[FPSPACE] Tether to fly on Mir in 2001

[David Anderman]

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
F.I.N.D.S. to Fly Futuristic Propulsion Experiment on Mir Space Station in 
2001 Los Angeles, CA (Oct. 24, 2000)--The Foundation for the Non-governmental
Development of Space (F.I.N.D.S.) announced it has reached agreement with 
MirCorp to fly a 7 kilometer-long  electro-dynamic tether aboard the Mir 
space station in 2001. The experiment,  dubbed "FireFly," due to its 
visibility from the Earth in the night sky, will  demonstrate a totally new 
way to help keep spacecraft in orbit that is
clean,  cheap, passive and doesn't disturb experiments or residents aboard 
a space  facility without using expensive chemical rockets.

"F.I.N.D.S.' goal is not just to prove this concept and help lower the 
costs of  operating in space, but to show that good science and engineering 
developmet  work can be done faster, better and cheaper than is now 
considered normal in  the space community," said F.I.N.D.S. Executive 
Director, Rick Tumlinson. "The budget for developing the system was only 
$1.5 million, less than most paper studies commissioned by government 
entities." FireFly will use electricity generated by the station's solar 
panels, fed down a wire dangling below the station, to cause an interaction 
with the Earth's magnetic field. This should slowly and gently push the 
station higher
over time, much the same way magnets repel each other when the same poles 
are aligned. It is being constructed by Tether Applications in San Diego,
who is under contract with F.I.N.D.S to build and operate the device. When 
completed, it will be flown to Mir by MirCorp, the station's commercial 
operators,
who are donating their resources, including an EVA to mount the tether's 
spool on the exterior of the Mir.

"Tether Applications has already received substantial export licensing 
authorization from the State Department in regard to FireFly, and has been 
advised recently by State that a final determination on export licensing 
can be expected in the near future," stated Tumlinson.  F.I.N.D.S., a 
private endowment which funds leading-edge research aimed at opening the 
space frontier to human settlement, hopes to share the information that it 
gathers from the FireFly project on its WEB page
(FINDS-Space.org). The team hopes to interest NASA and the International 
Space Station (ISS) partners in using a similar tether on other large space 
platforms, where
the belief is that it could save tens of millions of taxpayer dollars and 
improve research conditions for delicate microgravity experiments.

F.I.N.D.S. funds a wide range of science, engineering and education 
projects related to the opening of space for human settlement. Among these 
are the Mars
Society's Devon Island experimental Mars Base, the WATCH search for killer 
asteroids, SETI, Carnegie Mellon University's Solar Sail project, and numerous
conferences and meetings for those leading humanity into space.