Which of these flags gonna be in the space? Mr Ashis Thakkar has an answer

Ashis Thakkar | Indian-Tanzanian-Ugandan takes paid Space Flight

Posted by Rakesh on October 24, 2009
Submitted by: Pyarali Jamal
By email of: Oct 22, 2009
President Jakaya Kikwete placing the National flag to Mr Ashis Thakkar, Uganda-based businessman who is on course to travel to outerspace on board the Virgin Galactic’s first flight to space early next year. The 28-year-old millionaire will fly the Tanzania flag on the space shuttle as a tribute to his Tanzanian mother who was born and raised in Mwanza.
WHEN it comes to scaling the heights, Ashish Thakkar is like no other man in Africa. Kilimanjaro’s 19,341 feet do not excite him.
And even though he is one of the wealthiest businessmen on the continent – he’s worth 1 billion US dollars — is he content to be perched at the top of the business tree? No, he’s not. This man is set to blast off into space. Yes, you read that correctly.
Mr Thakkar will be heading towards the stars, going 100 km beyond orbit into Outer Space sometime next year. The 28-year-old Uganda based millionaire has paid some 200,000 US dollars to go up there. What’s more, he is taking with him the Tanzania National flag.
President Jakaya Kikwete graciously gave him the banner at the State House in Dar es Salaam today, patting his back and bear hugging him for what he described as a unique venture.
“Thank you for deciding to carry with you the Tanzania flag into orbit”, the president said.
“This is a unique opportunity for us to promote the country.” President Kikwete also thanked Thakkar who has offered to produce for Tanzania a two-and-a-half minute TV advert that is to be paid for by his International conglomerate – Mara Group.
Born in the UK, Thakkar made it plain to the president that he continues to take pride in his family ties with Tanzania, as his mother was born and raised in Mwanza.
“In fact I am taking the flag up there to the space shuttle as a tribute to my mother.”
Thakkar has already completed extensive training which included exercises in a simulator that gave him the experience of traveling at 2,700 km an hour which is the speed of the space shuttle where he will stay for several days.
“Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity, he said, “and this is the opportunity of a lifetime.”
Opportunities are something that Mr Thakkar has grasped before. He started at the bottom at the age of 15 by founding an IT company known as RAPS. He went on to set up a manufacturing plant, Riley Industries in Uganda.
Later on, pursuing his passion for real estate, Mr Thakkar co-founded Kensington Company in 2004. Today Mara Group has offices in Dubai, UK, Ghana and India.
Certainly, he can afford to become a founding astronaut in Virgin Galactic’s maiden flight to space. Mara Group has a portfolio of 1billion US Dollars and employs in excess of 2,000 people.
To look at him you would not immediately associate this small ( he’s 5′8”) and modest man with the legendary figures of space exploration: Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, all those guys with what was termed “the Right Stuff”. But Mr Thakkar clearly has what it takes. It’s taken him right to the top before.
Now he’s on his way up again.

http://musomablog.com/2009/10/24/ashis-thakkar-indian-tanzanian-ugandan-takes-paid-space-flight/

Off to Space with Tanzania’s flag
MUHIDIN ISSA MICHUZI, 16th October 2009 @ 16:34, Total Comments: 19, Hits: 1819

WHEN it comes to scaling the heights, Ashish Thakkar is like no other man in Africa. Kilimanjaro’s 19,341 feet do not excite him.

And even though he is one of the wealthiest businessmen on the continent – he’s worth 1 billion US dollars -- is he content to be perched at the top of the business tree? No, he’s not. This man is set to blast off into space. Yes, you read that correctly.

Mr Thakkar will be heading towards the stars, going 100 km beyond orbit into Outer Space sometime next year. The 28-year-old Uganda based millionaire has paid some 200,000 US dollars to go up there. What’s more, he is taking with him the Tanzania National flag.

President Jakaya Kikwete graciously gave him the banner at the State House in Dar es Salaam today, patting his back and bear hugging him for what he described as a unique venture.

“Thank you for deciding to carry with you the Tanzania flag into orbit”, the president said.

“This is a unique opportunity for us to promote the country.” President Kikwete also thanked Thakkar who has offered to produce for Tanzania a two-and-a-half minute TV advert that is to be paid for by his International conglomerate – Mara Group.

Born in the UK, Thakkar made it plain to the president that he continues to take pride in his family ties with Tanzania, as his mother was born and raised in Mwanza.

“In fact I am taking the flag up there to the space shuttle as a tribute to my mother.”

Thakkar has already completed extensive training which included exercises in a simulator that gave him the experience of traveling at 2,700 km an hour which is the speed of the space shuttle where he will stay for several days.

“Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity, he said, “and this is the opportunity of a lifetime.”

Opportunities are something that Mr Thakkar has grasped before. He started at the bottom at the age of 15 by founding an IT company known as RAPS. He went on to set up a manufacturing plant, Riley Industries in Uganda.

Later on, pursuing his passion for real estate, Mr Thakkar co-founded Kensington Company in 2004. Today Mara Group has offices in Dubai, UK, Ghana and India.

Certainly, he can afford to become a founding astronaut in Virgin Galactic’s maiden flight to space. Mara Group has a portfolio of 1billion US Dollars and employs in excess of 2,000 people.

To look at him you would not immediately associate this small ( he’s 5'8'') and modest man with the legendary figures of space exploration: Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong, all those guys with what was termed “the Right Stuff”. But Mr Thakkar clearly has what it takes. It’s taken him right to the top before. Now he’s on his way up again.

http://www.dailynews.co.tz/home/?n=4531&cat=home

Kenyan flag to be hoisted in space
By NATION ReporterPosted Tuesday, February 9 2010 at 13:27

For the first time ever, Kenya’s flag will be hoisted in space.
Prime Minister Raila Odinga set off the historic process on Tuesday when he handed the Kenyan flag to the man who will undertake the assignment, Dubai based multi-billionaire entrepreneur, Ashish Thakkar at his office.
By hoisting the Kenyan flag, alongside the Ugandan and Tanzanian flags in space, Thakkar hopes to demonstrate to the world the opportunities available in the three East African nations.
Speaking at the PM’s office, the 28 year old entrepreneur said the Sh15.2 million Virgin Galactic flight will take off as soon as engineers finish testing the space ship earmarked to undertake the trip.
“Currently, the space ship is undergoing testing, once this is over, we will take off,” he said without stating exactly when this will happen.
“This is an act of courage and dedication. Kenya stands to benefit from a lot of possibilities offered by space,” Mr Odinga noted as he handed over the flag to Mr Thakkar who has spent the last couple of months undergoing space training at Nastar Space Centre, Philadelphia.
Born in the UK, Thakkar has lived in Africa for over fifteen years and in Dubai for eight years. At the tender age of sixteen, Thakkar founded RAPS, the IT company. He went on to set-up a manufacturing plant, Riley Industries, in Uganda.
In 2004, he co-founded globally renowned real estate company, Kensington Group which today has offices in Dubai, UK, Uganda, Ghana and India.
The group focuses on quality real estate development and currently has projects valued at over $1billion internationally including the 36-storey architectural masterpiece in Dubai, the Kensington Krystal.
He recently founded Shikamano Africa to drive the private sector, bring together like-minded individuals and bring forward the idea of a borderless Africa.
Speaking on Tuesday, Thakkar announced that he planned to raise his company’s investments in Kenya in the near future.



http://www.nation.co.ke/News/-/1056/858498/-/view/printVersion/-/sknh48/-/index.html

