Strive Notes

The other night, the International Institute of Space Commerce, part of the International Space University, played host to the European premiere of an award-winning documentary film about the first privately funded space venture.

More than a hundred people turned up at the Manx Museum in Douglas for the event, and enjoyed an intimate discussion with the movie’s director Michael Potter along with presentations about the commercial prospect of space business given by ISU president Walter Peeters and CEO of Manx company Odyssey Moon Limited, Dr Robert Richards, who had just flown in from Canada to attend the premiere.

The film Orphans of Apollo provides a detailed examination of one of the most daring, if unsuccessful, efforts to commercialise space. It tells the true story of a small group of entrepreneurs who felt ‘orphaned’ by President Nixon’s decision to end the NASA Apollo Moon programme and the subsequent years of nominal space activity. They took matters into their own hands, and commercially commandeered the Russian Mir Space Station, behind the backs of NASA and the US Government. Their rebellious, yet pioneering, efforts launched the new commercial space revolution.

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