Elizabeth Ohene: We remain on our flat earth

I have searched the Ghanaian media in the past week for any mention of the words “New Horizons” and I have drawn a blank.There has been no sign of it in any of the newspapers I read, nor on the radio stations that I listen to and I am assured by my niece and nephews that the television stations have not featured the words either.

During this past week, a news item involving New Horizons has managed to knock off from the headlines, Greece, Eurozone, Syria, Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) and all the suspects that usually occupy the position.

Planetary scientists, a usually very dour lot have been in the news in a big way and have been seen screaming and jumping up and down with a lot of excitement. With the aid of a small spacecraft they named New Horizons, the planetary scientists have been filling in many of the blanks and colouring the picture of our solar system.

From a world that is three billion miles away, the spacecraft has been sending back close-up photographs and observations from the planet Pluto, with towering mountains of ice, vast smooth plains and many mysteries yet to be revealed.

The fly-by of Pluto by the National Aeronautics and Space Administraion’s (NASA’s) New Horizons spacecraft has been rightly celebrated as a triumph of human ingenuity, and it was the crowning moment of a mission that unfolded almost flawlessly.

Exoteric matters?

Somehow, this earth-shattering event seemed to have passed us by in Ghana almost as though we were not part of the solar system. I have tried to raise the issue of this “non-story” with a number of people and the recurring excuse I have heard has been that we cannot afford to spend time on such exoteric matters when we have life and death issues such as hunger, sanitation and dumsor on our hands.

In other words, how do you go discussing space exploration when schools do not have chalk and basic teaching and learning materials? Indeed, on the second day of the Pluto story, when the spacecraft was transmitting the dramatic photos of close-ups of the surface of the planet and of ice mountains, our headlines were dominated by a spirited exchange of words between a headmistress of a public basic school and the wife of our Vice-President over the non-availability of chalk in our basic schools.

I would suggest that it is precisely because we have become so short-sighted in our outlook and are prepared to settle for mediocrity that schools can be left without chalk.
Mankind would be eternally in debt to these scientists who worked on the New Horizons project for their work to widen our understanding of our place and places in space. By closing our eyes and our ears to the scientific advances taking place, we remain captives to every charlatan that offers us spurious theories as answers to our problems.

Firing the imagination

Explorations such as this New Horizons fly-by Pluto are what drive children to become the scientists, engineers and mathematicians of the future. These are the things that fire the imagination of inventors and writers. This is how accepted wisdom gets questioned and this is how we learn that our earth is round and not flat.

There cannot be and I cannot think of a better investment than to expose our young people and Ghana’s population as a whole to such stories.

When I listen to discussions on the radio I often hear the throwaway line: “This is not rocket science.” This is meant to tell us the subject being discussed is not too difficult to be beyond our comprehension. Well, here we have a true example of rocket science which was being made easy for the most unscientific to understand, and our media decide it is beyond us and they black it out.

The backstory of the New Horizons project teaches many lessons that we might benefit from. This project emerged from NASA shutting down their Pluto programme, which was deemed to be going nowhere fast, to borrow a phrase, and was way over budget. This was a scaled down version.

The project survived because the American Congress took an interest and kept the funding even when the administration took it out of the budget.

The scientists on the project were dedicated to their work. There were times when some of them spent days and nights in their labs and got no sleep. Some missed Thanksgiving holidays with their families. When the equipment developed problems, the scientists stuck to their work and fixed the problem.

And so how does New Horizons sending breathtaking close-up pictures of Pluto affect the price of kenkey or guarantee us 24-hour supply of electricity, I hear you ask.
It might make a few of us adopt a scientific outlook on life and it might come with the acceptance of the germ theory and take the pressure off a few elderly women as the culprits for every disease and accident. It might make a few more of us want to see through to the end, whatever we undertake to do, even if it means giving up on a funeral and spending time on our project.

It might make us prioritise the tasks we face and it just might make us make sure every classroom has chalk and not take the money to give uniforms and shoes to some schoolchildren.

It might make us realise that this little patch of land we call Ghana is part of a greater mass where the human race is making rapid progress. It would certainly make us realise that we are way behind and we should face up to that reality. Maybe we would then leave the flat earth society and join the modern world.

In the meantime, we should at the very least express our awe and wonder at the accomplishments of the New Horizons team. This is rocket science of the highest level and we should try and be part of it.