How did we take the first steps?

Did it come from enlightened federal agencies? Precursors of the Apollo program and the race against the Soviets to be the first on the Moon?

I’ve always wondered about the early chapters in space exploration. Most importantly, I’ve wondered what it says about the path humanity took in the 20th century. Unlike aviation, space travel took far longer to accomplish far less. Why is that?

For several years I read everything I could find on the 1920s and the birth of ‘rocket travel’ as it was called then. So many surprises emerged. For starters, the birth of rocket travel took place outside of America. It was in Europe and Russia where magical ingredients came together: of gritty visionaries skilled in physics and mathematics, well-to-do business people willing to fund exotic new ventures, famous directors and writers pushing onto the public the excitement of voyagers to the Moon.

Not only was America absent but so too the role of governments. The pathway assumed by the first generation of rocket pioneers was one of commercial. That rockets could and would develop like planes. Or the radio. Or the car. And the other revolutionary frontier markets at the start of the 20th century. But it didn’t. The reasons why will become clear as we journey together through the episodes of the book.

From the Earth to Mars was written to introduce you to an amazing group of space visionaries that are still important to us today.

The book brings to life the journey from the science fiction of Jules Verne to his devoted readers who changed the course of space exploration, including the Russian schoolteacher Konstantin Tsiolkovsky and the Romanian-German engineer Hermann Oberth.

The first two episodes, now available, detail the intertwined similarities of the space communities that erupted first in Russia and then Germany, before the first rockets were even constructed. And before governments sought to control space exploration.

Revealed is the space-influenced web that included the German film artists Fritz Lang and his wife Thea von Harbou, the French space businessman Robert Esnault-Pelterie and the long-forgotten Latvian-Russian Friedrich Tsander, whose cry of “On to Mars, On to Mars!” inspired so many other early influential space dreamers who built the first rockets. Tsander’s passion reminds me of another entrepreneur whose is devoted to having humanity reach the red planet. Elon Musk has accomplished so much, but still the dream is frustratingly elusive, yes?

It was critical that the style of the book be as accessible as possible. That’s why I wanted a graphic novel format, and I hope everybody will enjoy the illustrations by Shraya Rajbhandary and the cartoon strips of Jay Mazhar! Both artists were so patient as I insisted that every image be as historically accurate as possible.

Space exploration has never been as robust and important as it is today. From the Earth to Mars is written for so many of you, the next generation of believers and visionaries preparing to take us to the Moon, and on to Mars—this time to stay.

Read more here or visit FromtheEarthtoMars.com.

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The company was the Dutch MirCorp; and in a critical milestone in our march to realize a more robust, commercial exploration of outer space, two Russian cosmonauts rode a Soyuz to the Mir space station and brought the aging station back to life. The mission was paid for by my investors, principally the American Walt Anderson.

The mission was not easy. The Mir had been empty for seven months and was in poor shape when shut down. But Sergei Zalyotin and Alexander Kaleri were well trained both for the technical aspects of the mission and the underlying tension: at that time NASA was opposed to our mission to save the Mir space station.

The launch was April 4th. I remember the moment clearly. Standing in the TSUP Mission Control Center, with the other major investor Chirnjeev Kathuria, surrounded by the world’s media, I watched as the Soyuz lifted off flawlessly and began their journey to the world’s first station now owned by a private company (RKK Energia) and leased for use to a private company (MirCorp).

Two days later, at 12:05 in the morning Moscow time, the crew arrived. But I recall they were out of reach with the ground, and we had to wait to talk to the crew about 2 in the morning. The crew reported that all was well, and that they had come “with the support of MirCorp” to resume operations of the world’s only space station.

At that moment the Russians declared our lease operational and asked for my instructions. It was extraordinary moment for me personally. Captain of a orbiting space ship! We had a choice: look for the mysterious leak that has beguiled the station or undertake scientific experiments to show all was good on the station. My answer cut it down the middle: start the experiments, announce the experiments and then find the damn leak.

It is hard to imagine the tensions. NASA was opposed to our commercial mission. So too Rosaviacosmos (as the Russian space agency was referred to at the time.) Over and over they informed the public that Russia was spending no federal funds to support this manned expedition.

So our mission was a first in space history.

With no government funding we launched two humans to a privately owned space station. Indeed, for many years, there was no mention of the Soyuz launch in the United Nations date base. The Russian government refused to pay the nominal fee and do the paperwork. We had no idea it needed to be done. So it was for a decade the forgotten human expedition.

