Month: November 2006

This is Ham, the first chimpanzee to go to space on behalf of NASA. He died at the age of 26. Ham was sent first because the Americans weren’t sure if the Mercury astronauts were ready for the first space ride; so Ham beat both Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard. In a way, it was a depressing and embarrassing blow for the Mercury Seven who thought one of them would be given the chance to ride on NASA’s first rocket, but no, it was a chimp who beat them to it. After all, NASA initially thought a chimp would be able to do all the jobs of an astronaut in a space capsule.

Ham the Chimp was all alone in that capsule, went up to space, and re-entered minutes later.

Malaysia’s astronaut will have nothing much to do. He won’t be in command of the 3-men Soyuz space capsule. he’ll be in there as a passenger: much like the space tourists Dennis Tito, Mark Shuttleworth, Greg Olsen, and Anousheh Ansari. If it was in one of NASA’s space shuttle, the Malaysian astronaut would be a Payload Specialist #7 – or in old malay ministerial post: Menteri Tak Berpelior, sorry, Menteri Tak Berportfolio (or by its more politically-correct term now: Menteri di Jabatan Perdana Menteri.

But of course, it would be embarrassing having paid so much for the Sukhoi SU-30 MKKs, incorporating the cost of sending a Malaysian up into space to do nothing. So, according to BERNAMA, the first Malaysian astronaut will be playing gasing, batu seremban, make teh tarik, and to top the list of most difficult experiment: batik painting.

According to BERNAMA, “The astronaut will also paint a batik motif and make ‘teh tarik’ (‘pulled’ tea) which would be shared with his fellow astronauts,” said Agriculture and Agro-based Industry Ministry parliamentary secretary Datuk Rohani Abdul Karim.

Rohani, who was representing the Science, Technology and Innovation Ministry, was responding to a supplementary question from Datuk Dr Marcus Mojigoh (BN-Putatan) in the Dewan Rakyat, here Wednesday.

(‘Batu seremban’ is played by throwing one stone and sweeping another on the floor and then simultaneously catching the one thrown earlier.)

On Marcus’s original question, Rohani said a lot of scientists had forwarded their research proposal in space to the astronaut.

“The main objective of sending an astronaut into orbit is to carry out scientific experiments under microgravity – a situation alien to the earth. As such the National Aerospace Agency has opened doors to our scientists to show their mettle and capabilities through the National Astronaut Programme,” said Rohani.

So, now you know what experiments will be done up there next September when the Malaysian astronaut blasts off into space. My guess is if you can spin the gasing fast enough, it would orbit around the Malaysian astronaut and the experimental paraphernalia, creating a gravitational field, and none of the batu seremban pebbles, nor would the teh tarik behave like other things would in micro-gravity.

And do you know how much does it cost to send a kilogram of stuff up into space? US$23,486.00. Yes, that’s for a kilogram of stuff. I’m sure all the experiment paraphernalia the Malaysian astronaut is taking up will cost more than that.