Christmas in space

Despite the paparazzi, balloons and a few anaemic Santa Clauses prancing around, there’s no real Christmas this time. All that Kumbhakarna can see is another slide down the depressingly downward economic spiral that’s dragging down all but the rich and the politically connected, with everyone else trying to keep up appearances with the desperation of the newly impoverished.

But, for those who are keen on good news at any cost, Sri Lanka will send its first astronaut to space within the next seven years. Or so according to Science and Technology Minister Tissa Vitharana.

Good news? It will be to those who are ready to thrive on a steady government fantasy diet of better roads, neat pavements, another airline and, going by those Central Bank statistics, healthier, better educated and wealthier citizens.

According to their exellencies, Sri Lanka has already entered the space age by launching SupremeSat-1 on Nov. 27 this year. Built by the French, it was launched by the Chinese. While congratulating them this effort, Kumbhakarna notes with regret that it’s rather late for us to enter the space age. Sputnik was launched in 1957, and India launched her first satellite, the Aryabhatta, in 1975 with Soviet help, while Thailand launched Thaicom I in 1991, and Indonesia followed in 2007 with Lapan Tubsat, built with German help and launched in India. Well, better late than never.

How many artificial satellites are up there already? NASA says there are 3,000 man-made satellites orbiting the earth, while the Goddard Space Flight Centre lists 2,271. A few more up there could do no harm (two more are earmarked to follow SupremeSat-1). But it’s our ‘man in space’ goal that makes Kumbhakarana sit up and take notice. Do we need that?

Those who are celebrating Christmas and 31st night in Colombo’s hot new night spots will overwhelmingly say ‘yes.’ That’s supposed to be patriotism for the well-heeled. But, looking out of his window at Christmas-starved streets, Kumbhakarna sees a very different set of priorities.

Forget the official statistics. All vital state sectors, including health, education, public transport and welfare, are poorly funded. The real problem is determining which sector faces the biggest crisis, as budgets for education et al keep getting cut. The universities are looking at ditching the humanities while the defense budget gets unnecessarily bloated (Here, Kumbharna takes the view that our greatest enemies are ourselves). Only 8.2% of our households have a personal computer, and many commuters are left stranded without buses even in the capital after nine pm, and we are talking about sending a man to space.

A space training centre will be created here with Chinese help with this goal in view as well as for satellite related activities. The total cost of the four-year satellite project is 300 million US dollars. Kumbhakarna believes this money could be spent to improve the country’s health, education, public transport and welfare sectors. This $300 million is said to come entirely out of private sources, but that begs the question – what’s the private commercial sector’s sudden interest in space when it’s so hard to get a paltry one lakh rupees from a company for a welfare or entertainment programme?

If anyone argues that a space programme is more important than any of that, it must be asked – in what sense? Let’s take a look at neighbouring India, which also has a space programme (along with a nominal GDP of $1, 847trillion while Sri Lanka has a GDP of $64 billion according to 2012 IMF estimates). This is what analyst Randeep Ramesh said in the Guardian of UK.

“India’s lunar rocket blast off this morning (Oct. 22, 2008) from the balmy island shores in the Bay of Bengal is about a country asking for the moon – and getting it. To brush off those who wonder why India – the country with the world’s greatest number of poor people – is spending $86m on repeating what the Americans, the Russians, the Chinese and the Japanese have already done, Indian space officials have talked of the holy grail of nuclear energy: fusion.’

You see, the moon has 5m tonnes of Helium 3 – which is the ideal fuel for nuclear fusion power. Fusion’s the next new, new nuclear thing. Indian officials will tell anyone who asks that fusion creates four times as much energy as boring old nuclear fission….Nuclear fusion is the stuff that stars are made of….although the science was worked out in the 1940s, fusion has led to the thermonuclear explosion and little else but a series of hugely expensive white elephants, the latest of which is the International Thermonuclear Experimental Reactor (ITER) – a $12 billion project backed by the US, the European Union, Japan, Russia, China, India and South Korea.

“No surprise, then, that they all have eyes on the moon. To sell a problem that has eluded science’s best brains for more than half a century as a solution smacks of desperation. India is a nation with  proliferating development needs – the global hunger index ranks it below Laos and Burkina Faso. Hundreds of millions of Indians still openly defecate in fields, at roadsides, beside train tracks. Common tropical diseases easily overwhelm the country’s poorly-funded public health system. Railways and airports all need money and managerial overhauls….perhaps the country would do well to direct some of its remarkable talents to the more obvious, acute problems.”

The Indian Space Research Organisation has proposed a budget of $2.26 billion for its human spaceflight programme. If achieved within the proposed time frame, Indiacould be the fourth country after Russia, USA and China to send a man to space – unless Dr. Vitharana’s astronaut gets there first.
The point is, Indians have a reason for manned space flight (Helium 3 from the moon for nuclear fission). What’s our goal, other than just to send so-and-so to space? We have no nuclear energy programme. It sounds like a willful waste of money (private or otherwise) when, if current socio-economic trends continue, we could rank below Laos and Burkina Faso in the global hunger index in future. The only redeeming factor, when compared to India, could well be that we wouldn’t have so many people defecating in the open fields, or that the stuff won’t be noticeable in pictures taken from outer space.