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Nigeria Joins the Space Age
nuke-alwin writes "The Age is reporting that Nigeria has joined the space age by sending a satellite into space from Russia. The satellite will be used for environmental monitoring and to keep an eye on oil pipelines."
As a former high-ranking official of Norwegian space program I was able to secure some funds that government wanted to spend on more advanced space technology. I am pleased to offer honest and hard-working Slashdotters an amount of $50,000,000.00 (FIFTY MILLION US DOLLARS AND ZERO US CENTS) transferred to the bank account of their choice. Please leave your names, addresses, phone number, bank account and social security numbers (for tax purposes) as a reply to this thread. Ten of the highest-moderated replies will receive $5,000,000.00 (FIVE MILLION US DOLLARS) each.
shouldnt taht read: In soviet russia the space age joins nigeria ?
i am writing you from the nigerian space ministry. you have been reccomended to me as a vey honest rocket scientist. i need your help to retirieve an unclaimed satelite!!! if you could send me your current space shuttle, fully fueled, i promise to award you half of the satelite for your assistance. this is of the utmost confidentiality due to the senistve nature of......
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
I think i would have beaten you if it werent for the lamenes filter.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
Shouldn't they rather point it at their own country, trying to prevent women from beein stoned to death ?
launched from Russia? So they couldn't/wouldn't do it on their own? Does launching a satellite into space with the aid of Russia really qualify as joining the space age?
You're right, I wouldn't steal a car. But if it were possible, I sure as hell would download one!
Cue dozens of posts about how Nigeria should concentrate on fixing its own problems on earth before launching into space
Good stuff, now maybe that dolt Bush will have a reason to get up there again.
I am a viral sig. Please copy me and help me spread. Thank you.
Great job nigeria, but i'm afraid it's too late to reach alpha centauri as the The russians have already launched their spaceship 70 turns ago. With a 100% survivability rating, it seems the russians will win despite the American's higher civilization score.
Photos.
The linked article is missing the last 3 paragraphs, included in the Washington Post version:
The NigeriaSat-1 was produced by British-based company, Surrey Satellite Technology, with the help of Nigerian technicians trained in Britain, Olaniyi said.
The Russian Kosmos-3M rocket that lifted off from Plesetsk Cosmodrome with NigeriaSat-1 carried five other satellites with it - two from Russia, and one each from Turkey, Britain and South Korea.
A team of 15 Nigerian scientists and engineers will control their country's satellite from a ground station in Abuja during its five to seven year life-span, Olaniyi said.
In soviet russia you spam former nigerian presidents...
Now beat this.
"I am slashbot, hear me roar!"
So, this is what all the money they raised with those scam emails was used for.
How ya like dat?
Nice with the satellite, but Nigeria has a long ways to go.
A woman who committed adultery was spared death by stoning.
Yep, they were going to bury her up to her neck and have people throw rocks at her head until she was dead, because she had a baby out of wedlock.
And, get this one: the religous court decided that since children can take up to 5 years to develop in the womb (!!!) it was possible that she conceived the child with her husband, so on that ground they let her live.
So, nice with the satellite, but I just am not impressed. Not even one little bit.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Read the article. Appearantly, this satellite was developed by a British company (for what seems to be a really good price) with some "British-trained Nigerain scientists".... it seems to me like the Brits made a sattellite with some Nigerians either on the team or managing or staring through a glass window... who knows.
I'm just wondering, when designing a satellite has been done by a group of college students, when there are university courses that you can take and more or less come out knowing how to make a basic satellite... how impressive is this, really? I'm sure that there are Nigerians (either people born Nigerian that immigrated or Nigerian citizens who were wealthy and just managed to get a degree and a job) who've worked on space/satellite projects before... how important is it really whose flag they paint on the thing?
I think the real focus is on what benefits this could have for Nigerian citizens - the article mentions the possibilty of agricultural benefits (gathering information on climate/sources of water/land use? soil data?), as well as monitoring the oil pipeline - I don't know how effective this will be, but if it can save oil revenue and get it into the government, then this might have some solid benefits (Yes, I know that a lot of the $$ made never sees the starving masses, but, if it works as a percentage... any improvement is welcome). My only concern, then, is that there are other satellites already aloft that could have done the same thing - and Nigerian nationalism could have been fed just by constructing a ground station where the data would be downloaded (having more ground stations would help the satellite's primay user, as well) and evaluated - using Nigerian scientists and maybe even with Nigerian software.
Just my $0.02 (Enough in Nigeria to buy a decent meal -- think about it.)
Tim
There are a lot of things wrong with the world, and we can't fix them all overnight. Putting a satellite over Nigeria will help fix a lot of current problems - incuding being able to spot oil spills caused by theives cracking a pipeline before the spilled oil gets far. If you live off fish, an oil spill can be a death sentence.
Now that's the sort of lawyer you want to get on your side - and you thank all that is good that he is not a salesman somewhere!Nigeria's pretty close to the equator, innit? Maybe they could talk the Russians into building a launch site there for their shared use? Russia would benefit from the higher rotational velocity, and Nigeria would probably benefit in a number of more mundane ways (jobs, economic development, etc.)
