{"id":643,"date":"2007-10-12T07:13:53","date_gmt":"2007-10-12T12:13:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/12\/more-disgust-with-the-spaceflight-participant"},"modified":"2007-12-18T07:11:32","modified_gmt":"2007-12-18T12:11:32","slug":"more-disgust-with-the-spaceflight-participant","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2007\/10\/12\/more-disgust-with-the-spaceflight-participant","title":{"rendered":"more disgust, with the spaceflight participant"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>of all the hullabaloo of sending the first malaysian into space, only to find that the great sheikh muszaphar shukor is just a <em><strong>spaceflight participant<\/strong> (<a href=\"http:\/\/www.nasa.gov\/mission_pages\/station\/expeditions\/expedition16\/exp16_adv.html\">link<\/a>). <\/em>not an astronaut, but a space tourist. one that the government used tax payer dollars (okay, ringgit) to push him into. thats rm100 million to <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/archives\/2006\/11\/15\/silly-malaysia-race-cards-pulled-out-what-happens-when-oil-ringgit-runs-out\">play children&#8217;s games<\/a> and make <em>teh tarik<\/em> (pulled tea).<\/p>\n<p>someone like <a href=\"http:\/\/www.markshuttleworth.com\/\">mark shuttleworth<\/a>, forked out his own cash, between <a href=\"http:\/\/www.space-frontier.org\/PressReleases\/2002\/20020425shuttleworth.html\">USD$15<\/a> to <a href=\"http:\/\/transcripts.cnn.com\/TRANSCRIPTS\/0204\/16\/ltm.08.html\">USD$20<\/a> million to see space. this was an out-of-pocket expense, and now he&#8217;s the first south african in space. why are the malaysian tax-payers funding a space tourist?<\/p>\n<p>malaysian spin-doctors better not make sheikh a laughing stock. now they&#8217;re <a href=\"http:\/\/www.jeffooi.com\/2007\/10\/spaceflight_participant.php\">talking<\/a> about him praying more than 80 times a day, as the first muslim to go to space during ramadhan. was this one <em>large<\/em> joke?<\/p>\n<p>p\/s: rm100 million roughly equates to around USD$30 million. why was mark&#8217;s independent trip cheaper than this tax-payer-funded instance?<\/p>\n<p><strong>Update:<\/strong> Read Ditesh&#8217;s take titled <a href=\"http:\/\/ditesh.gathani.org\/blog\/2007\/10\/13\/the-angkasawan-programme-is-a-political-sham\/\">The Angkasawan Programme is a political sham<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>Technorati Tags: <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/politics\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">politics<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/tax%20payer\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">tax payer<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/spaceflight%20participant\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">spaceflight participant<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/malaysian%20in%20space\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">malaysian in space<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/first%20malaysian%20in%20space\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">first malaysian in space<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/sheikh%20muszaphar%20shukor\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">sheikh muszaphar shukor<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/corruption\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">corruption<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/laughing%20stock\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">laughing stock<\/a>, <a href=\"http:\/\/technorati.com\/tag\/malaysia\" class=\"performancingtags\" rel=\"tag\">malaysia<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>of all the hullabaloo of sending the first malaysian into space, only to find that the great sheikh muszaphar shukor is just a spaceflight participant (link). not an astronaut, but a space tourist. one that the government used tax payer dollars (okay, ringgit) to push him into. thats rm100 million to play children&#8217;s games and [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-643","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4vJD-an","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=643"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/643\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=643"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=643"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bytebot.net\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=643"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}