[FPSPACE] MirCorp public statement

[Dwayne Allen Day]

On Mon, 30 Oct 2000, Chris Jones wrote:

> "Tito, who is undergoing training at the Star City space center outside 
> Moscow, said MirCorp was charging $20 million per person. He said part
> of the money he had already paid had been placed in an account to be
> released if he actually flew."
> 
> Actually, that leaves open the possibility that some of the money he has paid
> has *not* gone into escrow. 

This seems reasonable.  MirCorp was saying that Tito's final payment will
be by December.  Not coincidentally, December is when they plan on paying
Energia for the October Progress launch.  But my guess is that there are
complex financial deals here and MirCorp does not get all, or even most of
his money until he flies.  If they want to utilize that money, then they
have to get a bank to loan them money based upon the expectation that they
can carry out their promises.  That is still a hard sell, but better than
nothing.


> I've also read that Anderson is said to be putting
> up another $10 million or so, to be announced in a few weeks,

They announced that Anderson was going to chip in cash back in
September.  It hasn't happened and a Washington Post profile of him
pointed out that his stocks in telecom industries are down in value.  In
the meantime, MirCorp announced the IPO.  My guess is that Anderson has
reached his spending limit.


> and MirCorp is
> hoping to get another big investor to kick in some money before the IPO. 

MirCorp has been hoping this since February.  The more bad news out of
Russia, the less likely it becomes.  Nobody invests in a sinking ship.


> If the deorbit plan still involves a crew on board near the end,

It doesn't.  All they really need is one or two Progress missions and they
bring it down on remote control.


> I suppose Tito
> could be on that flight, but it seems like NBC's "Destination Mir" flight
> requires a rather large financial infusion to keep Mir up past February.

I think that Tito's flight is still possible.  The Destination Mir one
looks impossible.  It would not happen until late 2001 or even early 2002
at the earliest.  How many hundreds of millions are required to keep Mir
flying until then?

What this highlights is that they cannot fly on tourists alone--the
overhead costs of the station (measured simply in terms of Progress
reboost missions) are too high.

There was another article on MirCorp on space.com last week that indicated
once again that MirCorp's relationship with the Russian government is not
good.  MirCorp prez Jeff Manber published a letter in a newspaper pleading
with Putin to subsidize Mir.  But there was a comment from a Russian space
official (Gorbunov?) once again expressing extreme doubt that MirCorp can
come up with the money.  At the very least, MirCorp should be asking with
the Russian and Energia officials to stop talking to the press.



DDAY