Published in DAWN on October 23, 2014
APROPOS Dr Parvez Hoodbhoy’s article ‘Sending Pakistan to Mars’
(Oct 18), not many Pakistanis know that Pakistan began the space race in the
sub-continent by launching two rockets into space in 1962. Until then, only
nine countries (which included Israel but not India) had been able to launch
rockets into space.
Unfortunately,
our successive governments did not pay much attention to our space programme
and India was able to steam ahead of us. In fact, even Iran sent a monkey into
space a couple of years ago.
It
will be many years before Pakistan is able to do this, despite having launched
two experimental satellites in 1990 and 2001.
For
Pakistan to make further progress in space technology, the first thing that
needs to be done is to replace our outdated locally-produced science text books
with imported ones. We can then hire Pakistani teachers from English-speaking
countries to train the new generation in physics, mathematics and allied
subjects.
Shakir Lakhani
Karachi
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