ZAMBIAN SPACEFLIGHT

(Investigator 2, 1988 September)

The Director Ministry of Technology Lusaka Zambia   Dear Sir, Could you inform me of the outcome of Zambia's space flight program of the 1960s.  An official news report of November 3 1964 stated: America and Russia may lose the race to the moon, according to Edward Mukaka Nkoloso, Director-General of the Zambia National Academy of Space Research. His ten Zambian astronauts and a seventeen-year-old African girl are poised for the countdown.  He said: "I'll have my first Zambian astronaut on the moon by 1965. My spacemen are ready, but we're having a few difficulties…we are using my own firing system, derived from the catapult." Mr. Nkoloso continued: "To really get going we need about seven hundred million pounds. It sounds a lot of money, but imagine the prestige value it would earn for Zambia. But I've had trouble with my space-men and space-women. They won't concentrate on space-flight; there's too much love-making when they should be studying the moon. Matha Mwamba, the seventeen-year-old girl who had been chosen to be the first coloured woman on Mars, has also to feed her ten cats, who will be her companions on the long space flight… I'm getting them acclimatised to space-travel by placing them in my space-capsule every day. It's a 40-gallon oil drum in which they sit, and I then roll them down a hill. This gives them the feeling of rushing through space. I also make them swing from the end of a long rope. When they reach the highest point, I cut the rope – this produces a feeling of free fall." I assume that the request for seven hundred million pounds was made by Z.N.A.S.R. to the United Nations. Please inform me whether Zambia received the grant and whether significant progress in space flight resulted. Yours sincerely,

 

 

REPUBLIC OF ZAMBIA MINISTRY OF POWER, TRANSPORT AND COMMUNICATIONS P.O. Box 50065 Lusaka 11th July, 1988 Mr ........... ………….. Dear Sir, I refer to your letter dated 24th May, 1988 in connection with outcome of Zambia's space programme. I wish to inform you that the matter under discussion was never seriously taken up by the Zambian Government and as such no official backing was rendered to Mr. Mukaka Nkoloso's efforts. The programme therefore died a natural death. Yours faithfully, E. N. Kamuyuw Assistant Secretary for/ Permanent Secretary Ministry of Power, Transport And Communications

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