But the public knew and supported us. Thousands of emails came in, many pointing out the irony that it took a Russian company to promote capitalism and free markets in space over the strong objections of the American space agency.

The mission was scheduled for 45 days. All seemed fine. We were in space. Now we just needed to find customers and more capital. That wouldn’t be so hard, would it?

As the former CEO of MirCorp I’m writing a occasional series of blogs looking back on MirCorp and its historic mission as we stand poised to begin a new era of commercial utilization of low-earth orbit and beyond, this time to stay private sector for good!

The post The World’s First Commercial Space Crew, Celebrating the Anniversary appeared first on Jeffrey Manber.

It was an historic milestone in opening outer space to commercial activities. For the first time, a company, not a governmental agency, would operate an orbiting space station. And the year was 2000, not some time in our own future!

Though seventeen years ago, I remember the day very well. The interest from the international press was intimidating. Everything about that day was for me intimidating. I remember walking into the grand hall of the private London business club, the sort where endless oil portraits of business leaders from the past two centuries stared down, and wondering what those barons of British enterprises would think of our efforts to market an aging space station.

We had worked secretly for months to reach this point. With support from our lead investor Walt Anderson, our attorney, Jim Dunstan and myself had made trips back and forth to Moscow to negotiate having a foreign company, in this case Dutch, run an orbiting space station. We had finally agreed with our Russian partners that we would be just like a tenant down here on Earth. MirCorp was responsible for the Mir “to the first coat of paint.” After that, our partners at RKK Energia, and the Russian government, would be responsible for the health of the space station.

I was nervous walking into the press conference for a number of (good) reasons. Firstly, no one had ever done this before. No private company had ever marketed a space station. But secondly, I was fearful of how NASA would react. NASA leadership of the time had trouble understanding that the Russians of the Yeltsin era were far more commercial than we in the States, and that their government had transferred ownership of the Mir space station to RKK Energia. So Energia had every right to enter into a relationship with MirCorp.

As recounted in the book “Realizing Tomorrow, the Path to Private Spaceflight,” from the University of Nebraska Press, our press conference was going well until I explained how part of our business plan was that wealthy, inquisitive people would pay for the chance to take the voyage to the Mir space station. The press burst out laughing. Really! I remember being stunned. How could the reporters not understand the attraction of space exploration?

Well, within several months we had announced that indeed, Dennis Tito was willing to pay for a ticket to the space station. But the reporters in London could not grasp, as could few in our industry, that once unleashed from the government, the space frontier would be attractive to everyday people, no matter the risk, no matter the cost.

Well, I was right to be worried and at the same time, I was too apprehensive! Yes, the political reaction was difficult. NASA administrator Dan Goldin was angry at the Russians, at Energia and at MirCorp. He could not understand that this was a commercial decision, not a political decision. And it made good sense for everyone. Some in Congress understood, which helped us a great deal.

And the business, well, that turned out pretty well. We had a backlog of close to $200 million by the time the Mir came to its end. And I was able to show that a private company could market a space station in ways that a governmental space agency just couldn’t.

So February 17th, 2000 marks the official beginning of MirCorp taking control of the Mir space station. It also, in many ways, marks the beginning of the commercial era that we found ourselves in today.

The press conference was our public ‘coming out” as two weeks earlier, the Russian government had agreed with Energia’s agreement with MirCorp and a Russian Progress had blasted off to the station not to de-orbit the Mir but to push it into a higher orbit. But few knew the details, and that’s what we provided at the press conference. How MirCorp was owned 38% by the Russian company Energia, how the rest belonged to western investors and how we believed that a private space station could attract paying customers in research and media.

It turned out to be a life-changing experience, and one that clearly has allowed me build up our customer base and make NanoRacks in 2017 the go-to company for commercial services on the International Space Station. I learned a lot from the roller coaster ride that was the time I spent at the helm of MirCorp.

Given that we are, seventeen years later, on a true cusp of commercial operations in low-earth orbit, I’ve decided this is the year to mark the milestones of the MirCorp journey. I’ll be writing blogs on the critical anniversaries, and explaining the lessons learned and how I’ve been applying that to the International Space Station. And soon enough, I hope to be applying these same lessons to our own, privately owned space station(s)!

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Americans really do need to take a renewed look at Russia. For starters, the popularity of Putin among Russians is genuine. The pride and patriotism is genuine. The relief that the embarrassing chapter of the Boris Yeltsin era is over is palatable. That this renewed strength in Russia comes at the expense of personal freedoms is without a doubt. That it comes with a U-turn back to a centralized economy with little tolerance for entrepreneurial, competitive markets and conflicting power bases is also without a doubt. Some Russians care. Most do not.

