Elon Musk, founder of SpaceX, at Satellite 2020 at the Washington Convention Centre in March 2020. Photo: AFP
Source:
https://scmp.com/magazines/style/news-trends/article/3125044/indonesia-wants-elon-musk-build-space-island-biak-why News & Trends
Indonesia wants Elon Musk to build a ‘space island’ on Biak – but why are Papuan residents against President Joko Widodo’s SpaceX launch pad idea?
- Musk’s other company Tesla is also discussing investments with Indonesian officials aimed at securing supplies of valuable copper and nickel
- SpaceX’s Starship and Starlink projects currently use US launch sites, but Russia’s aerospace agency, Roscosmos, is also sizing up a launch pad on Biak island
Elon Musk, CEO of SpaceX, and Biak, an island in Indonesia’s Papua province, slated to be home to a launch site against the wishes of its islanders. Photo: TNS, @visitbiak/Instagram
Residents of a small Indonesian island have said that a new SpaceX launch pad on their land would devastate the environment and threaten their livelihoods, The Guardian has reported.
In December 2020, the Indonesian government offered SpaceX CEO Elon Musk, known for his bold and unconventional thinking, a rocket launch site on the island of Biak, in Papua province in the far east of the country.
Musk and the Indonesian president Joko Widodo discussed plans over the phone in December and Musk was planning to send a team to the island in January to look at potential investments, the country’s coordinating ministry for maritime and investment affairs said in December.
Indonesia’s President Joko Widodo attends an Asean leaders’ summit in Bangkok, Thailand in November 2019. Photo: Reuters
But Manfun Sroyer, a tribal chief on the island, told The Guardian he was worried Papuans would be forced to leave their homes.
“This spaceport will cost us our traditional hunting grounds, damaging the nature our way of life depends on. But, if we protest, we’ll be arrested immediately,” Sroyer said.
This isn’t the only rocket launch site that may be built on Biak. Russia’s aerospace agency, Roscosmos, wants to develop a launch pad on the island by 2024.
“In 2002, Russians wanted our land for satellite launches. We protested and many were arrested and interrogated … Now they’ve brought it back, and this harassment and intimidation is still going on,” Sroyer told The Guardian.
Biak, in Papua province, Indonesia. Photo: @biakcool_/Instagram
Indonesia has some of the world’s largest deposits of copper and nickel – two materials key for making rockets, as well as batteries for Tesla’s electric vehicles. Tesla is already in talks with the Indonesian government about possible investment opportunities, according to the government’s December statement.
A spokesperson from the government told The Guardian the planned launch pad was being developed with direction from the Papuan government and local communities. They also said that Biak would become a “space island” which would “bring positive economic impacts” for those living there.
Workers put the finishing touches on a prototype of SpaceX’s Starship at Brownsville, Texas in September 2020. Photo: The Washington Post via Getty Images
Musk’s space venture eventually wants to send people to Mars via its Starship rocket. The third test flight of the rocket prototype exploded though after an initially successful landing at Boca Chica, Texas on March 3.
SpaceX is also launching satellites into orbit via its Falcon 9 rocket in a project to create global internet coverage called Starlink. These launches currently take place at Kennedy Space Centre in Cape Canaveral, Florida.
Want more stories like this? Sign up here. Follow STYLE on Facebook, Instagram, YouTube and Twitter.
This article originally appeared on Business Insider.