Ghana To Travel To "Space": Ambition or Foolhardiness..?

I heard from source, to be specific - Cyberworld that, yesterday marked the 40th Anniversary of the NASA Moon Landing. That must be a great feat. I have my doubts though, if that thing really did happen. Did Neil Armstrong and his colleagues actually land on the moon 40 years ago?

Someway, somehow, I'm tempted to agree with a friend who thinks the whole thing is one big hoax and a carefully choreographed US prank, just to prove their superiority over the USSR. You know how these two have been engaged in superiority contest since then.

One other thing that makes the picture a lot more blurred, is the fact that 40 year ago, technology was barely developed, but that claim was slapped on the world. And yet, till date we still know very little about the moon. Today, with all the dot.com/dot.net technologies and speed of lightning, NASA is now 'planning' to return to the moon in 2030. Woooaw! What a plan! Why should it take them that long?

I wonder if I will be alive to see that day. But they did that 40 years ago with crappy & cheap technology. One would have expected that an encore of that feat be achieved earlier than 2030. Anyway, that is an entirely US headache and not something for my small head.. My take is on Ghana's fanciful thinking about space travel. Yes, you heard me right. Ghana's Fanciful SPACE TRAVEL..

Listening to News Night on Joy Fm; I heard a few arguments to the effect that Ghana should be considering a space travel. Oh yes.. You just heard it.. Only from me. Don't doubt it. I was amused and I laughed silently listening to that trash. Sorry, its more a blunder than a trash.

It is absolute wishful thinking. Travel to space to do what in the first place? Honestly, given even 50 years from today, I bet we are not and never going to get anywhere near there. As usual, let me be the only pessimist here. You can join me if you do agree. I don't expect you to agree with me though. In fact, I'd be glad if Ghana and her so-called scientist can prove me wrong for once. But sadly, I'm going to be proved right. We won't even be able to build an aircraft in the next 50 years, talk-less of a spaceship. Where is Ghana Airways, Black star Line and the rest...??
My premise is this simple. 50 years after that miserable independence (I wonder who at all advised Kwame Nkrumah and his friends to get that from the British, we would have been better off); one which we were proud to celebrate with USD$70 million, we have nothing to show. We have not yet been able to figure out how to keep hawkers off the streets of the Accra Central Business District, we don't have a stable National Education and Youth Policy.

We are always shifting blame on other people instead of looking for the right solution to our problems. We can't think of a sustainable way of providing affordable clean drinking water for even a quarter of the nation's population. I live in a community known for it affluence and all but, we still have to buy water every week since we moved there.

We still can't find enough intellect to create a good drainage system in the capital, Accra. Our major health institutions have remained largely as transit points to the grave. No wonder, when our political leaders have simple "kaka" [trans: toothache], they fly outside, of course at our expense, to get treatment. When people elsewhere are traveling to the moon, we are still struggling to reach our villages from the city.

50 years after independence, NDC and NPP activists are still fighting over who has the political right to keep the keys to public toilets in Cape Coast, Accra New-Town and Axim; and we are talking about traveling where? To the moon? Please... Spare the crap-talk.

Let's try to figure out how to clear the debris in the Korle Lagoon, take the primary school kids from under the mango trees in Garu Tempane, Yendi, Bawku and Zabuzugu-Tatale, into very good and well-equipped classroom buildings; let's work out a permanent solution to the perennial flooding in Accra; let's find a way of reducing the driving hours between Adenta to the Tetteh-Quarshie Interchange and to the Central Business District.

If we are able to find our way around these little things, then we can have a clear space in our heads to spare on thoughts of a space travel. Simply put, age-old wisdom should teach us to count one before two. Let's not place the cart before the horse.

My fingers hurt so badly... Heading to ACP Canteen opposite DWA-Ghana with Fred and Joyce [colleagues from work] to find some beans & fried plantain as usual. Accraboy, how I go do am...??

Photolinks Credit: AtoKD's Blog