There was a period in my life, when I was younger, I admired the unreachable diamonds in the sky. At one time when I was older, I gazed into the clear night sky and witnessed the celestial heaven in all of its majesty from within the Grand Canyon of Tuolumne, under the clear Californian night sky. It was so full of stars, untainted by intrusive city light that characterizes human civilization. So far away from trouble, so near to the heaven above.
That love allowed me to recognize some of the constellations with little effort; Orion, Ursa Minor and Major, Draco and my own star Gemini, among others. In that canyon, amid the peaceful continuous music of water gushing through nearby rapids, I smiled alone, reliving that childhood preoccupation. Lying on my back, I connected the stars with each other, making constellations of my own, in hope to amuse myself before I succumbed to fatigue, partly due to the hiking I did earlier in the day, partly due prolonged withdrawal from my virtual world.
It was only natural for the love of stars to nurture interest in space exploration. That was exactly the case when I was a kid. I remember that when I was 6 or 7, I had to list down three trades which I would like to practice; in that tiny boxes with that bad handwriting of mine, I wrote “astronaut”. But that childhood interest died out, like too many good things in exchange for maturity. The reality of life has the knack of pulling one down to earth; there are issues that require urgent attention at the expense of greater things. Since then, I have not thought much of stars, of constellation, of space exploration until lately. The Malaysian space program, if one could call it as such with a straight face, entices me to revisit that childhood dream of mine.
On Liberty Street in Ann Arbor, from State towards Main, just beyond the first Borders store in the world is a quaint bookstore that I used to visit every semester, looking for inexpensive books to fill whatever time I had, whatever space I had on my shelf, as partners during many of my cold lonely nights. It was there where I finally got my hands on Blue Mars, the last novel of the Martian trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson. The trilogy on colonization of Mars is one of few widely celebrated science fiction novels of the 1990s.
Believe it or not, I had searched for that novel for almost 3 years and only found it after I had crossed the Pacific Ocean. It was amazingly hard to find the novel in Kuala Lumpur and I practically had given up looking for it. I remember very vividly, my muscles froze upon the unexpected discovery of Blue Mars in the store. Only after full realization of what hit me sunk in did I grab the book and decide immediately to purchase it, lest the serendipity turned into regret.
That same year, the Bush administration was cutting NASA budget and that news was greeted by many with deep murmur of protest. The person behind the counter was one of many individuals that strongly disagreed with the decision, adding on to whatever resentment he already had from the ongoing war in Iraq.
The title of the book probably betrayed my interest in space exploration and science fiction to him because he decided to start a conversation with me by saying, politely paraphrased, that the President is shortsighted. I smiled back, agreeing with him. But Blue Mars awaited and I had no time for idle talk! So I paid the cashier and made a dash from Liberty to Thompson and East Madison, up to the third floor and jumped on my bed to hurry to explore the first sentences of Blue Mars.
In the Martian trilogy, it took a Malthusian disaster to go to Mars. In the second half of the 20th century in the real world, it took a cold war to go to space. For the US, it took a charismatic Kennedy to go to the moon.
For Malaysia, it is much less inspiring for it takes a dish of roti canai to go to space.
Well, not quite, but you get the idea.
The Malaysian space program has been derided as space cab and unfortunately, it is not without merit. This is especially so when many are under the perception that the Malaysian government is paying the Russian to send a Malaysian up to space. The truth is that the Malaysian government paid almost nothing for the program because the deal was part of the Malaysian purchase of a fleet of Russian-designed jet fighters. In other words, the opportunity to taxi a Malaysian to space was merely a matter of sweetening the pot. The purchase went through and so was the deal. Therefore, in relative term, practically no public money was spent, unlike the downright misused of public funds at recent by-elections at Ijok and Manchap. On whether the purchase of the jet fighters itself was a waste of money, or how the jet fighters were purchase, that is another matter altogether.
The truth however does not rally total support from the public, especially after the Malaysian authority announced — no, stressed is a better verb — that the Malaysian astronaut, cosmonaut, spaceflight participant or whatever one wishes to call it, was going to introduce roti canai in space, among other things. They probably thought it was amusing but many were and still are disturbed at how precious resources are being spent when there are so many matters of bread and butter left unattended on the ground.
While I am dismayed at the celebration of roti canai in space, I am excited at the prospect of Malaysian presence in space. Yet, I feel the government is not embarking on the program for the sake of space exploration or the developmental benefits that entails it but rather, is more interested in shallow achievement that have been characterized with the spirit of “Malaysia Boleh“. Needless to say, the term Malaysia Boleh has been polluted with the penchant for the largest cake, the largest flag, the tallest tin structures, or whatever superlatives of superficiality that suit ridiculous efforts. This is perhaps to add to the grandness of the number 50 and within a larger context, to encourage a feel good atmosphere for the anticipated general election. By the way, the atmosphere is turning increasingly sore on the economic and the social fronts.
Sure, there are experiments to be conducted by the Malaysian “angkasawan” but those experiments were announced only after the outcry against the roti-canai-in-space announcement. That made me, and probably many others too, suspicious of the sincerity of the experiments and the space program itself. It is, as if, the experiments are organized in an ad hoc manner just to avoid further criticism.
It is sad for Malaysia to take the journey to space so lightly. I do not mind Malaysia hitching a ride through the Russian space program as part of our learning curve. There is a lot to learn from the Russian; what Malaysia could learn from the Russian during the launch is this: the way the Russian organizes its spaceflight. In my humble opinion, any soft assets obtained will be at least as valuable as any hard investment related to spaceflight. I do hope that the realization of this opportunity is not lost upon the Malaysian space authority, amid the euphoria, of having a Malaysian in space.
Ventures into space require great investment and its benefits do not bare fruit immediately, just like any other earthly investment. Amid competing demands for limited resources, it is easy to ignore the final frontiers in favor of more earthly businesses; a larger return on investment is being overlooked for a large initial investment required. Detractors of the Malaysian space program deride the ventures as costly national pastime but the benefits the US, Russian and European space programs brought to the global community have proven these detractors wrong. Yet, these myopic detractors ignore that and employ instead selective reasoning on space program: they demand return on investment from the space program immediately. These myopic suffer from instant gratification.
For Malaysia to have the same success as those programs, Malaysia needs to stress on the future benefits of this space venture, instead of the novel idea of consuming roti canai in space. Only through this would the myopic be soundly defeated.
Alas, the way the angkasawan program is marketed to the public may have granted the opponents of any space program the victory they seek, much to the chagrin of those that sincerely hope for a credible and sustainable space program, national or otherwise, for advancement in science. For the next bout, the same mistake must not be repeated. Any future venture into space must stress on its return on investment, not as a joy ride.
p/s — this entry was first published in Bolehland, as indicated here.