Construction mogul bargains for space ride
By Caroline McGregor, Staff Writer, The Moscow Times, Tuesday, August 10, 2004
If there’s a more uniquely grandiose way to convert fortune into fame than flying to outer space, real estate developer Sergei Polonskii can’t think of one.
“It’s not hard to have a lot of money,” he mused. “It’s hard to know how to spend it with style.”
Polonskii, the young and wealthy president of construction firm Stroimontage, is negotiating with the Federal Space Agency to buy the right to fly to the International Space Station on Oct. 9.
Space officials were left scrambling to fill the third seat on the shuttle after U.S. businessman Gregory Olsen, who was originally slated to fly, dropped out of training for medical reasons in late July.
Polonskii, 32, is in the final running with cosmonaut Yury Shargin. Pending a decision, Shargin and Polonskii traveled to Houston in late July for NASA training.
Polonskii said he is “90 percent sure” he will get to go. Of the many would-be space tourists, he is the only one who has completed all the necessary training. And, unlike Shargin, he would be a paying passenger.
The only two space tourists so far – Dennis Tito, an American, and Mark Shuttleworth, a South African – each reportedly paid $20 million for the privilege – roughly enough to cover the cost of an entire Soyuz mission. Pop singer Lance Bass was going to do the same, but dropped out of training when funding fell through.
Polonskii, however, is driving a hard bargain with the cash-strapped space agency, reportedly negotiating to pay a cut-rate $8 million.
Are Russian space officials content to offer a patriotic discount for the first Russian space tourist? “No,” Polonskii said, flashing a coy smile in a recent interview. “It’s simple supply and demand."
The negotiations concern more than the price tag, even though the space agency is demanding the cash up front and has given him until Aug. 16 to pay, according to NBC News space analyst James Oberg.
Height was initially an issue, because at almost 2 meters, Polonskii is about 6 centimeters taller than the maximum allowed for Soyuz crewmembers. But that technicality was nothing a little money couldn’t solve, Polonskii said. “They have a normal business approach: ‘If you pay, we’ll find a solution.’ ”
Polonskii set his sights on space in 2002 and completed a four-month training course in September of that year.
He bought training at Star City through a firm called Atlas Aerospace, which sells the chance to try out various aspects of the cosmonaut preparation regime, as if it were an expensive amusement park.
Price lists on its web site (www.atlasaerospace.net) show, for example, that a 17-minute spin in a centrifuge approximating the additional weight of gravity during a shuttle’s liftoff goes for a steep $6900.
Moskovsky Komsomolets has reported that Atlas was created by Polonskii, but his spokeswoman, Irina Opimakh, would not confirm that. Atlas itself is elusive and does not publicly list its telephone number.
Polonskii himself did not discuss Atlas.
Polonskii likes to show off a music-video-style clip of highlights from his training, produced by Stroimontage’s in-house movie studio. Viewers get to see Polonskii doing everything – from striding around high-tech labs in a spacesuit and mugging for the camera in the weight room to taking diligent notes in lectures and doing somersaults with a flag with Stroimontage’s logo in the weightlessness simulator – all to the blaring strains of the Fastball’s radio hit “The Way.”
That same logo of a cartoon man in red overalls is also sprinkled around Moscow on billboards advertising space in apartment complexes like Korona at Yugo-Zapadnaya. In St. Petersburg, the company’s flagship project is the Petrovsky Fort business center.
As part of contract negotiations, Polonskii must agree with space officials on how he would occupy himself during the week or so of handover activities between the incoming space station crew, Salizhan Sharipov of Russia and Leroy Chiao of the United States, with whom he would fly out, and outgoing crew Gennady Padalka and Michael Fincke, with whom he would return.
There is also some haggling over how much luggage he can bring. Olsen had intended to test his firm’s infrared lenses and had been granted 10 kilograms of baggage.
Polonskii is keen to provide souvenirs of some sort for his top clients, though he recognizes it would be “inappropriate” to use the ISS as an advertising vehicle for Stroimontage – or Mirax, as the company will be named after its current rebranding campaign is complete.
Stroimontage is technically two separate corporations called Stroimontage – one in Moscow, which Polonskii heads, and one in St. Petersburg, headed by a business partner.
Each is a 100 percent subsidiary of the other.
The name change is timed to coincide with the company’s first foray into the French real estate market. It recently acquired land to build a residential complex on the outskirts of Paris, becoming the first Russian developer to launch a project in Europe.
