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Unmanned Spaceflight.com _ Exploration Strategy _ Algeria - a space-faring nation?

Posted by: karolp Oct 30 2006, 01:48 PM

I have recently stumbled upon this one while reading an old (pre-Voyager) space encyclopedia. I also found it in Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammaguir

It was supposedly dismantled as the local government took over and the new center in French Guyana was built. But: could the Algerians actually keep some hardware or at least some blueprints? Any info on that?

Posted by: Stephen Nov 2 2006, 07:28 AM

QUOTE (karolp @ Oct 31 2006, 12:48 AM) *
I have recently stumbled upon this one while reading an old (pre-Voyager) space encyclopedia. I also found it in Wiki:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hammaguir

It was supposedly dismantled as the local government took over and the new center in French Guyana was built. But: could the Algerians actually keep some hardware or at least some blueprints? Any info on that?

I have no info as such, but any blueprints would have been owned by the French, not the Algerians, and would have gone when the French left. If any were left behind they would be for hardware that would now be 40 years old or more.

As for hardware, if anybody was going to keep such things it would have been the French, who were the ones who designed and built the hardware in question and so would have an interest in retaining them, if only for a museum. Unless the Algerias were going to put such things in a museum themselves, or use them to launch satellites, why would they keep them at all. More particularly why would they store them away, unused, for 40 years? If tenants were to move out of a house you own but leave some of their belongings behind--belongings they did not want any more and were of no use to you--would you nevertheless keep them yourself or take them to the nearest dumpster?

======
Stephen

Posted by: Rob Pinnegar Nov 2 2006, 02:27 PM

I guess it's not surprising that the French launched their satellites from Algeria. Closer to the equator and all that.

I didn't know the first French satellite was called Asterix. Nice.

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