To understand Russia today you have to clearly understand what happened to the Russian people themselves as the Soviet Union fell apart. And that is the objective of my just-published memoir, “Three Sisters at the Revolution.” The book chronicles what I saw from 1989-1992 as the Soviet Union was crumbling. Not the famous political details of the interplay between George H.W. Bush, Margaret Thatcher, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin, but how the collapse of the Soviet government impacted the lives of everyday people. The focus of my stories is three extraordinary women: Olga, Little Irena and the woman I called Crazy Irena.

I arrived in Moscow in December of 1989 in order to witness a rocket launch to the Russian space station. The rocket was carrying the first commercial American payload, a biomedical research project. I had helped the companies involved receive the U.S. government permission, a story I tell in my earlier book “Selling Peace.”

But I ended up seeing far more than a launch. As I chronicle in “Three Sisters,” I witnessed the clash between the onslaughts of American values against those Russian. Accepted concepts for us, like freedom of religions, weak governments and free markets were at first intoxicating to the Russian people. Our way of life was embraced as the antidote for the Soviet system. The three sisters dreamt of going to America, of worshipping in our churches and being independent women, as they understood existed in the States. But then it all began to go wrong.

We Americans wholeheartedly embraced Gorbachev, we embraced the selling off of their governmental institutions. We turned a blind eye to the rise of the mafia. We thought little what it must be like to have our own children speaking in a foreign language and our daughters and sons making far more money than the parents. We never understood just how threatening the idea of American evangelists preaching a cacophony of religions at the expense of the Russian Orthodox Church. The long subtitle of my work sums up my feeling: “An Eyewitness Account of how the Export of Freedoms Produced the Russia of Today.”

Another character in the book is well, myself. Through the main character, Olga, I came to understand far better what it means to be an American, and to be Jewish. With the help of Olga and her own understanding of being partly Jewish, I journeyed full circle, back to my grandparents to realize how unique is our own country and my own family’s journey. But also that it is not always possible to export our own values to other lands and expect acceptance.

Whether in the Russia of the 1990s or Iraq and Afghanistan a decade later. And sometimes, just sometimes, the most wonderful of decisions is to stay in your own homeland, with your own family, rather than start again somewhere unknown. A decision that Olga finally made.

By 1992 each of the women was rejecting America’s remaking of their society in our own image. Their dreams slipped away in the reality of scarce foods and myriad alien choices. My friends mirrored many in Russia.

Putin is clearly understood by Russians, whether they support him or do not. But for Americans, his popularity is often misunderstood. I hope my memoir of my own experiences and journey helps explain one part of the puzzle of just how the Russia of today came about.

Jeffrey Manber – Washington, DC, 2016

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The action mirrored Flynt’s similar cash offer during the Bill Clinton impeachment process, when Republicans were hell-bent on removing the president from office because of the president’s affair with Monica Lewinsky, the White House intern. In October of 1998, Flynt paid for a full page ad in the Washington Post offering up to a million dollars for anyone who could prove an “an adulterous sexual encounter with a current member of the United States Congress or a high-ranking government official.”

The cash offer led to information on extramarital affairs by then-incoming House Speaker Robert Livingston, who was replacing Newt Gingrich. Livingston resigned.

As highlighted in my novel Them Hustlers, Flynt’s offer, and the resulting response from thousands of tipsters, was a core factor in starving off the resignation of Bill Clinton.

Even prior to Flynt’s recent offer, the twists and turns of this recent campaign prompted me to issue Them Hustlers in a print edition. The primitive pursuit of political power by our elected politicians, as woven into my story of businessman Phil Greene’s engagement to the “money” lady for the Louisiana delegation, is, unfortunately, more than timely today. In the book, the Louisiana delegation stops at nothing, even using the ancient art of voodoo, to assure the ascension to the speakership of Congressman Livingston.

As the dust settles on the 2016 election, one of the questions lingering in my mind is just why Larry Flynt’s most recent offer had minimal political impact when compared to the 1998 offer.

Is it because there are no other examples of explosive behavior by Donald Trump? Don’t think so.

So why the absence in 2016 of an outpouring of evidence from people eager for the cash reward?

Well, in 1998 a sitting president was being vilified by his opponents because of a relationship that was wrong on all ethical and moral levels. But those leading the political charge against Clinton held themselves out to be morally superior. The “Moral Majority” Republicans attacked the personal Bill Clinton, not for his presidential actions but for his personal actions. Larry Flynt’s million dollar offer revealed how the moral gap between these Republican men and Bill Clinton was not so great after all. At least four attacking married Republicans were shown to be having affairs.

