its feasibility before year end at least."

MirCorp once had similar plans -- complete with a hoped-for stock market
listing -- to turn Russia's aging Mir space station into a money-spinning
cosmic hotel, before Moscow sent it to earth in a fireball last year.

"This is not pie in the sky," Manber said. "We've developed a business plan
that is pragmatic and very do-able. I give it a very high rate of
probability."

The deal calls for the creation of a $100 million orbiter, Mini Station 1,
built to host three cosmonauts for 20 days at a time. Manber said customers
were already lining up.

The station would have a lifetime of 15 years and be funded by selling
tickets, luring strategic investors and winning corporate sponsorship,
Manber said.

He said MirCorp envisaged positioning the station as an interim stop for
Russian supply missions to the international space station, or ISS. Fees
paid by space tourists would cover much of the cost of those missions.

Earlier this year, U.S. millionaire Dennis Tito became the first paying
tourist in space, visiting the ISS on board a Russian rocket over the
objections of U.S. space officials who said they thought it an inappropriate
use of the $95 billion orbiter.

MirCorp was founded in 2000 to raise cash to exploit Mir. The company, which
is based in Amsterdam and is 60 percent owned by Energiya, had also set up a
deal to blast a U.S. gameshow contestant into space.

But the $30 million it raised was not enough to save the accident-prone Mir,
forcing Russia's cash-strapped space chiefs to sink it in the Pacific in
March.

"This time things are completely different. I don't have to worry that if I
fail to make a payment by a certain date something will come crashing down
on our heads," Manber said.

Manber acknowledged the deal had yet to be okayed by senior Russian
officials, but saw it as a way to help the country find the money its
chronically underfunded space program needs.

Moscow has already begun training other potential space tourists, including
members of Russian boy band Na-Na, aiming to become the first pop group to
give a concert from orbit, and Mark Shuttleworth, a South African Internet
tycoon.

Manber said MirCorp was considering brokering tourist trips to the ISS
before its own station was launched.

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