Brazil has a tragic accident in its shoe string space program while ignorant Venezuelan science and technology officials “launch” a National Space Agency which will supposedly study what has been studied in Venezuela at the Fundacion Instituto de Ingenieria since the 1980’s when I was working there and promises even more in an effort to save money. According to the Minister, in its initial stage satellite images will be used to study fertile lands in Venezuela and launching satellites will be done in later stages. Sounds like the wheel is being rediscovered. But the really surprising announcement is “If there was the possibility that Venezuela had its own satellite technology, we would save enormous amounts of money”. Now, this is a really stupid statement, Venezuela does not even spend that big amount on money in buying images available, from French, US and Russian sources and even if we did, the cost of training personnel alone and attracting it afterwards to work in Venezuela would probably be more than what is spent today. Moreover, to hear this from the Government that destroyed the premier research group in the world on heavy oil crudes sounds so cynical and stupid. Venezuela had the people in the late seventies and eighties to start (only start!) ambitious projects like these, most of them are gone, emigrated either abroad or (like me) simply switched fields and stayed in the country. Today, there has been little advanced training in engineering and related fields in areas other than computer science. Furthermore, most of those that did receive the training have left the country either because of the low salaries or the lack of funding for their activities. I simply can not imagine a Government that criticized paying highly skilled oil workers $50-60,000 a year, willing to spend even higher amounts to attract good Venezuelan scientific talent. I wonder if the first satellite will be called Stupidnic.
6:31:01 PM 
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