1964: Zambia's forgotten Space Program

Edward Makuka Nkoloso was a grade school science teacher, candidate for the mayoralty of Lusaka, Zambia and former activist for the independence of Zambia who became notorious at the time of independence when he established the Zambia National Academy of Science, Space Research and Philosophy, Zambia's first (unofficial) space program.

 This program in the 1960s sought to accomplish the launching of a rocket that would send twelve astronauts and ten cats to Mars, thus besting the United States and Soviet Union's respective space programs at the height of the Space Race (note that, as of 2010, only the United States space program has managed to launch a successful manned mission to an extraterrestrial body, and has not yet accomplished a manned mission to Mars).


 To train the astronauts, he set up a makeshift facility seven miles away from Lusaka, where the trainees, dressed in drab overalls with British army helmets, would then take turns to climb into a 44 gallon oil drum which would be rolled down a hill bouncing over rough ground; this, according to Nkoloso, would train the men in the feeling of weightlessness in both space travel and re-entry.

 He wrote an editorial for a newspaper describing his endeavors. In it, he had described how he had asked UNESCO for a £7,000,000 grant for his space program, and how he specifically instructed the missionaries to not force Christianity onto the native Martian inhabitants if they didn't want it. He also noted that the rocket, a 10x6 aluminium and copper vessel, would launch from the Independence Stadium on Independence Day, 1964.

 Nkoloso's space program never took off the ground, particularly because of the lack of grants from UNESCO and the fact that the 17-year-old "spacegirl" who was to ride on the mission, Matha Mwambwa, had gotten pregnant and was taken away by her parents. Furthermore, the Zambian government distanced itself from Nkoloso's endeavor. He later served as president of the Ndola Ex-servicemen's Association .... http://en.wikipedia.org