Rob Coppinger has a short report on the demise of the Myasishchev Design Bureau, which said it had been working on a 16-passenger space tourism vehicle (above) for a mysterious Russian investor:
Sources at Russia’s United Aircraft (UA) have informed Hyperbola that the Myasishchev Design Bureau is being absorbed into the state run aviation company, created in 2006, and its headquarters is to be bulldozed so the Russian Federal government can sell the land in central Moscow.
Myasishchev had been involved in a space tourism feasibility study for an undisclosed Russian organisation but that has ended and all of its activities will now be focused on design work for UA with no more work on space related studies. The design bureau had been involved with the Space Adventures suborbital tourism venture when it was announced in February 2006.
You can read Coppinger’s full report here.
Speaking of Space Adventures, it’s also been quite some time since anyone’s heard CEO Eric Anderson talk about his company’s plans for suborbital tourism. My guess is that they have not been successful in bringing together the right mixture of technical expertise and venture capitalism to make it work.
If they haven’t done it by now, it must be doubly difficult given the economic downturn and the progress that XCOR and Virgin Galactic have made on their vehicles.
This situation also could help explain the massive price increases in cost for the company’s orbital tourism joyrides to ISS and 727 parabolic arc flights. Those are probably the company’s two main sources of income now. If investment money isn’t coming in, they likely need to make as much as possible from them.
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- Is Virgin Galactic Overhyping Safety?
