Ipoh A Space Tourism Hub?? Oh Please!

An artist concept drawing of the suborbital space plane, Ascender. Can't bring myself to imagine that this sleek and sexy thing would zoom out from Ipoh, Perak Darul Ridzuan. Boleh ke yeop?

If you need a good laugh, check out page 6 of The Sun newspaper today. The title of the news story is "Ipoh Proposed As Space Tourism Airport." My first reaction - kah! kah! kah! kah!

Either something is really wrong with the brain of the space tourism consultant, Dr. Patrick Collins when making that proposal or the already desperate and pathetic Perak state government bribed him to the max to make such statements.

I actually sympathize with the Perak state government. For the benefit of foreign readers out there, Ipoh is the state capital of Perak, located about 200 km up north of Kuala Lumpur, the capital of Malaysia. Perak was once famous for being the world's largest tin producer through its tin mines sprawled all over the Kinta Valley in the heart of the state. Now unfortunately, the state of Perak has nothing great to offer, except for one or two tourist atractions which to me personally, are nothing much to shout about in this day and time.

That's why I can understand the desperation of the Perak Menteri Besar (State Chief Minister), Datuk Seri Tajol Rosli Ghazali in securing some sort of deal with Space Future Consulting, the so-called space tourism consultants, to turn the underutilized Sultan Azlan Shah (LTSAS) airport into a "space-bound" airport. How pathethic.

For your info, Space Future Consulting (SFC) is an international UK-based consultancy group that provides advice and analysis to the space, tourism, and media industries. As part of their operations, they maintain the informational web site www.spacefuture.com, the foremost source of information on space tourism, power, and vehicles on the Internet. SFC was the first in the world to carry out market research into the field of space tourism, and its work has been endorsed extensively by others, including NASA in its recently published report, "General Public Space Transport and Tourism". SFC's head, Dr Patrick Collins, is the leading researcher in this field and has published papers on the subject for over 15 years.

Here's why Dr. Collins feel that the LTSAS is good for the project. He says that the Ipoh airport is strategically located at the centre of West Malaysia and supported by good transportation network. More importantly, the airport has low airline traffic unlike the KL International Airport (KLIA). Hmmm. What do you think?

My personal view is that this should be a national effort, not just the Perak state government's effort. It seems now that SFC is dealing direct with Perak rather than with the federal government. To me, the day Malaysia Airlines cancelled its flights from Kuala Lumpur to Ipoh due to low load factor, was the day Ipoh aiport was laid to rest. The airport is now dead and not worth saving at all. We might as well make KLIA the space tourism hub, don't you think? At least, it'll place KLIA prominently once again on the world's airports map, and help it's current struggle to attract the world's major airlines to land there.

Anyway, back to this space tourism thingy, Collins said the initial cost was estimated at RM100 million and it includes plans to conduct 100 test flights using the Ascender suborbital spaceplane which can carry space tourists, astronauts and facilitate scientific experiments.

Some background on the Ascender : It will be manufactured by UK-based Bristol Spaceplanes Limited and takes off like a normal passenger jetliner from a normal runaway. It does not require a full-fledged launch pad like the space shuttle or rockets launched by NASA or the Russian Space Agency. The Ascender is still in concept development phase and God knows when it will actually be produced.

Dear Datuk Seri Tajol Rosli, I suggest you use the RM100 to eradicate poverty among Perak's hardcore poor. How does that sound? We've already wasted so much money sending two poster boys who think they're so good looking to go to space performing kiddy experiments while their Russian cosmonauts counterparts perform the serious experiments for the good of mankind. Sudah-sudah lah tu. Tak ada maknanya!!!