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  MirCorp 1999 - 2003
Bringing People Together In Space.
 
 

 

This site is dedicated to the brief but extraordinary ride that was MirCorp.

The Mircorp story is now a documentary. Watch the Orphans of Apollo trailer, produced by Michael Potter.

"Orphans of Apollo is both a great work of art and an important story....an inspiring film to see before my own flight to space!"   Richard Garriott, America's first 2nd Generation Astronaut




“WELL before Richard Branson, Paul Allen, Jeff Bezos and other rich entrepreneurs joined the private space game, there was Walt Anderson. A multimillionaire telecommunications mogul and space enthusiast, Anderson bankrolled many early private space ventures and paved the way for the "astropreneurs" who followed.

Anderson's most high-profile space investment was MirCorp, the 1990s start-up that briefly privatised Russia's ageing Mir space station. He reportedly pumped as much as $30 million into the venture. Yet his deep pockets were no match for Mir's decrepitude or the Byzantine politics of the Russian space programme: the station was abandoned and sent plummeting into the Pacific Ocean in 2001.

However, MirCorp's first client, entrepreneur and former space scientist Dennis Tito, would go on to become the world's first self-financed space tourist, flying to the International Space Station only a few months after Mir's demise. That event is credited with beginning the private space age in earnest.”  New Scientist, 5 September 2007




mircorp website

Revisit the final MirCorp web site