> In 1999, South Africa launched its first satellite, SUNSAT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the USA. A second satellite, SumbandilaSat, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2009.
It's not even the first African-designed and -built satellite, which was NigeriaSat-X. In fact, Nigeria has had a space program for some time, starting in 2001, with satellite launch plans as early as 1976:
Technically speaking, the first African-designed and built satellite, albeit one that never flew, was South Africa's Greensat, which began as a military reconnaissance project in 1985 and was converted to an earth observation satellite in 1993.[0]
Beyond that, Stellenbosch University's SUNSAT (designed and built entirely by its students and professors under the SunSpace spinoff) went up in 1999, 18 years ago, and 12 years earlier than NigeriaSat-X.[1] I'm not saying this to score points, only to establish the proper context for why this piece is inaccurate, in that African countries have been sending up indigenous satellites for decades.
Basically this is just incredibly lazy reporting. It could've been an interesting story about how Cubesats are enabling space access for scientists, students, and engineers in nations like Ghana which lack the resources of their richer global and even continental neighbours, but instead TechCrunch went for the easy way out.
I'm glad to see that Ghana is gaining experience with satellites. I'm not going to read the article because of the headline but it seems like Ghana could be a great place to be involved in space launches eventually, as close to the equator as they are.
While people talk about the Chinese century or the rise of India, I think even more interesting will be the continued development of Africa.
In fact it does do something for polar launches, but it's bad. Being close to the equator means cancelling out more rotational velocity to go into a polar orbit.
... and Ghana is one of them. I was responding to a guy incorrectly saying Ghana did not have a downrange ocean. I did not assert anything about the equator.
The context of "downrange ocean" was for launches that benefit from being near the equator. So while your statement was true, it wasn't very relevant, and your "..." is not deserved.
I had no idea. Thanks for explaining; next time I see a completely incorrect statement on HN I'll be sure to split hairs about the context and not comment unless it meets your relevance standard.
The way the western Media reports on this continent is downright negligent. It's misleading and honestly hinders the world's perception of the reality here.
I'm in West Africa right now, moving South, and it boggles my mind to see how the world reports on "Africa".
Every day people ask me questions online and I read articles about "Africa" - so many people genuinely think it is one "place" a can be all lumped together. Because of that people assume that for example if there is war in South Sudan, then "Africa" is very dangerous. Or drought in Northern Kenya means "Africa" is desperate for water.
They have no understanding there are over a billion people living in 54 separate countries spread out by tens and tens of thousands of miles.
If there was war or a nasty disease breakout in Northern Oregon would it be dangerous to visit Costa Rica? of course not.
If a war somehow reached Northern Oregon, most of the planet would instantly become a much more dangerous place. Some parts because the USA might lash out. Other parts because their local powers might play their hands more forcefully while the USA was preoccupied with its domestic war.
Of course, the more distant an object is, the fewer details we see. I can differentiate between the houses on my block, but not the ones in the next neighborhood. I know the neighborhoods in my city, but not the ones in, for example, Austin TX. Most people know the nations on their continent, but not in far away places ...
The problem is that we need more voices in the news media from Africa. I've actually tried to find some quality, serious, English (because that's what I read fluently) news from Africa, and it's tough. The Daily Kenyan and East African, both from the same publisher, are pretty good, but of course focused on their region only. I've seen others from European countries, but with an outside perspective of course. AllAfrica.com is far too much.
Other suggestions are welcome if anybody has them. I'm looking for a high signal (serious news of wide impact) to noise (celebrities, sports, news of only local impact like the local city council race) ratio.
The do, frequently. I'm told daily that America did something. As a Canadian, we just accept that you guys have no idea how continents or countries work.
I think there is value in treating Africa as a country.
There is a PC war against it, but personally I think that's ignoring the real issues of third world poverty and arm-chairing away from the real problems.
PS We mostly say American has done X, Y, Z so not a great example. And we use words like issues in the Middle East/South East Asia, which once again I think has value at the higher level of world news.
