By Gabrielle Pundavela || Illustration by Jen Abasola
How far can a nation reach for the stars when the ground beneath it remains unstable?
During his fifth State of the Nation Address (SONA), President Ferdinand “Bongbong” Marcos Jr. declared, “Yes, we are going to launch a rocket to space,” announcing a planned 2027 test launch in Cagayan. It was a thrilling promise, one that evoked a country on the threshold of a milestone: joining the ranks of nations capable of launching into space from their own soil. For a country that has long relied on foreign launch sites to put its satellites into orbit, the promise was enormous.
There is, however, a small technicality: the rocket is not actually going to space.
The initial flight of the liquid-fueled rocket is expected to reach an altitude of at least five kilometers. At that height, the rocket would still be in the troposphere, not even outflying a commercial airliner. Space, by international standards or the Kármán line, begins at 100 kilometers. The announcement is therefore misleading if “space” is to be taken in its technical sense. Nor is the announced flight an orbital launch. Reaching orbit requires not only altitude but also sufficient horizontal velocity to keep a spacecraft circling Earth. The 2027 test in Lal-lo, Cagayan, is therefore a preliminary step toward developing launch capability, not the achievement of placing a spacecraft in orbit.
That may seem minor, but it matters. It matters because the project is being presented to a public whose understanding of “space technology” can easily be reduced to rockets, astronauts, and distant frontiers, when its real value lies in what happens much closer to Earth. Though a test flight need not reach space to be scientifically valuable, if the public is invited to celebrate a milestone, it deserves to know precisely what that milestone entails.
More importantly, we must look beyond how high the rocket flies and ask what its scientific payload is expected to deliver.
The mission is expected to carry scientific instruments weighing approximately two kilograms. Filipino personnel involved are currently undergoing training in South Korea through the Philippine Space Agency’s SIKLAB: Building Industrial Space Launch Systems Project, in partnership with South Korean space-mobility company Perigee Aerospace, Inc. These are meaningful steps toward developing domestic expertise. Yet the value of the experiment depends on what the instruments can measure, what the mission can demonstrate, and how the resulting data will be used.
The payload is expected to measure and record signals from cellular communication infrastructure on the ground, potentially contributing to research on signal propagation and helping identify areas with poor cellular coverage.
But what good is identifying a dead zone if the people living in it cannot afford a phone, pay for mobile data, or even rely on a steady supply of electricity? A rocket may map the limits of cellular coverage, but it cannot address the economic barriers that keep people disconnected in the first place. The data may tell telecommunications providers where to build, but it cannot guarantee that they will—or that the services they offer will be within reach of the communities that need them. We must not confuse making the invisible visible with making the inaccessible accessible.
And if the final result of all that sophisticated technology is simply another colorful map showing Filipinos exactly where they already know their phones have no signal, then we have succeeded at measuring a problem without necessarily solving it. Scientific data becomes truly useful only when institutions have the capacity—and the political will—to act on it.
The proposed Philippine spaceport carries a price tag of ₱17 billion. Before committing to an investment of that scale, we should ask ourselves: In a country that still argues over misused public funds, who is to say that such a large investment will not meet the same fate?
The test site in Lal-lo, Cagayan offers a potential safety advantage, as directing the rocket’s trajectory toward the Pacific Ocean could allow falling debris to land in open waters rather than populated areas.
But open water does not mean empty water.
If the Philippines proceeds with plans to establish its own spaceport, temporary maritime exclusion zones will be required to protect vessels from potential hazards, restricting access to waters that municipal fisherfolk depend on for their livelihoods. For communities whose daily catch determines their income, even temporary restrictions could mean lost fishing hours and reduced earnings.
This would force our municipal fisherfolk to steer their boats back toward shallow municipal waters, which are within 15 kilometers of the shoreline. Additional restrictions on fishing grounds, if imposed without adequate consultation or mitigation, could further constrain the options available to these communities. A project cannot claim to serve the national interest while leaving the people who bear its costs out of the conversation.
A spaceport may carry the promise of reaching new frontiers, but that promise rings hollow if the communities below must surrender their livelihoods to make it possible. We cannot call it progress if only a few ascend while the rest are left behind.
Yes, it is true that having our own spaceport could benefit the Philippines. But not now—not yet, for a rocket is only as steady as the ground it leaves. If we wish to stand alongside spacefaring nations, we must build our foundations strong in the soil, so that when we reach for the stars, we do not falter.
