Faye (my big sister to the uninitiated) asked for a teacher's perspective on the first African, who also happens to be a South African, in space. I must admit that when I first heard about it, I thought it was a joke. As with Dennis Tito, I wondered if $20 million couldn't be spent in a more far-reaching exercise.

In an interview from space, with the BBC, he was asked this question by a viewer from Kenya. His response was that as the first African in space he is creating opportunities for and possibly inspiring other Africans to aim for space, that space has now truly become an international arena. It was a carefully thought out response; after all he had seven months of training to think of a good sounding justification.

Now, I don't want to sound envious, which I am (I watch Star Trek every night of the week, at 11 pm, and wish I was living three hundred years in the future), but how in the universe is Africa going to afford a space programme when it can't even afford a proper educational programme to qualify it's potential Africanauts? Would Shuttleworth's contribution to Africa's space programme have been less spaced out if he had contributed to the African education about space? Would the effects of those $20 million (approximately R220 million) on the ground not have elevated Shuttleworth higher in his fellow citizens' estimation that the blast off from Russia did?

So, why did Shuttleworth (just got to write that name as often as possible - it's ridiculous, given the topic) fly into space? For Africa's benefit? Come on. A multimillionaire does not become one by thinking about others first. This whole experience, which angers me the more I write about it, was so that he could do something for himself and brag about it afterwards. Far from being the selfless act on behalf of Africa he tried to portray it as, this was an indulgence of the most selfish kind. Unfortunately, it seems that almost as many people as the millions he spent on this space picnic, have bought into his sales pitch. So, once again, he has got what he wanted.

I have no objections to Shuttleworth spending this money on himself - it's his money - but I do object to him suggesting that he did it for the benefit of others.

Beam me out of here Spock!

12 May 2002

Dion Marc Delport

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