I am doing a lot of work on Myanmar these days. One of the most interesting phenomenon is how rumors tend to inspire people with fertile imaginations.
There are two cables from the US Embassy in Rangoon (Yangon) that are like that — in one leaked cable, an embassy contact notices unusual security and care taken with a shipment of ore, jumping to the conclusion that it must be uranium. In the other leaked cable, an “expatriate businessman” concludes that a barge laden with rebar and an unusually long airport runway suggest, to him at least, that Magway must be the site of a clandestine nuclear reactor construction project.
The businessman was awestruck by the runway, near Magway, which he described as so grand that “you could land the space shuttle on it.”
So, I know this is hyperbole, but could you land the space shuttle on it?
The runway is visible in Google Earth and it is long — 2700 m. That’s long enough to accommodate widebody aircraft, something that does seem a little out of place for Magway (population: 300,000). But, there are plenty of global runways that stretch for more than 4,000 m.
And, alas, 2700 m will not allow the space shuttle to land in Burma. The runways for the shuttle typically stretch 4500 m. (So, for example, the Air Force and NASA had to lengthen the comparatively stubby little 2100 meter runway at Vandenberg in the early 1980s.)
So, I guess we can cross space exploration off the list of nefarious Burmese activities — for now.
I kid, but this is a real problem. Burma does have an interest in acquiring a research reactor and is sending students to train in Russia. But the rumors, especially among democracy activists, are generating a lot of noise that is hard to filter out. At least that’s how I read these two cables.