It is somewhat related, in that as part of that programme South Africa built the RSA series of space launchers, doubling up as nuclear-armed ICBMs, with technical assistance from Israel.
The 'R5b' space programme would've used the RSA-3 and RSA-4 launchers, with the former designed to place a 330 kg satellite in a 41 degree low earth orbit and the RSA-4 able to place a satellite into a medium earth orbit.
As part of this, the Greensat earth observation satellite was designed and built, initially for military surveillance and later for civilian uses.[0]
Four RSA-3s were built, three were launched on sub-orbital test trajectories from Overberg Test Range, and the fourth remains preserved at the South African Air Force Museum at Air Force Base Swartkop, complete with mock satellite in the final stage.[1][2]
Had the programme not been cancelled in 1990, it's likely that South Africa would've been able to launch Greensat by 1992 or 1992. However, it was prohibitively costly and of questionable benefit for a country slashing budgets after the end of war, preparing to end apartheid, and acceding to international protocols on the use of ICBMs and nuclear weapons. Attempts were made at commercial sales, but the programme was never really cost effective.
Proudhon picked up on this point at the start of the 19th century; there isn't enough property (private property) for everyone, ignoring of course critical depletion of all the earth's resources such that even personal property becomes infeasible.
The solution proposed is to abandon the idea of property, not merely make it common to all, but rather to abolish it as a right.
Humanity has made plenty of strides in democratizing technology that improve the length, quality, and self-sufficiency of many peoples lives (internet, medicine, clothing, water purificiation, food production etc)
Many people have been "lifted out of poverty" by technology, yet this has led to renewed and different types of conflict.
Many more remain in dire straits.
I'm not sure that moving to Mars would solve 4 billion people's problems, but I guess it's an idea!
In your answer you mix a space elevator with rockets, a space elevator is not a rocket.
But people have invented many other designs that are not rockets, there is a huge page on Wikipedia about them:
How do I mix them? I said the alternatives to rockets are nukes or a space elevator, both of which, for Earth to space launch, are beyond current feasibility. Ditto with most of the ideas on that Wikipedia page. Air breathing only gets you 10% of the way and the others are limited by our materials.
> It's chemical rockets, nukes or a space elevator. At least given known physics.
He's giving a series of 3 things that he's asserting are viable given known physics, so the second two are alternatives to the first. Would it make more sense to you with an Oxford comma? E.g.
> It's chemical rockets, nukes, or a space elevator. At least given known physics.
Are you interpreting the nukes/elevator as sub types of chemical rockets? That might be written (counterfactually) as
> It's chemical rockets: nukes or a space elevator. At least given known physics.
> He's giving a series of 3 things that he's asserting are viable given known physics, so the second two are alternatives to the first.
To be clear, the meaning of the construction used is that, given known physics, the only alternatives are the list elements (chemical rockets, nukes, or a space elevator). This is completely conventional American English.
While Ghana’s president Nana Akufo-Addo applauded the launch and congratulated the team directly, the project did not receive official Ghanaian government support, according to Damoah. Instead, Japan’s national space agency, JAXA, provided the bulk of the resources and training to develop the satellite.
In other words, this is also mostly a Japanese-US effort too.
Hacker News: where anonymous cowards call others anonymous cowards and make baseless accusations of racism
Apologies for the meta-discussion, but this sort of comment is unbecoming of hacker news. Instead of calling anonymous commenters names, we should discuss their ideas.
The commenter is quite clear that he or she is calling into question the competency of the Ghanaian space program because "its not even a new design, they literally just used the cubesat platform and launched it from United States."
Similarly, the connection between calling this article the space-race equivalent of "affirmative action" and the alleged racism of the author of the comment is unclear.
If you actually believe the author of the comment is a racist, you should make your case. The author's racism doesn't seem "blatant" to me, and presumably wouldn't to most of the hn community.
> In 1999, South Africa launched its first satellite, SUNSAT from Vandenberg Air Force Base in the USA. A second satellite, SumbandilaSat, was launched from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan in 2009.