I remember falling in love with the concept space travel when I watched my first episode of Star Trek : The Next Generation. The idea of going into the unknown and seeing things for the first time enthralled me and it was also one of the reasons I got into technology.

Many people I know of are very proud that we got somebody up there but is it really a great thing? In my books it is just like a millionaire paying big bucks to be a space tourist. True, there were experiments conducted but it just doesn’t give that ‘I am so proud to be Malaysian’ or ‘Malaysia Boleh’ thing.

What makes a space program of any country great is not really the destination but the road there. The engineering challenges of creating a space vehicle breaking earth’s gravity and all the logistical issues in maintaining it are what makes it a monumental achievement for the Americans, Russians and more recently the Chinese. We on the other hand bought some Sukhoi fighters in exchange for a scientifically oriented taxi ride.

I think it is great that we have somebody up there but is it truly something of monumental proportions that it is being made out to be? It also doesn’t help that prior to the launch that some idiot in the government also wanted us to make Teh Tarik and play Batu Seremban there.

Maybe one day when we have a space program that is vertically integrated from rocket to astronaut I’ll be proud but not today.