How Business Learned To Love Russian Missiles

By Jeffrey Kluger

Russia's SS-18 missiles seemed scarier when they were pointed at Washington and Wichita, Kans. Like so much else in the onetime land of Lenin, however, the big guns have gone Big Business. Last week the U.S.-based ONE STOP SATELLITE SOLUTIONS (O.S.S.S.) announced that it had signed an agreement with the Russia-based KOSMOTRAS to use decommissioned SS-18s as launchers for commercial satellites.

Perhaps appropriately, the rockets from the formerly classless society will loft decidedly proletariat payloads. O.S.S.S. hopes to mass manufacture satellites known as CubeSats, boxes measuring 4 in. a side that can be bought and launched for less than $45,000. Up to 100 CubeSats could go aloft on one SS-18 and be used for anything from experimental sensors for university science students to Internet relay stations to resting places for the ashes of a loved one.

It will be a year before the first of the minisatellites take to space, but the companies stand to make up to $4 million per fully loaded rocket--a nice payday for a missile designed for Doomsday. --By Jeffrey Kluger