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Author
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Topic: Nigeria
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Jimbo
1 dr3w j00 4 p1ggy!
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posted 07-05-2001 11:08
   
Nigeria's been high up on my list of "Nations Always Good For A Look Of Sneering Disbelief" for quite some time now - they've been featured many, many times on my old front page at Jimbo's World.While you're all agoggle over the fact that they're trying to start a space program while the median - MEDIAN, mind you, meaning AT LEAST half the country makes LESS - annual income is $300, don't forget to look up Sharia law. It's SPESHUL - recently an unmarried teenage girl who got pregnant was sentenced to 180 lashes or so (20-30 lashes is often fatal for a strong, healthy adult male), sentence to be carried out as soon as the baby was delivered. She got most of those lashes because the court asked her who the father was - and by TELLING the court, she made herself guilty of "false accusation" because she could not provide four corroborating witnesses to back up her "accusation"... of course, if she'd refused to answer, THAT would have been contempt of court, resulting in... Yeah. Everytime I hear "culturally enlightened" black Americans talking wistfully about "the motherland" I can't help but look at them like they're fucking lunatics. IP: Logged |
marcel
Member with a member bigger than the member with a member
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posted 07-06-2001 05:50
2.7 Million and 2.2 million over the next three years? WHAT?That’s not enough money to BURY the people who
will die from AIDS in Nigeria during the next three years. I can understand a poor country aspiring to great things. BUT, perhaps this money can be spent in developing a relationship with a pharmaceutical company, in the hope of favorable pricing/development for AIDS drugs.
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deeznuts
Member with a member
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posted 07-06-2001 07:19
yeah, why don't they throw their national life savings at a big fucking drug company so they can get a volume discount on aids drugs (which don't actually cure the disease anyway) that they still won't be able to afford.a tech industry could lift them off of the bottom 20, get them the money to afford expensive pharmecuticals, and generally unfuck the country. by space program, i'm assuming they don't mean the man on the moon kind. what they'll be trying to do is get themselves into some lucritive commercial payload delivery contracts. lots of companies are in need of launches for low gravity, sterile experiments and comm satellites and old channels like the us's nasa can be slow to respond and expensive. if nigeria can get this done, they could become the korea of space programs. not the best or the most innovative, but a workhorse in high demand. and unlike in cheap factory labor markets, a space industry would neccesitate higher education. increasing education in the country would solve a lot of the epidemic and screwed up legal system problems, as well. or perhaps they could just sit and wallow in poverty and disease as befits one of the poorest nations on earth. IP: Logged |
marcel
Member with a member bigger than the member with a member
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posted 07-06-2001 08:00
QUOTE]Originally posted by deeznuts:
1) ...a tech industry could lift them off of the bottom 20. 2) ...get themselves into some lucrative commercial payload delivery contracts[/QUOTE] 1) Correct. However, payload delivery is not the correct industry to target. Startup/development costs are exuberant, they do not have the resources. Even China (vast resources) resorted to stealing development data for their program.
Why not target a tech industry, which requires LESS startup cost? Pharmaceutical development makes a hell of a lot more SENSE than a space program at this time,
And can be QUITE lacerative. 2.) How many payload contracts are they going to sign for a estimated launch date of 2020 or later? Would you sign up with then now? Let’s not even THINK about how nervous the surrounding countries will get if/when Nigeria is able to launch a missile with a warhead. After all, we all know how WELL the African countries get along. Afghanistan and India will be light weights compared to the amount of bickering this would create.
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deeznuts
Member with a member
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posted 07-06-2001 15:47
actually satellite launches would be comparitively cheap. you'd probably need a reentrant vehicle to be good for research purposes, but that's something to work up to later. the reason china resorts to stealing research is not because launching a rocket is hard. it's because they want state of the art icbm targetting systems. just getting something up into its proper orbit is not nearly as hard and there's already been several commercial ventures in the area.if a third world country signs up with a drug company, it will not be as researchers; it will be as ginuea pigs. it'll take a lot more than 2.5 million a year to provide the infrastructure alone for drug research. and that's once the facilities are already built. the only attraction could be lax government regulations on biotech research. it might take them 5 or 10 years to get a viable space program going but once they do, the cost/profit ratio for the industry will be very nice. IP: Logged |
Clme
cake fiend
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posted 07-06-2001 15:55
Whats pissing me off here is that you honestly think that a space program could be funded for 2 million dollars a year.Besides, I doubt they'd educate their own people. They'd hire people from outside the country to come in and run the bitch. IP: Logged |
Clme
cake fiend
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posted 07-06-2001 15:56
Wait... 2 million over three years?Jesus. That only compounds what I said previously. IP: Logged |
Jimbo
1 dr3w j00 4 p1ggy!
