Some people are just a waste of flesh and food! Mr Keith Gottschalk, from the Department of Political Studies of the University of the Western Cape, further went on to remind us, and I quote:
In the past it was the Nasa who selected a historically disadvantaged schoolgirl in Khayelitsha, flew her to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, in Pasadena, California, and trained her to operate robotically one of their two Mars rovers. In future, it should be our own space agency that organise such schools outreach programmes.
Like many other Bills that went through Parliament, the South African National Space Agency Bill was subjected to public participation and scrutiny. The DST, which is the Department of Science and Technology, Mr Ellis, also gave a report during this process about their own consultation processes, which was very helpful.
The portfolio committee wishes to thank the University of the Western Cape, the University of Cape Town, the Department of Communications, the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, Telkom, SunSpace, Marcom, the SA Astronomical Observatory, C&M Space Investments, Eskom, Sanparks and Sentech for their valuable written submissions and in particular those entities that afforded the committee the opportunity to interact further with their oral submissions. Nagomso! I must say, the DA was very well behaved here on space matters.