The 2016 campaign was nasty on many levels. Both sides were vilified, both sides were painted as being less than presidential. Hilary Clinton for standing by her man in the face of his many sexual allegations, and Donald Trump for using his celebrity status to take advantage of women.

The American public revealed a new level of sophistication to the public arena. It is not necessarily the allegations alone that are politically explosive; it is the hypocrisy involved by the messenger. As quoted in the introduction of Them Hustlers, former Democratic congressman Dick Gephardt calls on Americans in 1998 to “stop destroying imperfect people at the alter of an unobtainable morality.”

In the election of Donald Trump we seem to have heeded Gephardt’s advice. Slowly, for better or worse, we lurch in the America of 2016 towards removing our candidates from pedestals and judging them more and more like our neighbors.

The post The Political Nuances of Sexual Hypocrisy circa 2016 appeared first on Jeffrey Manber.

We are on a cusp of a new chapter in our exploration of space. This new chapter is not about geographical goals nor about a specific program. Rather, it is about how America will explore space and how America will use the frontier of space to better our lives and we as a species.
For the first time, a president of the United States endorsed a philosophy of space exploration, that more and more of our efforts will be commercially based with reliance on a new generation of commercial space companies. That the U.S. government will act as a customer. That the private sector will take on more of the financial risk. And that the creativity and imagination of the private sector will be a driving force for the American space effort, whether for colonies on the Moon, expeditions to Mars or commercial space stations.

The administrator of NASA wrote, that as a result of the White House initiatives these past several years:

“NASA will start the process of providing companies with a potential opportunity to add their own modules and other capabilities to the International Space Station. While NASA prepares for the transition from the Space Station to its successors, the agency is also working to support and grow the community of scientists and entrepreneurs conducting research and growing businesses in space. A vibrant user community will be key to ensuring the economic viability of future space stations.”

The flurry of powerful activities and media products, from the workshop attended by the president, to a CNN blog written by Obama, all matter. For too long we have undertaken space activities with one hand tied behind our backs, by denying that free markets, capitalism and entrepreneurism all have a role in space exploration.

NanoRacks was founded just seven years ago on the premise that NASA was changing to allow a private company to offer services onboard the International Space Station. Today we are 50+ strong, with offices in Houston, Washington, DC and Silicon Valley. We have self-invested tens of millions of dollars in space station hardware owned by us, operated in cooperation with NASA. We have deployed over 140 small satellites from the space station for both smaller companies and for governments around the world. Our customer base also includes biopharma research organizations, high schools, universities and other space agencies.
This is the new frontier of space. A place where operations in space are conducted just like business on the earth.

The president also highlighted the NASA NextSTEPS program, where six companies have been selected by the space agency to explore develop commercial habitats from low-earth orbit to Mars. NanoRacks is one of those six companies. How cool is that?

We, working together with NASA, have already taken the first steps. Now we are ready to take the next steps—where private companies like NanoRacks and others, design, operate and market to customers privately owned homes and factories in space.

It was great seeing friends and colleagues at the White House workshop. There was a feeling of celebration, to mark how far we have come and a sense that the next decade will be a great decade for the private exploration and utilization of space. Let’s go!

The post Our New Philosophy on Space Exploration appeared first on Jeffrey Manber.

The trillions of investor dollars that pass through stock exchanges every day, starting in Tokyo and Beijing and later Moscow, Frankfurt, Paris, Amsterdam, London, then New York and Chicago—the stunning liquidity of private investments into thousands of companies, all can trace their origins to meet the need of a commercial frontier venture of the 1600s.

Think about this. It was commercial exploration that created the stock market, not, as I always assumed, the other way around.

The first modern-day stock market began in Amsterdam. The exchange developed because of a key problem confronting the launch of the Dutch East India Company (VOC) in 1602. As described in “The World’s First Stock Exchange,” by Lodewijk Petram, the standard procedure in the 16th century was to have trading companies raise funds, build ships, hire captains and their crew, send them to Indonesia and other exotic ports in the “Orient” to purchase spice, and then, once sold on the European market, the investors divvied up any profits and the venture was closed.

There was little liquidity as investor’s capital was tied up in a single project. Nor could huge sums be raised, as the companies in the 1500s were single voyage only.

