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Ahem!!! Didn't it occur to you that MIR-2 is a possibility?
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Posted by Jacob Samorodin () at 16:58 GMT on 31 Mar 2001

Hi!

Let me say first that I'm posting here to promote
some practical activities, not wasted-time blabbering
about "what might be" or "what might have been"?
If you want to DEBATE this thread for the sake of DEBATING
(WASTING YOUR TIME, AND ELECTRONIC PIXELS} then go to or start
another thread.

(OK! Pay attention if you want to do something that maybe useful.)

FIRST, SOME USEFUL INFO:
(a) The Mir space-station is gone, BUT there are at least TWO "actual"
Mir core-module copies [clones] built by the Russian Space Agency
in the 1980's that were designed and built to be launched on Proton rockets to replace the original Mir-Core module when that
now destroyed module became worn-out...The Russians never found the
money to launch those TWO replacement Mir core-modules...
So, ONE served as a cosmonaut training and an engineering "trouble-
shooting" module module in "Star City", Russia...And the SECOND such module is NOW in a aerospace museum in the town of "Wisconsin Dells, Wisconsin".

(b) Both of those Mir core-modules can be, with a few relatively
inexpensive modifications, launched into orbit aboard a Proton rocket.

And there's no reason to doubt that the Wisconsin museum board-of-directors wouldn't part with their actual Mir core-module
duplicate if "the price is right" and a full-scale [plywood & fiberglass?] faithfully-detailed copy were made available to them.

(c) Either Mir core-module can, alone, serve as a self-contained
small spacestation like the original Salyut spacestations of similar size.

(d) A Proton rocket preparation & launch (back in 1994)
cost 70 million dollars US [Encyclopedia Astronautica]...
Compare that to a 400 million dollar US launch for an Ariane, etc.

(e) There are wealthy men [billionaires} who could afford to
pay for the launch of one of those modules into orbit. And would have
money left over to pay for Soyuz rockets and spacecraft to deliver "paying" passengers and crew to such a Salyut-size spacestation,
and for the occasional Progress to deliver an electrodynamic tether
to "keep it up there" as well as the usual air, water, food, CO2 scrubbers, etc...


Here's some practical suggestions:

(1) Start a letter writing campaign to the "Space-Frontier
Foundation" chairperson & president (Forger e-mails; they
are often ignored), and the president of "MirCorp" offering suggestions and info like this.

(2) Get hold of snail-mailing addresses of billionaires, corporations & financiers whom you can send letters to containing such suggestions and info...If you can't find that info on the "Net", go to your library and ask your librarian.

(3) Start "straw polls" among friends, peers and neighbours,
asking them what would they want such a small "private" space-station
to be used for? (i.e., Space Tourism?....Space manufacturing of electronic crystals?...Space manufacturing of exotic pharmaceuticals?...An orbiting TV documentary locale?...An internet terminus?...An orbiting Hollywood movie-set?}...
Once you've gathered those "straw polls", containing the results
from at least 100 people, sent it to MirCorp, SFF, and to those
corporations and financiers whom you want to interst and inform.

(4) Finally, put your own suggestions down on paper (NOT HERE ON THE NET! IT WON'T BE READ BY INFLUENTIAL PEOPLE) and send it off to
the corporations or individuals in question.

Thanks.

Re: Ahem!!! Didn't it occur to you that MIR-2 is a possibility? Michael K. Heney (02 Apr 2001 14:35 GMT)

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