Sri Lanka’s government to formulate a space policy
The Sri Lanka government has now established a committee whose task will be to formulate the country’s first space policy.
The Cabinet of Ministers has approved a resolution presented by the Minister of Science and Technology to appoint an expert committee tasked with formulating Sri Lanka’s first National Space Policy. According to the government, space technology has become a critical driver of national development, delivering benefits across disaster management, communication, security, environmental monitoring, and economic innovation.
Sri Lanka is a signatory to the Outer Space Treaty, so any policy it establishes has to fall under its rules and limitations. This op-ed today in one of the nation’s major media outlets provides a very detailed overview of the issues. It seems the country has a lot of options, most of which revolve around attracting already established aerospace companies to build there.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Being an island nation only a few degrees north of the Equator and with a lot of empty ocean to its east, Sri Lanka has considerable potential as a spaceport site from a purely geographic perspective.
Working against that would be the dysfunctional leftist politics of the place. The official name of the country is the Democratic Socialist Republic of Sri Lanka. ‘Nuff said. The political “spectrum” there seems to range all the way from socialists on the “right” to communists on the left.
There is also the matter of the country being pretty much broke after attempting to pay off loans from the PRC that financed a lot of economically unproductive Belt and Road projects. Whatever space policy it comes up with, the cupboard is pretty much bare when it comes to actual implementation resources.
Sri Lanka being, still, pretty much an economic colony of the PRC, any Western-financed spaceport there would be constantly subject to PRC espionage.
There is also the vicious ethnic rivalry between Tamils and Sinhalese. Sri Lanka has a decades-long history of civil war between these groups. Any Western-financed spaceport could also expect endless squabbles between these two groups over employment quotas, wages and suchlike.
The PRC certainly won’t be financing any Sri Lankan spaceports – the PRC keeps those at home – nor will any other foreign country with a national space agency. That leaves the ascendant Western private sector. Given the very real risks of renewed ethno-political violence breaking out and the possibility a future government might simply nationalize one’s facilities, I think any rational private sector player would be well-advised to eschew Sri Lanka in favor of some Pacific island nation or US possession with equivalently favorable geography and more congenial domestic politics.
The Tamil tigers were a part of this.
And now that A. C. Clarke has passed, all the little boys don’t have to hide anymore
From the linked article:
Yet the contemporary world no longer permits nations the luxury of indifference toward outer space. Space is no longer a distant abstraction inhabited solely by astronauts, astronomers, and superpower rivalries. It has become an operational domain of economics, communications, environmental governance, security, and geopolitical legitimacy.
Look at the change that a decade and a half of commercial space has brought.