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posted 07-06-2001 17:26
Pharmaceutical research is INSANELY less expensive than orbital delivery.IP: Logged |
CapnBiggles
clmesdad. stopplease sirmyass is bleeding
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posted 07-06-2001 19:37
Pharmaceutical research is in my bumIP: Logged |
Bex
Delicate Flower
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posted 07-06-2001 21:08
Pharmaceutical research is not cheap. I'm away from home and can't remember the exact figures, but it takes 7-10 years to get a drug through all of the testing and on the market. And for every one that makes it, about 10,000 don't. The amount spent per successful drug is astronomical and explains in part the high cost of prescriptions these days. To start from scratch with nothing in the pipeline would be a losing proposition for the first 10 years. Not a good risk to take, I would think. And sorry, but I would hate to see a poor country like Nigeria try to deal with lab animal research. That's getting into biosafe facilities, cloning and a multitide of other complications. -Bex IP: Logged |
PrezMonty
PenIsite
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posted 07-06-2001 21:24
quote:
Originally posted by Jimbo:
Pharmaceutical research is INSANELY less expensive than orbital delivery.
Exactly why I'm such an activist about space travel. Everyone complains that we need to stop wasting money on it, but spending now is the only way it's gonna get cheaper. IP: Logged |
deeznuts
Member with a member
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posted 07-07-2001 11:57
for 2 mil a year, they could set aside land for launch areas, build up roads and power grid around those areas and, yes, educate their people. it's a good deal for both sides if they send their young people off to get doctorates in physics and aerospace engineering and they have a several year contract to work off with the national space agency when they get back.these people would be working at well below what rocket scientists would make in an open market but still light years above what your average resident of a shithole country would make. low costs attract investors and there will probably be no shortage of people willing to kick in a little cash to dig the shaft for the gold mine and get the launch pads built. yes, there is a risk involved but what are there other options? redouble their efforts in oil production? with hybrid and electric vehicles already on the market and fuel cell vehicles being rumored? whore themselves to drug companies? and for what? it would take more infrastructure investment, just as much education and carry a higher possibility of toxins and/or mutant diseases being released. carrying stuff into orbit on unmanned rockets carries a low risk of losing money once they actually get the rockets flying and there is a long term demand for the service. compare that to medicine, where they could lose their shirts at any moment, or oil, a rapidly dieing industry that hasn't been cutting it for them as it is. IP: Logged |
Jimbo
1 dr3w j00 4 p1ggy!
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posted 07-07-2001 15:10
Well, Nigeria does have ONE thing going for it as a location for orbit jockeys - it's right on the fucking equator.It's still Nigeria though. All things being equal, I'd rather go with Ecuador. IP: Logged |
PrezMonty
PenIsite
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posted 07-07-2001 16:47
quote:
Originally posted by Jimbo:
Well, Nigeria does have ONE thing going for it as a location for orbit jockeys - it's right on the fucking equator.
Alright! Finally someone else who knows the right way to do things. Then again, I AM referring to Jimbo here. That's what the Russians really had working against them back in the days of the Space Race; no holdings near the equator. Their launch vehicles had to rely on pure brute force. Back to the subject of Nigeria. Right now, I think there's really too many ups and downs in Africa for any of the nations to have a stable space program. But with half the continent set to die off in the next decade, I'd think that it'd open them up a lot more towards some sort of unity to get something going. And like was said before, they could effectively be to space travel as Korea is to (I assume) the internet. Not new or flashy, but they'd get the job done. Obviously, this would result in a drop in costs of getting cargo to space, and because of the requirements to build a space program, it would solve a lot of the country's current problems. IP: Logged |
PrezMonty
PenIsite
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posted 07-07-2001 16:53
quote:
Originally posted by Jimbo:
It's still Nigeria though. All things being equal, I'd rather go with Ecuador.
Perhaps I should've covered this in the post I just posted, but hey! An excuse to raise my post count.  Obviously, our own satellite would be the best launch location for us. But since we're currently stuck on Earth, I'd vote for moving from Cape Canaveral to Hawaii or one of our other Pacific Island holdings. Then again, it'd probably be too costly to operate from such a remote location. I say we annex South America. IP: Logged |
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