Polonskii started the company 10 years ago in St. Petersburg, and its motto at one point was, “We were chosen to build capitals.”
Yet he rejects widespread speculation that political patronage from President Vladimir Putin, another native son, was to thank for the company’s strong standing. Vedomosti puts Stroimontage’s annual turnover at $310 million.
“I’ve seen him only once,” Polonskii said, referring to Putin, “and it was last year, at the Paul McCartney rock concert on Red Square.”
His relations, however, appear to be quite good with Mayor Yury Luzhkov, who named Polonskii as an adviser in 2002.
Stroimontage won a lucrative contract to build the Federation Towers skyscrapers in the planned Moskva-City complex near the White House on Krasnopresnenskaya Naberezhnaya, which City Hall hopes will become a bustling financial district. Since there were no open tenders, projects were effectively assigned.
Polonskii’s reputation, meanwhile, is at best mixed. On the record, his peers say he is known for keeping his word and there’s no project he has started and not finished. Off the record, they paint a less rosy picture, describing him as young and arrogant, someone known to stand important business partners up.
Polonskii’s net worth is not public, so his ranking alongside other Russian businessmen is hard to estimate.
During the recent interview, he said off-handedly that it would take a personal fortune of $100 million or $200 million for a person to allow him to fly to space.
The upper end of that range would put him just shy of Russia’s richest 100, as calculated this spring by the Russian edition of Forbes magazine.
Flying to space would not be the first way Polonskii has spent stylishly to distinguish himself within glittering Russian social circles.
Polonskii is known for his love of extreme sports and extreme adventures. He spent a recent vacation on a camping trek with friends through the Cambodian jungles.
He’s also received a slew of awards that seem designed to look good on paper, as much as anything. A charity ball he sponsored in March named him philanthropist of the year for his support of children’s homes. No details about how he supported the homes were presented.
According to Kommersant’s account of the ball, Polonskii – whom tabloids once reported to be smitten with former Bolshoi ballerina Anastasia Volochkova – made the most of the spotlight. Award in hand, he proposed with great flourish to his now-wife, Natalya Stepanova, the president of Stroiconsultgroup.
Polonskii said the reason others haven’t gotten as far as he has in life is that they aren’t hungry enough. He added that one day he’ll combine that and other pieces of wisdom into a book of his personal philosophy.
“Every day, you have to wake up and say these are my goals and what have I done to get closer to them?” he said. “If you don’t see the next summit, you start to drink or get depressed.”
Right now his goals are to build the Federation Towers and go to space, but he wouldn’t say which is more important.
“It’s like asking whom you love more, your mum or your wife,” he said.
An update:
Construction mogul ditches space bid for medical reasons
By Caroline McGregor, Staff Writer
The Moscow Times, Monday, August 23, 2004
Sergei Polonskii, the construction mogul and space tourist-hopeful, will not fly to the International Space Station in October “for medical reasons,” his company, Stroimontage, and the Federal Space Agency said Friday.
Neither side would say what the medical reasons were.
Federal Space Agency spokesman Vyacheslav Davidenko referred all questions to Polonskii’s representatives, but said that “most likely” it was Polonskii and not doctors who made the decision.
“Medical reasons are a private affair,” Polonskii’s spokeswoman Irina Opimakh said. “We have no other comment.”
Polonskii, 32, had passed the necessary medical tests and was expected to sign a contract with the Federal Space Agency on Friday or Monday, Davidenko said.
Polonskii had negotiated for two months about how much he would pay for the right to the third seat in the Soyuz capsule. Polonskii was reportedly offering $8 million, a significant discount off the $20 million paid by the two previous space tourists.
There was speculation that Polonskii had trouble pulling together the full amount in cash, as the Federal Space Agency had demanded up front as a condition. The previous two tourists paid on instalment plans.
Davidenko would not confirm the amount of the contract, which he said was confidential, but he said the money issue was not an obstacle.
The space agency and Stroimontage released a statement Friday saying that both sides were “satisfied” with the negotiations. “The contract was agreed and ready to be signed. However, upon the appearance of medical reasons for the candidate the sides decided that completing the flight was senseless,” it said.
A final decision on the flight roster will be made around the middle of the week, but the extra seat on the Soyuz will probably go to cosmonaut Yurii Shargin, Davidenko said.
Another article: “Russian millionaire rejected for space ride,” James Oberg, 20 August 2004.
Linked from Cosmonaut news 2004