rimsat us russian joint venture i ve been to three talks in the last month which might be of interest i ve transcribed some of my notes below since my note taking ability is by no means infallible please assume that all factual errors are mine permission is granted to copy this without restriction michael sternberg cheif of operations of rimsat was invited to speak at an informal lunch held by acdis here on the campus of the university of illinois acdis is an organization on campus that deals with arms control disarmament and international security rimsat was considered an appropriate topic because the company is using russian launchers and satellites i think it also helped that his daughter is a grad student in the international relations program the concept behind rimsat apparently began when matt neilson went to tonga to visit a friend while he was there he somehow ended up visiting the king who happened to be a big tv fan matt bought the king a satellite dish which the king thought was really nifty since tonga has a gnp of about million his majesty asked if there was any way to make money off this matt thought there probably was so at his suggestion tonga applied for geosynchronous satellite slots while this isn t entirely off the wall it was very unusual seeing as tonga was a tiny kingdom with no space program and is a lot of slots the whole thing was debated in the appropriate regulatory agency and carl hilliard who is apparently a respected space lawyer wrote several opinions supporting tonga s case eventually tonga ended up with slots ranging from e to e slots are designated by the longitude over which they reside according to sternberg four of these from e to e are the best in the world because they are excellently placed for communications between hawaii and the pacific rim rimsat was formed to use these slots it was officially formed in nevis as a tax haven they tried for a few years to raise funds in the west however to fill slots with western satellites launched on western launchers would have cost approximately billion it s not easy to raise that kind of money eventually they hit upon the idea of using russian hardware they began negotiating with glavkosmos for hardware mr sternberg describes operating in moscow in such harsh terms that i don t think i ll visit there for a long time besides a significant lack of creature comforts he was not happy with the way that people operate for example everybody can sell you everything everyone can show the proper documents and licenses that indicate they are the only ones who have the authority to sell what ever you want to by eventually rimsat arranged a deal with glavkosmos for satellites at a cost of million however glavkosmos lost favor after the coup sternberg says that this is because they were basically a bunch of kgb operatives who went to trade shows and picked up lots of brochures since glavkosmos was out of power he had to renegotiate the deal with the new authorities he again described life in a moscow hotel in rather unfavorable terms eventually he worked out a deal and on dec he met with koptev who heads the russian space program to sign the deal koptev insisted on a few concessions before signing and according to sternberg he arranged these new rules to allow himself to form another company to do the exact same thing as rimsat the next step was to meet with the builders of the hardware npo applied mechanics npo pm to use their acronym this organization is located in siberia can t figure out how to spell the town i need an atlas and has built about vehicles since the dawn of the space age sternberg commented that siberians are very different from musovites they are hard workers honest people who team up to get things done very much like midwesterners at this point there were some comments from the audience that agreed with his opinion on both siberians and midwesterners sternberg had lots of good things to say about npo pm his company is apparently lookng for million to invest in the firm to become partners it apparently costs the russians about million to build a satellite that would sell for million in the west if you want to give them specifications they ll build you a satellite for the particular satellites that rimsat will be using costs run about per transponder year this compares to t y in the u s they can sell their time for about million compared to million in the u s rimsat will launch their satellites on protons to get the best prices they bought in bulk they have the rights to twelve launches so if any of you need a lift i can give you their address the first launch is scheduled for october and they are getting one used satellite from the russians which is being moved into place now tidbits sternberg says this kind of thing has to be done by entrepreneurs not big business because big business is just like what they have over there except that we have better paper both in the bathroom and in the copier russian launches are self insured the promise to replace a failed launch within months major investors in rimsat include russell which is a huge retirement fund organization cellsat which is a big telecom business in southeast asia and a fund operated by some of the big names in u s aerospace which he says is sort of an insurance policy for them if this really takes off he downplayed the instabilites in the ex ussr saying that we are worried partly because we aren t used to seeing russia as anything but an unvarying monolith italy gets a new government every two weeks but we don t worry because we re used to it he predicted that once we get used to seeing what really goes on in russia we won t worry about their stability as much part of the problem with cooperative ventures is the problem of transfering money the central bank has a policy of taking hard currency payments putting in their coffers and replacing the rest with the equivalent value in rubles to get around this rimsat pays their hard currency into an austrian bank account npo pm then pays their contractors with foreign currency so that the only the contractors get swindled by the government one of the big problems rimsat has had is stonewalling by the western satellite industry however intelsat recently bought three of the same type of satellites which was rather reassuring the biggest worry most people have about russian satellites is the primitive technology and shorter lifetime the older gorizont horizon satellites have a lifetime of about years while the more modern express satellites compare well with western technology and last about years while this is much shorter than years for western satellites sternberg downplayed the difference at these prices they can afford to launch new ones in addition shorter lifetimes mean that they can replace their equipment with newer technology so they will be able to compete better than older out of date hardware josh hopkins jbh uxa cso uiuc edu find a way or make one attributed to hannibal
