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NASA Public Affairs has used the term Spaceflight Participant to designate space tourists. Tito, Shuttleworth, Olsen, Ansari, and Simonyi were designated as such during their respective space flights.[6] lists Christa McAuliffe as a "Space Flight Participant" (although she did not pay a fee), apparently due to her non-technical duties aboard the STS-51-L flight.

Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Space_tourism

put it in this way, at least the government is making a malaysian dream comes true by "sponsoring" the trip. malaysia can claim that the nation has someone to space, as the only country in SEA. else, when do you think the country able to send one in the future, using own's technology ? this is an investment actually ....

You guys are simply jealous!

Seriously, how is all the money spent on this venture really going to help the country? It'll probably take another 200 years or so before Malaysia can venture into outer space under its own steam. It's another of those 'largest flag in the world' or the 'fist car to be parachuted onto the pole' kind of thing, only that this time it is much more expensive.

As an orthopaedic surgeon, it'll be nice and fitting if he were to conduct experiments on how fast bones mend in a weightless condition but he may have to break a bone first. Oops, better not do this.

A waste of money and a tale of boastful pride.

The normal Joe will still be my hero for the day. Providing food on the table, feeding his offspring, working hard, making it through life.

There are still people in dire need of medical care, a roof over their head and food. Use the money to help them instead of spending it on primates' PRIDE!

A waste of money and a tale of boastful pride.

The normal Joe will still be my hero for the day. Providing food on the table, feeding his offspring, working hard, making it through life.

There are still people in dire need of medical care, a roof over their head and food. Use the money to help them instead of spending it on primates' PRIDE!

Even in PR, one should learn to walk first before running. Somehow one feels this is going overboard. It's stratospheric PR without substance.

One, it's hard to believe the Russians will let a precedent be created by giving a free seat when they're charging over twenty million USD for one; so they must have built that into the sukhoi price, or its maintenance thereof.

Two, it's just tagging along; unless we really have some significant experiment up there, what's the role of our astrowan that can be narrated later when thousands of students take their history exam paper and have to write down?

Three, if it's funded by the OIC as some muslim achievement, i would go with it but only because that would mean it costs us nothing; somehow one doesn't think that has happened because it's not a muslim achievement; it's socialist technology.

Fourthly, how's the broadcast beamed to us? Are we uplinked to the russian satellites or did we have to buy new tracking equipment, and it was said to be something in the region of a hundred million ringgit? If that be so, we're paying USD50 million just to see a UKM doctor up in space for a few hours of broadcast.

If we really need to help our Malay brothers up, first thing to do is not to neglect local achievements by our non-Malay brothers too, otherwise how to reconcile national integration and race-based achievement? Just be fair, if a chinese achieved stellar international success, celebrate that as equally and rewardingly as you would his malay brother's success. Then it becomes a malaysian thing and you spread the net a bit more to try and capture more shining examples of what malaysians can do.

You know it's as important that the malay guy be able to accept his chinese fellowman as equal citizen, as it is for vice versa.

Seeing the doc up in space won't make the mat rempits change their ways one bit; they're in for the gambling money.

And too much of that seems to be thrown into all sorts of schemes and dreams these days - the sports camp in england, the rakanmuda complexes in cobwebs, the national service russian roulette casualty rate...

And yes, the indian girl who hanged herself because her parents were too poor to buy her another set of school uniforms.

Any umno bigwig shed one drop of tear there?

Space participant is the correct definition for this Malaysian Space Tourist.

A lot of things if done 30 years earlier would have been a BIG deal. But to achieve them today is not a big deal. This is one example.

For example, climbing Mt. Everest or Swimming across the English Channel. Anyone who is reasonably fit and young and trains for them can climb Everest or swim the Channel.

For Everest, as long as you follow the route set up by the experts, you should do okay. The most difficult part of Everest is in predicting the wheather. The climb itself is pretty much laid out unless you are attempting a new route. Or if you attempt to break the world record to get from base camp to the summit which I remember correctly is now held by a teenager from Nepal at around 6 hours, then it would be a big deal. Otherwise, for the price of about USD55,000, there are mountain climbing agencies that take you to the summit and many elderly mountain climbers have succeeding in reaching the top that way. With more money in the bank, they will even help you achieve the "7 Summits" which is to climb the highest mountain in every continent.

