Space is
inspirational
and aspirational
ative. We need more creative thinkers
and we need to inculcate in our young
this love to create new things and the
passion for new ideas. As the student
matures, he or she should not only be a
critical thinker but also a creative one.
On top of STEM, it would be innovation
that would set Malaysia apart from the
competition.
Q: Datuk, you were instrumental in setting up the national
space agency in 2002. What was
your vision for that agency?
It was simple – I wanted Malaysia to be
a country that is respected internationally in the field of space. To achieve that,
there were several things I had to do. One
of them was to set the target that by the
year 2020, we would have the technological capability to build our own MEASAT
Satellites. At the time and until now, our
satellites are being built by the French
and the Americans, through companies
like Boeing. I wanted Malaysia to be able
to build these satellites on our own. I built
the foundation for this goal.
Unfortunately, I believe that Malaysia’s space industry has taken many steps
– backwards. We are not even stagnating –
that would see us in a better position than
where we are now. We have regressed.
We are not building satellites, we no longer have programmes that work towards
building our space capabilities.
The saddest part is that other countries have forged ahead. Around 2004,
our space programme was the envy of
several countries, especially the African countries. There were even countries that were concerned about our
capabilities. But today, some of these
countries have surpassed our achievements. A few months ago, Singapore
launched six small satellites, doing the
things that I thought Malaysia should be
doing. Vietnam is catching up with us.
Nigeria has their own facilities. Thailand
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and Indonesia are ahead of us. We may
be trying hard but we have regressed.
Q: So we are not on track to
build our own satellites by the
year 2020?
We are absolutely NOT on track. We had
the facilities and the human resources
but If you don’t invest in the technology and build satellites, good talent will
leave. Space is one sector that people
enter because they are inspired by very
big and noble goals. Space is inspirational and aspirational; that’s why in
the US, the industry attracts the best
minds. If you compared space to, say,
biotech, the motivations are different.
Biotech is business-driven while in the
space industry, people are motivated by
goals bigger than themselves and their
companies. These people will leave if
there are no programmes and no aspirational targets to work towards. So, we
have hollowed out our capability and
capacity. It’s very sad.
Q: What would it take, in your
opinion, to rejuvenate Malaysia’s space programme?
If we look at national development as
being necessarily holistic and comprehensive for the sake of the future of our
country, we will come to the conclusion
that the space sector is an indispensable
part of that future. There are parts of
our economy for which space assets are
critical (communications, navigation),
while others could do better if we utilised their services better (agriculture,
education, environmental protection).
This awareness is currently very low
hence a lot more has to be done to raise
it. It’s not like we have to start building
heavy-lift rockets immediately. We
should however slowly build up our capability commensurate with our needs
and resources.
Q: You headed the Angkasawan
project, Datuk. Wasn’t this project designed to inspire more Malaysians to be more interested in
space science?
That was part of the vision, of course:
for people to relate themselves to space.
When the space agency was set up, I
held talks on satellites and rockets, on
space technology. But the media was
not interested. They kept asking that as
Malaysia now had a space agency, was
Malaysia going to launch an astronaut
into space? I kept resisting this id