This is an arms race clothed as a space probe

Like all smart Nazis, Wernher von Braun chose to give himself up to the Americans rather than the Russians. He realised that the Yanks would probably give him a better deal than the Soviets, considering the skills he possessed.

Braun was a rocket scientist who developed the dreaded V2 rockets that could hit London from Berlin at the flick of a switch. With the end of World War II and the inconvenience of losing, he was looking for a new employer.

He went on to develop for his adopted land the rockets that got America into space, earning himself the title ‘Father of the American Space Programme’. When his past as a Nazi was found out, he, like the entire Leadership, denied any wrongdoing.

He was merely your average designer of weapons used for mass murder and knew nothing of the slave labour that was employed. Science is impartial, he said. Slave labour from concentration camps is wrong, yes, but rockets with explosives aimed at civilians — I mean who wouldn’t?

The important thing is that he now saluted the correct flag, and that made all the difference. America, after all, is the land of opportunity and opportunists. Braun’s inventions earned him numerous high awards from US government agencies and national scientific bodies.

There is an important lesson here; and that is rockets can deliver a payload of bombs or astronauts. Rocket research came at a time when America was suffering from deep paranoia about Russian capabilities. The Russians had launched the satellite Sputnik into space before the Americans, for starters.

SPACE RACE

At about the same time, both superpowers had discovered the wonders of plutonium. They had made large swathes of New Mexico and Kazakhstan uninhabitable by exploding terrifying bombs.

With the bombs in place, the problem now had to do with delivery. How do we get them before they get us? So they spent a fortune on space travel, with men like Braun moving from designing military rockets to Nasa.

Four per cent of the entire American budget at some point was sunk into the Apollo programme, but the rockets weren’t really aiming for the moon, they were targeting Moscow.

All this occurred in the shadow of the civil rights movement, and it irked Martin Luther King. “If our nation can spend $20 billion to put man on the moon,” he thundered, “it can spend billions of dollars to put God’s children on their own two feet right here on Earth.”

The Soviets, meanwhile, sacrificed monkeys, dogs, people and entire countries to get to the moon, resulting in the ruin of their economy and that of their people.

History shows that money for the space race usually turns up when there is paranoia about enemies. All the insights into ballistics usually find military applications, and the military is usually taking notes where astronauts are gathered.

Space programmes are really stalking horses for delivery of nuclear weapons. The militaries of large nations are obsessed on how to deliver mass murder faster and on a budget. Nasa, therefore, is really the R&D department of the American military. It isn’t the search for green men that motivates conquering space, it is military might. India lacks electricity and clean water for a majority of its people but it still has a space programme.

New Delhi isn’t really seeking to go into space; it wants to figure out a way to turn Pakistan into a wasteland before the favour can be returned.

The latest craze for orbiting space stations is merely the fulfilment of Ronald Reagan’s idea of star wars, a strategic missile defense shield. The reason Russia is so worried about Ukraine falling into the West’s sphere of control is that Moscow thinks America could have a position to shoot down all its land-based nukes.

We seem to be in the midst of a new space age; a new era of traversing the heavens. The lull in space exploration was due to the implosion of Russia, helped along by its ridiculous attempts to match America at spending on defense.

NEXT FRONTIER

America and Russia are back to shadow-boxing over Europe; Russia seeks to reassert itself; and China seeks global dominance. Japan, India and Pakistan all look to their space programmes to help solve domestic difficulties with their neighbours. Israel is headed up there because Iran is also going to space, and South Korea has a space programme because North Korea remains unpacified.

The new space race is really an arms race. The more assertive nationalism that seeks to go and conquer new planets is likely to find more destructive manifestations.

The hankering to go to Mars really is about an old human emotion; the need to conquer. China is now on the high table to sup with the big boys and has already hosted a world circus (Beijing Olympics), now all that is left is for a Chinese flag to stick out of some interplanetary rock to announce to the galaxy or any aliens flying past that indeed China has made it.

History shows that money for space is only available when the military feels it might soon be called upon to annihilate ever larger numbers of despicable foreigners quickly, or there is a need for one-upmanship with some other nation. Neither of those things is to be admired.

Aside from the fact that we have more pressing problems around us like the environment, and that we can’t afford it, we should be wary of the martial edge going to space will yield. 

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Why loans have become so expensive

Why should banks loan to customers when they can make risk-free money from the government? Short-term finance for the government has touched 20 per cent while the interbank rate, the rate at which banks loan each other money to manage their cash assets, is close to 30 per cent.

If a bank can loan another bank money at close to 30 per cent, why should it risk giving you anything? It seemed like a sure bet that electing a president with lots of experience in finance — in his private dealings and his stint at the Treasury — was a good deal. He would help us by using his skills to get us great deals, I imagined.

But I have come to realise that it takes more than one man to manage finance, and that indeed Kenya’s underlying market proposition is weak. However, the truth is that, as a nation, we are investing in assets that are destined to be stranded — oil in Turkana, which was meant to be our saviour, is looking so 2005, for instance, and all our growth is tied to cement consumption. Our economy, meanwhile, is subsisting on loans to fund the construction boom.

But who will loan to you on your business idea now when the government offers such great risk-free offer, and when they do what are the rates going to be?

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ICC trials now tied to the Kenyan electoral cycle

Will Kenya ever rid itself of ICC? I thought that after the election of the two accused we would have respite from the court, but we are still debating who fixed William Ruto, working on the grand idea that he was innocent before that.

It is as though no one died, Kenya did not burst into flames, no one lost their homes, and property was not destroyed. It seems like we are misremembering the past, and that ICC is a political court susceptible to machinations of low-level Kenyan politicians.

It has been eight years since the elections and we still struggle to agree on a coherent narrative of what happened despite it being in our lifetime.

There have been no repercussions, nor has there been compensation by the perpetrators, and it is beginning to look like we imagined the whole thing. It seems like the ICC will be a feature of the Kenyan electoral cycle for the next two elections.