Zambia’s Laughable Space Program | Tales From the Bottle
The Zambian space program is worth a look for a few laughs – but does it hide a darker secret?
“From 1960 until sometime after 1969, Nkoloso’s “space program” sought to accomplish the launching of a rocket that would send 17-year-old Matha Mwambwa and two cats to the Moon. There were also plans for a trip to Mars. Nkoloso hoped to beat the United States and Soviet Union’s respective space programs at the height of the Space Race.
To train the astronauts, Nkoloso set up a makeshift facility on an abandoned farm 11 kilometres (7 mi) from Lusaka, where the trainees would be rolled down a rough hill in a 200-litre (44 imp gal) oil drum. This, according to Nkoloso, would train them in the feeling of weightlessness in both space travel and re-entry. In addition, they used a tyre swing to simulate weightlessness.
Nkoloso stated that the goals of the program were to establish a Christian ministry to “primitive” Martians and the hope of Zambia becoming the “controllers of the seventh heaven of interstellar space”. However, he reportedly instructed the missionary in the space program not to force Christianity onto native Martians.
The rocket, named D-Kalu 1 after President Kenneth Kaunda, was a 3-metre by 2-metre (10×6 ft) drum-shaped vessel.[3][10] Nkoloso claimed that it was made of “space-worthy” aluminium and copper. The planned launch date was on Independence Day, 24 October 1964 and would take place from the Independence Stadium, but the launch was purportedly denied permission due to being inappropriate.
It is said that he then asked UNESCO for a grant of £7,000,000 in Zambian pounds to support his space program. It is also said he requested $1.9 billion from “private foreign sources”. However, the Ministry of Power, Transport and Communication is reported as stating those requests had not been made on the behalf of Zambia.
The term “Afronauts”, coined by Nkoloso, refers to the participants of this program with hopes of bringing not just Zambia, but also the entire continent of Africa, to space.
Interviewed in 2016, President Kenneth Kaunda said of the space program that “It wasn’t a real thing … It was more for fun than anything else.””
More on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Makuka_Nkoloso
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