[FPSPACE] MirCorp President speaks about MirCorp

[Dwayne Allen Day]

On Thu, 2 Nov 2000, David Anderman wrote:

> There's an interesting interview with Jeff Manber on the MirCorp web site:
> 
> Lots for Mr. Day to poke holes at!

Heh, heh, heh...

Actually, nothing really to poke at.  There was at least *some* honesty
there, although MirCorp's overall delusional state pervaded the entire
interview.  

There were a few new datapoints that were quite interesting:

-Manber said that total investment in MirCorp to date has been $30
million.  That is A LOT less than we had been led to believe by press
reports.  Previous reports were that investment in MirCorp was $40-50
million.

-Manber said that MirCorp can operate for about $75-80 million a
year.  That is a LOT less than what the Russians have said.  The Russians
have claimed that costs would be $150-200 million.

-He said that Energia has essentially taken a loss on the Progress and
Soyuz flights to Mir in return for a stake in the value of the
company.  When all this is over, it will be interesting to work out what
happened--did NASA subsidize the Mir flights?  Did Energia subsidize the
flights?



He did say that because they are a new type of company, they have had a
hard time attracting investors.  

The more interesting part was his comment that they cannot find scientific
experimenters who can be prepared to fly in a short period of time.  Now
MirCorp early on said that the advantage of their station was that
experimenters could fly soon, rather than waiting for an opportunity on
ISS.  Clearly the timescales here were incompatible--MirCorp needed
customers now, but potential customers might not be ready for
years.  That's an interesting development.



DDAY