[FPSPACE] The fat lady gets weird and yodels

[Dwayne Allen Day]

Well, according to the Wall Street Journal, MirCorp has decided to give up
on Mir and instead buy into ISS, agreeing to fund the Energia
"Enterprise" module.  The cost of this module is estimated at $100
million, but it is not clear how much money will come from each of the
partners (Spacehab is also hooked up in this).  The deal reportedly also
includes two piloted missions to ISS and two cargo missions (although it
is not clear if the latter includes the launch of Enterprise).  Maybe the
piloted missions are the Tito and Destination Mir missions simply rolled
into this new thing.

This is just bizarre.  It's hard for me to figure out what is going on
here.  These guys didn't make any money on Mir and this latest move
represents a tacit admission that their previous business strategy was a
failure, so they have to come up with a bunch of new things to do
on the ISS.  (And let's not forget that these guys went around crowing
about how they were going to operate a private space station, not one
associated with NASA.)   So does this mean that Anderson and Kathuria,
MirCorp's billionnaire backers, intend to throw more tens of millions of
dollars down an orbital hole?  (One would assume that before inking this
deal, they paid the Russians the money that they already owed them.)

They are supposedly going to hold a press conference on Wednesday.  Maybe
then they will explain how they plan on making money on this deal.



DDAY