Hi Dale, how about a vacation on The Mir space station? Dr. Kathuria, who allegedly is the head of X-Stream, is a big investor in this venture.
From the article:"Baked, frozen, sprayed with micro-meteorites, crashed into, punctured, burned and condemned..."
Hmm, sounds like the condition of X-Stream investors. <gg> Beam me up, baby! Jeff
THE GUARDIAN: REFURBISHED MIR TO OFFER ROOM WITH A VIEW
82% match; The Guardian - United Kingdom ; 18-Feb-2000 12:00:00 am ; 540 words
James Meek
Baked, frozen, sprayed with micro-meteorites, crashed into, punctured, burned and condemned, the Mir space station is about to be submitted to the ultimate ordeal: tourists.
Visitors will have to be rich, they will have to be fit, and they will have to have time on their hands. But the international consortium that yesterday pledged to rescue Mir from a violent retirement in the Pacific ocean said it was already talking to potential clients, and insisted the space station had enough commercial potential to stay in orbit without Russian or US government help.
The consortium, known as MirCorp, signed a leasing agreement yesterday with Mir's builders and operators, the Russian firm Energiya, to rent the 13-year-old craft to all comers who qualify.
Transferring estate agent-speak to the cosmos for the first time, MirCorp's blurb burbled: 'Mir's orbit offers a unique environment that is free of the constraints of gravity and with unmatched views of the Earth and heavens.'
Mir, costly to keep in space even when untenanted, was to have been dropped from orbit through the atmosphere, streaming fire, into the ocean later this year.
But Energiya, and the wider Russian scientific community, have never been comfortable with abandoning this potent symbol of the glory days of Soviet research in favour of a junior role in the western-dominated, English-speaking environment of the new international space station.
Enter MirCorp, an eclectic, diffuse alliance of Moscow-based Energiya, the US venture capital firm Gold & Appel, and other miscellaneous investors such as Chirinjeev Kathuria, head of Britain's third-biggest internet service provider, X-Stream.
Registered in Bermuda, based in the Netherlands and with the focus of its operations in Russia, Kazakhstan and space, MirCorp is confident it can raise the money to keep the space station aloft. The company says it partially financed the launch of an unmanned cargo ship to Mir earlier this month, carrying fuel and air for a manned mission in March, for which MirCorp will also help pay.
Dr Kathuria said the cosmonauts on the 45-day March mission would act in part as surveyors, working out what needed to be fixed in the elderly vessel.
He estimated that MirCorp would need to raise a further Dollars 150m ( pounds 93.3m) to keep the space station in orbit in the short term.
Dr Kathuria said he hoped shares in MirCorp - which has yet to be floated on any stock exchange - would be the pioneers in a space stock boom, like the market in internet company shares.
The company hopes to generate income by leasing Mir to commercial researchers who want to see how drugs and new materials can be made in near weightless conditions, even though Nasa and Soviet space scientists have not made breakthroughs with experiments such as these in the past. The firm also plans to launch a website showing live colour pictures of Earth beamed from cameras on Mir.
But it is the notion of space tourism that is likely to create the greatest interest among potential corporate investors and the public.
Jeffrey Manber, MirCorp's president, said one wealthy tourist was already on the waiting list.
'We are currently, and have been for some time, in discussions with one such individual. He's very excited,' Mr Manber said. 'He comes from a family that has some space experience. These negotiations might go somewhere.'
MirCorp prefers to call its tourists 'citizen explorers'.
'They'll have to be very wealthy people, very adventurous people. They'll have to be people able to undergo very rigorous psychological and physical testing,' Mr Manber said.
'So it's an extremely small group of people, but I think there are a lot of people out there, myself included, who would love to go.'
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