Realizing that a more efficient approach was to take a longer view, The Dutch East India Company was granted a 21-year monopoly. This was far, far longer than previous ventures, such as the “Old Long Distance Company.” There were also political interests—think of VOC as a commercial extension of the still-fragile republic of Holland.

But 21 years is an eternity for any investor, whether in the 1600s or today. So, it was decided that after 10 years the investors could ask for their money back, plus any profits at that time.

Well, 10 years is till a long time to have capital locked up in an uncertain undertaking. So, as described by Petram, it was written, on the very first page of the share register, that the “Conveyance or transfer (of shares) may be done through the bookkeeper of this chamber.”

No longer did investors have to wait, whether for the dissolution of the venture, or a set period of time. What developed next was extraordinary: investors in the new venture began to sell their shares. That mean new investors bought those shares. And as the number of investors grew larger they began to meet in the plaza of a building in Amsterdam, then in the building and pretty soon, within several years, there was an active market of buyers and sellers.

Most of the tools of the modern stock market also developed naturally. There were investors betting on bad news (puts and shorts), others taking naked options. There was insider trading (news arriving from faster ships on good or bad news regarding the VOC activities in the Orient allowed one to respond accordingly before anyone else).

The Dutch East India Company lasted not just 21 years but for more than two centuries. It funded the launch of almost 5,000 ships, and settled more than a million Europeans in the Far East. Think commercialization, utilization and colonization all rolled into one multi-century effort.

I’ve been thinking about the VOC and stock markets lately, as we talk about the role of companies in our next steps to the Moon and on to Mars. What new financial tools might permit funding of such a venture? The VOC raised over $100 million dollars to funds its ventures. How could we tap a billion dollars, and like VOC, fund the flotilla of (space) ships, hire the crews and launch the expeditions?

I understand that colonization is not trade. There is no proven market. The mining of in-space resources is unproven. Beaming solar energy to earth (or elsewhere?) long discussed, is still years away.

But it’s encouraging to know that the modern stock market was born to fuel an impossibly long commercial mission from over 400 years ago.

Now, another task awaits: what new financial tools can launch our own 21-year effort (that may last two centuries) to commercially tap the resources of this generation’s space frontier resources?

The post Exploration Created the World’s First Stock Market appeared first on Jeffrey Manber.

To wit, in Florida, a Walmart had a breathtaking display of Coke Zero (get it…Ground Zero?) that re-created the two World Trade Center towers. And there was apparently an American flag made of Coke, Diet Coke, and Sprite boxes. A sign above the display said, “We Will Never Forget.” Classy.

And a store in Texas released a television ad promoting a twin (get it?) mattress sale. The ad ends with (and one cannot make this up), the staff in the store falling over the two mattresses, topping them down.

Sadly, harbingers of what’s to come. No matter the Walmart apology and the owner of the mattress store not only apologizing but shutting the store.

Harbingers because words and phrases are meant to convey emotional connections to the audience and what is tasteless to some is a fantastic selling pitch to others.

In 1979 we almost had a nuclear disaster here in this country. A nuclear power plant on Three Mile Island in Pennsylvania experienced a partial nuclear meltdown. In other words, we almost suffered, on the East Coast, an accident much like that in Chernobyl. But, by luck or industrial design, we did not.

But we did suffer through a rash of ads announcing sales that were “radioactive;” I remember them. A quick look on the Internet draws a blank, but I remember the tongues wagging how tasteless. Lots of publicity; but today there is no harm in calling a sales, or a promotion, radioactive.

Need more proof? Been to the theater to see a ‘blockbuster’ play? Tickets hard to get? And how Americans bought movies at the chain store “Blockbusters?” Don’t remember any pickets? Sure, no one cared that “blockbusters” was introduced in the language from World War II. These were bombs that could destroy a city block. (Get it?) Destroy buildings. Kill civilians. They were incredibly destructive; they were “blockbusters.” The Brits used these bombs, some of which weighed more than 4,000 pounds. The German citizens were apparently the first to call them blockbusters.

Soon enough, some copywriter in the 1940s thought to have sales described as ‘blockbustes’. Soon enough, Broadway proudly advertised a hit play as a ‘blockbuster.’ By 1954 a “block-buster” movie was one grossing at least $2 million dollars.

And, in a variation on the militaristic theme, when a movie does not gross enough revenue, it is referred to as a “bomb.”

Bombs kill.

No one objects today to the use of a catastrophic weapon to describe an unsuccessful move.

And, soon enough, in a few short years, we will all be standing on line to buy some sort of “twin” products with “falling” prices on September 11th. Soon enough, no one will bat an eye.

It is the nature of who we are.

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