The first Ugandan in outer space
Posted Sunday, April 19 2009 at 11:47

When the time came for him to propose to his longtime girlfriend, he chose to pop the question on the helipad of the Burj al Arab, Dubai’s 7-star luxury hotel, 321 metres above the ground, of Dubai.
The stunning view of the city, millions of lights stretching away in every direction far below them, left her so dizzy that she now insists it was her fear of heights that carried the day.
She consented to marry him just so he would take her back to ground level — or so she says.
That was in September, last year.
This year, Ashish Thakkar, who believes heights have always worked magic for him, is planning a far more daring escapade that is going to take him rather higher than the top of the Burj al Arab.
Instead of a constellation of man-made lights, this time around he will be surrounded by the countless trillions of stars in the universe.
The 28 year-old resident of Kampala is among the initial group of Virgin Galactic space tourists who have signed on for a trip to outer space that includes four to five minutes of weightlessness and will take 2.5 hours.
When Virgin Airlines tycoon Branson announced the Virgin Galactic venture in 2004, he said flights might begin in 2008.
Delays have pushed the date to 2010, more likely 2011.
Customers will be sent into space by rocket after being flown 50,000 feet into the air by a carrier craft called WhiteKnightTwo, which will take off from a runway, unlike the American space shuttles.
It has passed three tests, Wincer said.
The Virgin Galactic spacecraft built by Scaled Composites will be strapped to the underbelly of a specially designed jet carrier.
At 50,000 feet while still airborne, the spacecraft will be released to continue the journey on its own.
But the six-passenger, two-pilot SpaceShipTwo, that will carry the customers to space after WhiteKnightTwo releases it, must still be tested before flights can begin.
There have been three successful test flights of the mothership WhiteKnightTwo, which will launch the spacecraft SpaceShipTwo.
However, SpaceShipTwo will undergo a year’s worth of test flights before it is deemed safe for tourist flights.
Of course, the flight will not come cheap — the quick jaunt just beyond the earth’s atmosphere and into zero gravity weightlessness will cost the space tourists a cool $200,000 each.
But, “Nothing is more expensive than a missed opportunity. This is the opportunity of a lifetime,” says Thakkar, chief executive officer of the Mara Group.
His fellow spacefarers include actors, real estate magnates, CEOs and rich adventurers who can afford the fee.
Among them are actress and skin-care entrepreneur Victoria Principal, Hollywood film director Brian Singer and Soviet emige Lina Borozdina-Birch, who took a second mortgage of her house just to be on the trip.
Also booked are the husband and wife team of George and Loretta Whitesides, who want to spend their honeymoon on a space vehicle.
Thakkar and his group have undergone a series of tests and weightlessness exercises to prepare them for the conditions aboard the space vehicle during the flight.
In November last year, they completed a space flight training course at the National Aerospace Training and Research Centre (NASTAR) in Philadelphia.
“The training was an amazing experience,” said Thakkar. The flight simulation exercise were combined with sessions in the STS-400 centrifuge, which simulates the crushing G forces acting on the body during lift off: “I felt like I was really launching into space.”
Training at the Centre is an integral part of Virgin Galactic’s spaceflight programme, because during a flight, passengers will experience the same physiological stresses as professional astronauts, including elevated, sustained Gs.
Gs are a multiple of the normal effect of gravity on the human body.
For example, 3.5 Gs is three and a half times the normal weight a person feels while at rest on Earth, and is the force spacecraft passengers will feel on launch. They will experience 6 Gs on re-entry.
According to Thakkar, the wannabe astronaurts not only became accustomed to these stresses, for most people these effects, while intense, proved not only survivable but even enjoyable. Most of the participants laughed or whooped during their space launch simulation.
Each passenger will have a fully documented record of the whole trip and of course their astronaut wings.
So far, Virgin Galactic has recruited around 200 people to be part of its inaugural flight, which will blast off from the Mojave Desert Spaceport in California.
Thakkar’s dream of travelling to space were nurtured during early years filled with great adversity, but also great dedication and great effort, crowned with improbable and unexpected successes.
At the age of 14, Thakkar quit school to set up a small IT shop, which developed to the multimillion-shilling business empire known as the Mara Group with offices in Dubai and Kampala.
The group has an impressive 15-year history in information technology, real estate, financial services, hospitality, energy, packaging, retail and media, with an extensive network in Africa, Middle East, Europe and Asia.
“Our brand has become synonymous with innovation and entrepreneurial flair,” says Thakkar; well, it has certainly made him rich enough to realise his childhood dream.
Virgin Group’s flamboyant boss Sir Richard Branson is Thakkar’s hero. He points out that, like him, Sir Richard never finished high school.
As the craft accelerates to 4,800kph (four times the speed of sound), passengers are pinned to their seats.
Once the spacecraft’s speed stabilises, passengers can view the sky through the large windows, as it changes from blue to mauve, then indigo and finally to black.
They will finally find themselves floating as the vehicle escapes earth’s gravitational pull.
Below them, they will see an image of the earth already familiar from television and the Internet — but astronauts insist that there sis nothing like the real thing.
After four minutes of weightlessness, the pilot will ask the passenger to buckle up for the return trip to Earth.
Virgin Galactic is one of the world’s first space tourism companies, founded by Sir Richard Branson as a part of the worldwide Virgin Group.
It plans to construct the world’s first commercial spaceport, Spaceport America, (formerly Southwest Regional Spaceport) in Upham, New Mexico, an uninhabited, unincorporated town near the town of Las Cruces.
The flight vehicle for Virgin Galactic will be based on the successful SpaceShipOne design, which won the Ansari X-Prize for space tourism in 2004. SpaceShipTwo, or Virgin SpaceShip (VSS) as it will be called, is scheduled to start giving commercial flights in mid 2009.
The flights that Virgin Galactic will initially offer will be true spaceflights, in the sense that they will be at an altitude of about 108 km, just above the Kármán line that separates the earth from space.
However, they are still suborbital flights — that is, they scrape the edge of space without actually entering into a stable orbit and staying there.
http://www.theeastafrican.co.ke/magazine/-/434746/561762/-/view/printVersion/-/7bk4o/-/index.html