Rocket Science?
About two months ago, on December 8, 2016, Colonel John Glenn, probably more known as a Senator in the US Congress, died at the age of 95. He was America’s third, and the world’s fifth man to go to Space.
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For many Ghanaians, John Glenn’s death and indeed the subject of Space Exploration might not mean much. But for little boys like me in the 1960s, Space was an absolute fascination.
Football Passion
Perhaps, the world’s passion now for football is the passion it had for Space Exploration in the late 1950s into the early 1960s. Soon after the end of World War 2 (WW2) in 1945, the Cold War started between the US and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).
The competition was between the USA leading the capitalist Western world through NATO, and the USSR the Communist Eastern world through the Warsaw Pact. The former WW 2 allies now turned enemies deployed the world’s most gifted scientists, incidentally captured Germans, to send a human being to Space and bring him back safely. Space became the target for ultimate technological superiority.
NASA
So important was the race to Space that on October 1, 1958, American President Dwight Eisenhower (Gen Retd) commissioned the National Aeronautic and Space Agency (NASA) with the immediate objective of sending an American to space. After the most rigorous selection process, seven test pilots out of the original applicants of about five hundred were selected to commence training to be astronauts. They were to be prepared by a team of Rocket Scientists.
Rocket Science, now aerospace engineering, is still considered one of the most difficult fields of study. Rocket Scientists were and are still considered extremely brainy and brilliant human beings. Rocket Science is, therefore, not for average people. Out of the extreme difficulty of Rocket Science, the English expression “it is not Rocket Science” was born to state that an activity can be done by any average person.
Yuri Gagarin
On April 12, 1961, Yuri Gagarin, a Russian cosmonaut/astronaut of the USSR became the first human being to journey into space and orbit the earth in his Vostok spacecraft. Three weeks later, on May 5, 1961, American Rear Admiral Alan Shepard became the second man, and the first American to go to space. For the USA, it was a painful defeat to the Soviets in the race to space.
Following the defeat, on May 25, 1961 American President J.F. Kennedy challenged NASA to land an American on the moon by the end of the decade to avenge the Gagarin humiliation. At the time, this was a very audacious proposition from the young President, and qualified for MISSION IMPOSSIBLE. How could a human being land on the moon in less than 10 years?
On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong in the Apollo 11 spacecraft became the first man to land on the moon. He made the famous statement, ONE SMALL STEP FOR MAN, ONE GIANT LEAP FOR MANKIND, on stepping on the Moon. Thus America avenged the 1961 Soviet technological defeat!
“It cannot be done!”
As I drove to town, I heard the persistence with which the panelist said “It cannot be done.” Tried as others attempted to reason with him, his stance appeared cast in concrete as he continued repeating “it cannot be done, it is impossible!” The subject was not Rocket Science! It was politics. Unfortunately, our airwaves and TVs are replete with Ghanaians dedicated to explaining why something cannot be done in
Ghana.
It reminded me of President Kennedy and the Space Race in the early 1960s. He charged his countrymen and women in his famous dictum “My dear American, ask not what your country can do for you. Ask what you can do for your country.” Young as I was, I did not hear any American burn energy explaining why landing a man on the Moon in less than a decade could not be done!
Rather, they all threw their weight behind the idea, and got it done. Certainly, they did not all belong to same party. But they all had a sense of nationalism belonging to one nation, the USA. Can we not do likewise if we ask what we can do for Ghana?
RSM Abugah
Our first Regimental Sergeant Major (RSM), WO1 Abugah of blessed memory, told us at the beginning of our training in 1970 that military training is tough and not for the fainthearted.
The movie “The Officer and a Gentleman” attests to that. He asked us to be positive and eschew a “Negative Mental Attitude,” which we teasingly abbreviated to be NMA. For those who have that NMA psyche, RSM Abugah asked us to avoid, I recommend Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew’s book “From Third World to First World!”
Lee Kuan Yew (LKY)
The Time magazine of March 24, 2014 described LKY as “a man of great intelligence, incredibly brilliant with no patience for mediocrity.” After Singapore was sacked from the Malaysian Federation in 1965, LKY told Singaporeans that “the world does not owe us a living. We cannot live by the begging bowl…………We either produce cheaper and better than anyone else or we perish.”
Attitude makes all the difference in life between success and failure. A nursery rhyme says “The little boy who says I will try, will get to the hill top.
The little boy who says I can’t, will forever remain at the bottom.”
The math needed in Rocket Science
The General on Ghana
As a cadet training outside in 1973, I was pleasantly surprised when a foreign General told me “that tiny little country of yours (Ghana) produces one of the highest brains- per-capita in the world.
There are excellent Ghanaians everywhere in the world.” He stated that brains were Ghana’s largest export. This was after I had argued that cocoa was Ghana’s largest export. He educated me about Ghanaian engineers in the US Automobile industry, medical doctors in Science and Technology, academia, and indeed in NASA.
So how can Ghanaians in the 21st century say “it cannot be done?” It is even sadder when this comes from intellectuals.
Edward Said
The 20th-century Palestinian philosopher Professor Edward Said described an intellectual as “Someone able to
speak the truth, a courageous and angry individual for whom no worldly power is too big to be criticized and pointedly taken to task.
The real or true intellectual is, therefore, an outsider, living in self-imposed exile, and on the margins of society. He or she speaks to as well as for a public, necessarily in public, and is properly on the side of the, the unrepresented and the forgotten.”
Do our intellectuals meet Prof. Said’s prescription? If yes, well done! If not, why not? Ghana needs your learned contributions.
Conclusion
Nothing is Rocket Science about administering fellow human beings with resources of the state which a government is temporarily entrusted with. Democracy, in its early form in the Greek city states of Athens and Sparta, was about the majority ceding some of their rights to a body called government in exchange for protection and the provision of social goods and services, including law and order. Government’s role has not changed.
Leaders and the led’s responsibilities
What we need in Ghana is a clear national direction, and not periodic partisan government direction as appears to be the case. This must be backed by selfless visionary leadership, sound moral principles and integrity,
and a people with a positive attitude, with the Rule of Law operating, to develop Ghana.
Politics can be plain honest commonsense, if leaders do it selflessly and for the utilitarian good of a positive minded people. Politics is not Rocket Science!