First Privately Funded Manned Space Mission

Ragetech writes "CNN.com has a story about two Russian astronuts (yes, I say nuts) blasting off to dock with the Mir station to evaluate it, rescue and possibly operate it for profit. What I'm wondering, really, is why they don't pick up a few Iridum satellites while they're up there and really pick up the profits. I mean, that stuff is salvagable now, isn't it? "

Comments

URL for MirCorp

[rogerbo]

havne't seen this here yet.

MirCorp is at www.mirstation.com

They do confirm backing by the eerily named Gold and Appel Transfers Fnord. I really wonder if that is a complete coincidence or just a very rich baby boomer with a sense of humor.

They also have some info on the the crazed fools (or visionarys) backing Mir Corp. Why does everything about this remind me of Heinleins 'Man who sold the moon'?

Good luck to em, personally if it gets things happening in space sooner I don't mind even if mir ends up plastered in golden arches and windows logos.

Oh and by the way ...

[Captn Pepe]

Yes, I'm sure Hemos is aware of the fact that "picking up some Iridium satellites while they're up there" is a silly idea. But for the humor impaired, here's why -

• Iridium satellites are in polar orbits; Mir orbits at an inclination of around 55 degrees or so. And at a different altitude. The change of orbit would be really expensive.
• Iridium satellites are big. The mass of a craft capable of carrying "a few" of these things back to Earth would be substantial. We're talking a Shuttle-class mission, at best. You could change their orbits with some kind of tug, I suppose ... but why?
• In fact, but, why describes most of this hypothetical undertaking. The things are next to useless on the ground, unless somebody wants one for a museum. After all, I could build a ground-based device with pretty much the same capabilities as an Iridium satellite would have on the ground (i.e. a solar-powered microwave relay). And in space, they're not any more useful than they already are if you move them (arguably, they'd be less useful due to reduced coverage).

Conclusion: why bother? It would be a very expensive, very silly operation. Though now that I think about it, Red Hat might be interested. Rearrange their orbits just right, and they'd flash "LINUX" in the evening and morning sky every 90 minutes around the world. I envision Redmond being the first target. :-)