Outer space delusions

While Malaysians are still reeling from the revelations of enormous wastage of taxpayers' money contained in the Auditor-General reports, the Port Klang Free Zone fiasco and the naval boat scandal, we now have the Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology pushing to send another Malaysian "space participant" skywards in 2008 or 2009 in a space programme with dubious benefits to the country.

Although the cost of sending a Malaysian into space, estimated to be about RM 100 million, is not comparable to the astronomical billons involved in the failed PKFZ and naval boat projects, it is still a lot of money. I am sure many Malaysian educationists, academics and scientists will be able to suggest much better down-to-earth alternatives for advancing science, innovation and technology in the country with that kind of money.

The Minister of Science, Innovation and Technology said that the second "cosmonaut" or whatever he wants to call him will be doing more challenging tasks which "could involve him doing a space walk or conducting repairs to the spacecraft". If this is the Minister's idea of technological advancement in the country then Malaysians will have no hope that we will ever make real progress in this area.

Malaysians are tired of the hype being spun around the "Angkasawan" program. We do not have delusions that by sending someone into space in a Russian spacecraft is in any way an achievement for the country - scientific, innovative, technological, or otherwise. Some very rich individuals such as the Iranian-American woman Anousheh Ansari have paid US$20 million of their own money and have undergone similar training and went into space to visit the same International Space Station. Lets call a spade a spade. They are space tourists and so is our Malaysian spaceman.

To send another Malaysian space tourist on a similar trip is an unnecessary waste of taxpayers' money and is an extravagance which even more technologically-advance and richer countries do not indulge in. Don't try to make us believe that it is any different even if the Russians have agreed to call Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor a "cosmonaut" and even if he has brought along with him some experiments to conduct in space.

In a Bernama news report on Oct 13, the DPM has said that there will be a post-mortem on the first space programme before deciding on sending the second person to space. Please do that and please put an end to this wasteful programme which is clearly dead from the very start.