Into Thin Air
Image by Trishaw Mafia
Sri Lanka is planning to spend $150 million USD to launch a satellite. This money goes to a British company. In the same way, most of the millions spent on the Mihin Lanka airline go to lease foreign airplanes and buy foreign fuel. Our rulers will have vanity projects, but I don’t get why they can’t waste the money here. Spend the money on scholarships for aeronautical engineers or pilots here. Or try to build a home-grown plane or rocket here (things that probably won’t work). Just create jobs and opportunities for Sri Lankan people, and waste the money in our own economy.
I am not averse to vanity projects. From the pyramids to Olympic stadiums, they happen. Very often the investments burden nations, though some pay off handsomely over a thousand or so years. What I don’t get about Sri Lankan vanity, however, is that it’s basically ghetto fabulous. We buy German cars and Eastern European airplanes. We pay British companies for white label satellites. It’s like someone coming out of Compton and buying Cristal and Swiss watches. It does nothing for our own communities.
Rappers make their money and if they want to make rich white people richer that’s their business. The Sri Lankan government, however, is spending our money on random foreign stuff which they think is cool. Mahinda has an aviary fetish so he named an airline after himself and wants to launch a satellite. Mihin Lanka has lost billions of Rupees and keeps swallowing state funds. He nationalized Sri Lankan Airlines after they booted his entourage from a flight and now that is suffering. And now they want to start a vanity space program.
This may be ghetto fabulous for the modern third world rule, but it does nothing for the taxpayers of Sri Lanka. It doesn’t create jobs, infrastructure, or even cool stuff for our kids to look at. Build a giant statue of yourself, write your name visible from space, have a Mahinda zeppelin circling the country, I don’t care. Just do it here, and waste the money here. Giving Sri Lankan taxpayer money to other countries to satisfy the President’s ego is just dumb.
For god sake – stop talking about aviation corruption – it just makes one so mad. But what to do ?
SriLankan was nationalized, and suffered a USD100m loss – a reversal of USD49.5m profit on the year ago period. Vaas did cut fleet from 17 to 12. Slashed network nearly by half. Leased out one A320 to Mihin. And Mihin started operations on some of SriLankan’s most profitable routes. He recently sold 3 A330s, and leased them back – solely to generate cash. And finally took two loans this month just to pay bonuses and wages.
Next one is Hambantota Airport – built on the island’s most low yielding area. But at the same time cannot invest on expanding already congested Katunayake Airport. Where is he expecting traffic from ?
Let me tell you – you guys need to write on Sunday Leader on these stuff.
If you can back it up with source or data, email me a guest post. Could probably run it in the Leader if it checks out
This ‘our money going abroad, spent it here’ is a lost economical argument. Let’s say we built our own satellite from a strict nationalistic view point without having any knowledge or technology. Sure we may provide short term 1000 or so jobs. But when the project is halted we may have no viable output into our economy.
Money goes abroad or not what we must chose is the most efficient alternative. The best economies are those that are most efficient, not those that build from needle to rocket inefficiently.
How the hell government can run a satellite business without having mere ability to run cooperative or a delivering a letter without getting lost on the way. So now they want to lost my data too and stop private sector doing a better busienss. What we gonna do when they are on strike. Leave those things to private sector. if they want, and if they need, I’m sure some of our mobile operators are perfectly capable of undertaking such a project any way they wish, if we don’t have TRC crocodile in the middle trying to bite off big chunks out of the communication sector. What about big firewall things to block internet porn things.. looks like they could not find funds for that projects.
How the hell government can run a satellite business without having mere ability to run cooperative or a deliver a letter without loosing it on the way. Now they want to lose my data too. Leave those things to private sector. If they want, and if they need, I’m sure some of our mobile operators are perfectly capable of undertaking such a project any way they wish, if we don’t have TRC crocodile in the middle trying to bite off big chunks from communication sector.
@SAM
spot on. Government involvement is a must, but only to facilitate the effective functioning of the economy. But in our case the government is there to obstruct everything.
The satellite will provide lot of useful info others won’t provide us. Data about weather, impending disasters (saving lives and property), agriculture, irrigation, storm water… what ever needs data from large areas. There would be economic benefits . e.g. info on shoals will help fishermen. Data not needed could be sold. Sri Lanka can run satellite business- we have clever Profs with PhD s from some of the best universities of the world. Have confidence in our people. Maybe the president can do something right.
@Sue
For those needs we can rent time on existing satellites for much cheaper and get the same benefits.
…but only at the mercy of whatever country is running the satellite.
Even India had refused.
@ indi – its not exactly that simple. What the gosl is proposing is a geo-stationary satellite dedicated to Sri Lanka and hovering above our heads. there is a great deal of very rich data that can be ascertained from this type of a satellite including very rich geographical info and communications. Most geo-stationary satellites in the south asaian region (from what i remember are positioned) are positioned to the center of the Indian sub-continent and have a foot-print that covers LK but only just and may not be that useful for GIS type info (especially for the India Ocean or security considerations. Security is a whole other realm that needs to be examined and it may be good for the gosl to know what our Indian and Chinese friends are up to (a great deal of the war data was provided by NSA sats). Also the $150 mil tag is really not that high and a fraction of what a single spy sat costs and a great deal of the cost involves both intellectual know-how and launch costs.
mihin is a completely different kettle of fish
Agree. There was the same outcry when India launched its satellites (why “waste” money when millions upon millions of Indians were wallowing in poverty) but the satellites have provided immense benefits to India, including its fishermen . The defence side of it is important as well I think.
Indi should do some research before giving his opinion. His writing is entertaining but how about credibility.
Whatever’s going on, somebody’s going to be really rich. My grandfather (who is actually a SLFP member of a provincial council) recently told me about five lakhs given to build a road in some village under Maga Neguma. The whole five lakhs just disappeared. Imagine it. All of it. Not even one rupee trickled down to make that road.
Forget five lakhs. Look at those Tharunyata Hetak ads.
Just remembered that my dad did an article on a similar subject in LBO earlier.
Has some interesting comments, and more technical details on the types of satellites and what they do
Firstly. Do we really need a Satelite?
I mean its not a must. Not a necessity. We can do without it. Yes $150 mil is a fraction of the cost of building a Spy Satelite but at this point the government should not be wasting money on things like this.
Also isn’t the Sri Lankan government not on the best terms with the British? They could just easily screw us over.
It’ll be way more sensible to have Sri Lankans make the satelite and launch it themselves. I mean we have the funds ($150 Mil) and we do have enough Sri Lankans in NASA (that depends if the co-operate). So why not do it here?
Anyway a Satelite is totally unnecessary.
Not many of might you know that SriLankan Airlines took a Rs.500,000,000 loan in order to pay bonuses only to local staff – allegedly under an Aviation Minister’s order in a bid to secure votes.