Downmodding is the refuge of the weak. Don't downmod, make a better argument!
In order to get more Mercedes Benz for the goverment, Nigerian authorities got a crappy space contractor who "washed their hands good" selling them a satellite.
else:
1 how a country ranked 156 in the world for living standards worries more for a satellite.
2 they mean the pipelanes which got bombed by lazy civil leaders more corrupted than the politicians.
3 they are looking for sources of stones to execute 18th century laws.
4 do they know what a satellite is?
5 they want to improve communications with their fellow taxi drivers in Houston,TX.
6 what the fuck gives the enviroment when aids and malaria populates the zone.
And finally...HEADS UP...a Nigerian satellite is in space...only god knows how much crap is flying up there.
These laws were bought in democratically by the local government in nothern Nigeria. The people voted for these laws and now they have them.
Also, I assume you know nothing about Shariah law, because it requires that there are 4 witnesses to the deed that the defendent has been accused of. This was the virdict handed down:
In an hour-long hearing, the panel said Lawal was not caught in the act of adultery and wasn't given enough time to understand the charges against her.
It also cited procedural errors, including that only one judge was present at her initial conviction in March 2002, instead of the three required under Islamic law.
by the way, how is Islamic law any difference to the Christian fundamentalists who plague the US landscape demanding that abortion doctors be put on trial for murder and that people who devorce should be ostrasized from society.
"The difference between pornography and erotica is the lighting" - Woody Allen
Nothing more than animals. Animals kill each other in such ways. Amputation? This barbaric interpretation of one man's hallucinations is destructive and evil.
Would the real Mohammed please stand up?
Please stand up?
Please stand up?
Not ignorant at all. I don't know of any argument in favor of stoning that will be persuasive.
I'm an atheist, and all religious law is barbaric. That anyone would democratically vote for religion to control the law is ignorant.
I don't believe in your god, nor his laws. Valid for all values of 'your'.
If tits were wings it'd be flying around.
Just what we need. :)
Q.
Insert Signature Here
All the humor aside, I think fellow slashdotters are being just a bit condescending here. It isn't fair to jab the Nigerians for failing to take care of earthbound problems before tackling space. Look at us - we've been in space for decades but have arguably the lions share of social/economic inequities on earth. What other country hosts both the opulent decadence of Bill Gates and homeless vagrants who spend nights in city parks where you can just as easily get beat up for thrills by street gangs or freeze to death in the winter.
Some have mentioned the harsh Muslim laws which has touched one poor woman's life in a very public way. They seem to have forgotten that we have a pair of ultra right Christian fanatics who initially said Americans suffered 9/11 because abortionists, feminists, homosexuals, the ACLU and others have upset God. And the priest who was convicted of murderings someone for performing abortions - didn't he publicly declare that he believes he will be welcomed in heaven for what he did?
I can not condone the advanced fee fraud Nigeria is famous for, but if you are dumb enough to fall for it, maybe you deserved to learn the lesson the hard way. Perhaps us stock-market-speculating Americans have forgotten that money could be gotten the old fashion way - by earning it with honest work?
Some point out that the endeavor is more British and Russian than Nigerian. But that is missing the point. I mean, what do you expect baby steps to be like anyway? John Glen didn't got to space overnight. He rode the coat tail of German rocket researchers who came to work for uncle sam after WWII, and the Germans had built upon the work of our own Robert Goddard. Can you imagine how few engineers there would be today if in their younger days, there was not the generosity or charity to provide them with that old crystal radio set or that clunky-but-still-functioning computer? It isn't wrong to ask or recieve help. You have to start somewhere right?
Let us not forget that our own space program was priceless in stimulating so many good things. Aside from the obvious utilitarian benifits that the satellite offers by performing it's duties, it also gives the citizens something to look up to. (no pun intended) Maybe there will be a few less scammers as young Nigerians realize there are higher goals worth pursuing. Just to show that I'm not completely without humor, I for one welcome our new space-faring colleagues.
Stay sentient. Don't drink bad milk.
In a very real way, both of these problems are indicative but not proof of injustice by the oil companies. [This includes Chevron, one of Rockefeller's Standard Oil companies, but I'm not sure that Chevron is all it is.]
Point being, if Nigeria has had a huge poverty problem before, they'll likely have it afterwards, as well. Money typically gets spent at the behest of the powerful to make more money for the powerful.
So I really don't expect this to have benefits. But if it does, then I'm all for it.
Correct Horse Battery Staple: 72 bits of entropy. Enter "Correct H" into google. When it generates the phrase, that's
Democratically? It's things like this that make me glad to live in what used to be a Republic. Democracy, alt. spelling: Anarchy (see also Mob Rule).
Shouldn't that read: "In Soviet Russia the Space Age joins Nigeria?"
(Capitalizing the name of an age is optional, but is commonly done.)