Russian innovation foundation Skolkovo joins the international commercial space industry. Today the last details of the cooperation agreement between the Skolkovo Foundation and International Space Transport Association (ISTA) were approved in the Hague, in the Spherium Spacetrade Center.
A business lunch for potential ‘space tourists’ with a British entrepreneur, the founder of Virgin Galactic company Richard Branson, took place there. At a press-conference Richard Branson declared that already next year his company that operates suborbital space flights is ready to start commercial flights for the first space tourists who are able to pay.
According to the businessman, his company has already received over 500 requests for the space flights, and by the end of the century over 100 thousand people can reach the space. Branson stresses that there is no need to have perfect health of an astronaut or to be in great physical shape in order to make a space journey. “You should simply enjoy the flight.”
At the business lunch there also has been held the presentation of the Skolkovo foundation that received great interest. Seda Pumpyanskaya, Vice President of the Skolkovo Foundation, shared the fact that during the conversation with Sir Branson the representatives of the Foundation invited him to Moscow in order to “discuss in further detail the possibilities of cooperation in the area of space technologies”.
She reminded that currently annual turnover of the world space tourism industry has reached 120 billion USD and continues to increase rapidly. “For development of this industry a lot of innovation technologies, primarily space technologies, are needed. The Skolkovo Foundation creates such technologies, and it is a basis for our mutually beneficial cooperation.”
ITAR-TASS communicates that during the business lunch awards of the International Space Transport Association have been given to Richard Branson “for pioneer achievements in suborbital business of the operator company Virgin Galactic” and to the Skolkovo Foundation “for visionary leadership in the space technologies business”.
About the Skolkovo Foundation
The Skolkovo Foundation is a non-profit organization. The goals of the Foundation are to mobilize resources of Russia in the sphere of modern applied research, and to create friendly environment for scientific research. In the future Skolkovo effective regime will be applied to other innovative regions of Russia.
The project includes founding universities and research institutes, creating a business incubator, founding a center of transfer and commercialization of technologies, hosting representative offices of the foreign companies, and constructing residential buildings and social infrastructure. Activities of the innovation center Skolkovo are regulated by a separate law that offers special economic conditions for its residents.