For the English Channel swim, the hardest part is going to be the water temperature. Get over that, and the rest is just training. unless of course you want to set a new record, otherwise if completing the course is all you want, it is highly do-able for most young people.

Back to this space thing, if anyone has 20 million dollars or so, the Russians can take you there. Again its not a big deal anymore. The big deal is coming up with the money.

There are other ways Malaysia can gain validation for having acheive greatness, and that is from sports.

Winning the Thomas Cup for example is a much bigger deal than all of the above. We should try to win the Thomas cup again.

Qualifying for the FIFA world cup would be another great achivement worth shooting for.

In fact, I would single out the qualification of the FIFA world cup as one of the most important milestone in our road to Malaysia Boleh. After we qualify, we should shoot to progress to the 2nd round of the world cup and aim higher and higher after that.

the FIFA world cup is where we will actually see competition from other countries. While climbing Everest, or swimming the English channel, or joining a space tourist program - we don't really have any competition, its just competing with ourselves.

Sorry Melurian,

He is not the first from SEA, which I thought he was until I did a search on Soyuz and guess what, the first ASIAN in space is actually a vietnamese 27 years ago!

Here is the link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ph%E1%BA%A1m_Tu%C3%A2n

well, i guess "Angkasawan" sounds better than "Peserta Penerbangan Angkasa"? even shorter somemore..

remember how we claimed Proton as original, when it was all from Mitsubishi?

how do we proclaim ourselves to be "Gemilang" when even the big screen projector in Dataran Merdeka failed to function?

what a joke!

Our 'malaysia boleh' is really in a class of its own. No other country has it.

If its true that he is just a space tourist, then its a shame on the country to proclaim otherwise.

How long more of lies and deceit must we take? Sigh...

Cemerlang, Gemilang, Terbilang ? Think again !

Expensive hitching a ride in Space? Bernama has quoted a figure of RM90 million for the angkasawan programme to offset the agreement between the Malaysian and Russian governments in the purchase of Sukhoi fighter jets costing RM3.4 billion in 2003. Current Space ticket fare is only RM70.77 Million (US21 Million). Give and take how did the Malaysian angkasawan (cosmonaut) programme ballooned to RM90 Million.). Another Mindef agent’s fee for brokering the deal? Wired report AP says the deal (in 2003 for 1 Astronaut to go) was a US25 million agreement for US900 million for 18 Russian Jets or equivalent to RM84.25Million (current rate 3.37). So is the cost still escalating?
More details at:
http://powerpresent.blogspot.com/2007/10/more-pics-video-inflated-rm90m-malaysia.html

All local news media, NONE of them mentioned about the Ansari X Prize . Yet, they all daring to talk about "first step in space technology.

Bah, nevermind.

CNN (US) had a story on it and showed and mentioned Sheikh Muszaphar name.

CNN called him a "TOURIST"......why cant our GOV pick up the damn phone and inform some of these media B4

who cares if he is a space tourist or an astonaut. as far as muszaphar is concerned, he is in space.
To be a member of ISIS (international space station) you have to contribute BIG money. among the contributors are US, european states, japan. Malaysia is not one of the contributors and as far as ISIS is concerned, cannot use such facility. russia was given a pass as they have the technology and therefore did not have to contribute any cent as long as they share their hardware for the space purpose. Hence in order for Russia to further reduce their spending, they sell seats on board space flights.

Since he is already up there, I wish him all the best and a safe journey.

However in my book he will always be our anka(t)sa(ya punya)wan(g).

40 years after man stepped on the surface of the moon and we are creating history for sending a Malaysian to a space station?

I can't take this (i.e. the trash you read on our printed media)! Are we fools or what? I would think the Russians will see us as VERY RICH fools!

Foxnews.com reports: During his 12-day space trip, Shukor is to study of the effects of microgravity and space radiation on cells and microbes, as well as experiments with proteins for a potential HIV vaccine.

Has Dr Sheikh Muszaphar Shukor already confirmed that the particular HIV strain for his potential vaccine originates from a place with microgravity? If not, what then is the relevance of this experiment? How about taking a piece of charcoal and study how it behaves under microgravity? Who knows?

Maybe it may just turn into something as valuable as diamond under diametrically opposite conditions!