Letters to the Editor
View(s):Mattala ideally suited for spaceport
Sri Lanka’s strategic and geopolitical importance has been known for many centuries. In this context, the recently opened Mattala airport, with its Code F runway (60m x 3.5 km; suitable for Airbus A380s), apart from being the country’s second international airport, has another strategic value.
Virgin Galactic mothership and spaceship
If you are reading this article at Mattala airport, you may not realise that you are travelling eastward at 1,664 kph! It is Mattala’s rotation speed which is only about half a per cent less than the earth’s maximum equatorial rotation speed. This makes Mattala a potentially attractive spaceport.
Traditionally, getting spacecraft, whether they are satellites or manned capsules, into space has been done from the ground on rockets that are launched vertically. These rockets are hazardous since they contain large amounts of highly combustible propellants and produce noxious emissions.
Thus, ground launch sites are located far away from populated areas. Additionally, since the earth’s rotational speed could be advantageously made use of to launch a satellite into low inclination (relative to the equator) orbits, it is advised to have launch site as close to the equator as possible. This is why Kourou (5 latitude) and Kwajalein Atoll (8 latitude) are favoured by commercial operators for low-inclination orbit-satellite launching.
However, there is an emerging trend in rocket launching, referred to as “air launch”. It is less expensive, safer and environmentally friendlier. The rocket is carried aloft by a ‘mothership’ aircraft to about 50,000 feet and then released in mid air before igniting the rocket’s engines to carry it into space.
The pioneer in the commercialisation of this air launch approach is Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic. The company uses a mothership (White Knight Two) designed by the famed Burt Rutan’s Scaled Composites company to ferry aloft a rocket. This reusable rocket called Spaceship Two can carry six space tourists and a crew of two on a sub-orbital flight to the edge of space. More than 500 space tourists have signed up for the $200,000 flight which will allow them to experience five minutes of weightlessness during a parabola shaped flight into space. The first space tourist flights are expected to start in early 2014 from Spaceport America, a purpose-built Code F runway airfield in New Mexico.
Recently, Virgin Galactic announced a new space craft named Launcher One which can carry a small satellite (225 kg) to low earth, low inclination orbit or a smaller (100 kg) satellite to low earth, high inclination, sun synchronous orbit. Launcher One is expected to revolutionise the cost of launching satellites and is expected to begin commercial operations in 2016.
Finally, Stratolaunch is using a similar air launch approach, but on a much bigger scale. It will mate two Boeing 747 airplanes together to make the world’s largest airplane with a wing span of 117m (the Airbus A380 is 80m). The mothership will be able to carry a rocket that weighs up to 220,000 kg. Test flights are expected in 2017.
In addition to having available a brand new Code F runway at Mattala, which is ideally located for the motherships to operate out of, Sri Lanka also has a large FIR (Flight Information Region) of almost 98,000 sq. km (with much of it over water) with relatively low air traffic making it ideal to use for space launches.
So Mattala is indeed a well suited site for space tourism, space research flights and for commercial satellite launching.
Tilak Dissanayake Via email
Aranthalawa bus monument: Practise the Dhamma, don’t promote hatred
The LTTE killed 31 Bhikkhus, including Ven. Hegoda Indrasara Thera, a chief monk, on June 2, 1987. The attackers were young LTTE cadres brainwashed by a megalomaniac to quench his thirst for blood. On June 2, around 7.30 a.m., a group of young ‘samaneras’, accompanied by their teacher, Ven. Indrasara Thera, and few other civilian dayakas were going on a pilgrimage from their temple in the village of Mahavapi to the Kelaniya Rajamahaviharaya. At Nuwarathenna, a village between Ampara and Mahaoya, the bus they were travelling in was stopped by armed LTTE cadres. They ordered the driver to take the bus on a jungle path towards Aranthalawa, where the massacre took place.
Strangely, the bus in which the Buddhist monks travelled has been preserved at the site as a grim reminder of the LTTE horror. Last week a ‘museum’ of sorts was declared open in memory of the victims. Why don’t we stop thinking about the past in this manner? The so-called ‘museum’ will not only widen the gap between communities but also spread hatred. Is this an attempt to create another bloodbath by certain vested interest groups trying to create not only racial disharmony but religious as well?
No sane person would ever justify cold-blooded murder of this nature, but do we really need this ‘museum’? This will only promote hatred and disharmony. We do not desire another war. True, it was an inhuman act. But what is the purpose of erecting such ‘monuments’, which fan the flames of hatred and disturb racial and religious amity that has begun to prevail in the country after a lapse of three decades.
There is little benefit in talking about communal harmony without making any effort to promote it. Unification of hearts and minds of the people already scattered by a 30-year conflict cannot be achieved in a short period; but one short-sighted act could destroy the progress that has been made in the reconciliation process.
The re-emergence of Tamil or Sinhala ethno-nationalism should be stopped as it hinders efforts to build a Sri Lankan nationalism. A commemorative plaque on a rock in Aranthalawa is already in existence. In addition to this, a statue of Ven. Indrasara Thera has been built near the massacre site. In 2003, a civil group and the STF built another monument near the site. All these monuments stand in the middle of the Aranthalawa forest encircled by mammoth trees that witnessed the slaughter 25 years ago.
It is time that we stop practising the opposite of the Buddha Dhamma.
K. K. S. Perera, Panadura
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