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Australia Develops Space Program With Russia
Chuq writes: "ABC News has details of a joint space effort between Australia and Russia. Australia will be providing launch locations on the Christmas Islands and Woomera (central Australia) and Russia will be providing.. well, experience! As I'm an Aussie I'm glad to see us finally making our first move into the space arena, no matter how small!" Imagine this happening even, oh, 10 years ago.
Maybe one of their giant rockets will explode and take out the Christmas Islands. Hurrah! No more goatse.cx!
Actually the Ariane launches from CSG (Centre Spatial Guyanais) Kourou, French Guiana. That's on the north coast of South America.
I know this is off topic but I'd like to point some things out about how El Presidante "handled China".
s c/ ep3_010518_1_n.shtml
First off, the recent fun with China happened because an American recon aircraft in International Airspace was intercepted by a reckless pilot and hit. Then as the aircraft radioed for emergency landing clearance, in accordance with numerous air transport treaties that the PRC and the USA have signed, the clearance was denied and then the crew was held.
Look here on Janes for some background
http://www.janes.com/defence/air_forces/news/mi
Secondly - The PRC holds that everything in the South China Sea, including the Spratly Islands, which are closer to the Philippines. They also occupy the Paracel Islands which has been part of Vietnam since the early 1900s, and invaded Vietnam early in 1980, Afghanistan style...only to be beat back. So in short, the PRC is attempting Pacific expansion in the same way Japan did in the 1930s and early 40s. Taiwan is threatened with hundreds of short-range missiles, and the United States, and Europe if they took Taiwan's side are threatened with atomic weapons by China.
Lastly - The PRC is responsable for wildly violent outbursts against pro-Democracy, Islamic, Tibetian, or other religous groups that make Waco or even Kosovo and the airwar against Serbia look like picnics.
Bush...much as I dislike him, did a very good job with China, giving in to the demands of expansionist nations will never work, the world learned that after Chamberlin's 'Peace in our Time' speech.
That's me, being off topic.
On topic, I think the U.S. should set up a launching facility on the Atlantic Coast of Brazil, where we still have 40 some years on a WW2 lease...at...Natal I think it is. Where the planes in the 40s and 50s jumped from S.A to North Africa. So we'd be closer to the Equator. Maybe it'll happen after the FTAA happens.
The biggest construction project ever was the US Interstate highway system.
As for importance, the Great Wall of China didn't really do much to stem the tide of the northern hordes it was to stop.
him grabbing snakes and alligators in zero-gravity would be cool as hell. Something like "The Matrix meets The Crocidile Hunter" ;-)
Perhaps I've been poorly misinformed, but don't rocket launches release a shitload of ozone-depleting chemicals?
Australia already has a lotta trouble with skin cancer. Can't imagine launching rockets right into the ozone hole is gonna help 'em any...
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Since it seems that whenever anything falls out of the sky, they always aim it at Australia.
The big question is how close are the new Australian launch sites are to the Equator?
If they're pretty close the same rocket used on the Sea Launch system can be used for these Australian sites.
The biggest advantage in regards to Sea Launch is the fact they can be literally at the Equator, which means maximum assistance of the Earth's rotation. That's why a satellite that would have required a bigger rocket such as the Atlas III when launched from Cape Canaveral only needs the smaller Russian Zenit rocket when launched from the Sea Launch platform.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
Christmas Island: 10 30' South
Woomera: 31.10 S
Cape Canaveral: (drumroll) 28.45 N.
Florida is about as far north as the center of Australia is south.
... and if a rocket crashes in the center of Autralia, does it make a sound?
Australia had a beaut shoestring space program, oohh, 20 years ago. We even launched a satellite from Woomera that was the model of robustness and longetivity (except perhaps voyager?). Anyway, the powers that be decided sheep were more important and profitable than technology and shut it down. And nothing's changed since...
I don't think I'd call the situation is Russia a recession (which would imply a cylic retreat) - it's more just economic turmoil from the transition to a market economy. There's just so much economic infrastructure that needs to be built, as well as the current general lawlessness that makes doing legitimate business there pretty hard.
Yep. That's why Ariane, which mostly is putting up comms. satellites, launch from Africa.
Actually, ESA wanted to use Northern Australia as a launch facility instead of French Guinea or whatever. But in it's infinite wisdom and world wiseness the Australian tax department wanted to tax everything that they would bring into the country.
But don't worry, although we pissed the Europeans off and instead of Australia being the major European launch facility we did invite the Brits to come and detonate nuclear weapons slightly upwind from Adelaide.....
is that Paul Hogan be launched as Australia's first satellite! And maybe The Crocodile Hunter too.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
NASA is in a sorry state right now. The space station is a lousy way to get out of the stagnation that we've been locked in ever since the shuttle program got underway. More competition from a Russian/Australian alliance (as well as from China et al) could be a very good thing, both for NASA and for global space exploration in general.
I'm for anything that would get us off our asses and have us out doing something interesting, like exploring Mars, rather than putting Yet Another Damn Tin-can in orbit. Someone at NASA has a huge David Bowie fixation, methinks....
DO NOT LEAVE IT IS NOT REAL
For the record, Australian toilet bowls work on a slightly different mechanism. Our water doesn't swirl, it goes straight down.
Just FYI.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
Ah, those were the days. When we were a nation that actually did something rather than reflect on past glories. Thanks for setting me straight, I thought the U.S. was still heavily (leadingly?) involved in the building of the space station, not to mention the enormously scientifically important Hubble. I think no one notices any more because those things, while amazingly dificult to do and important, are not as TV-friendly as was the moon landings (actually, the FIRST moon landing. By #2, I think everyone was already jaded).
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python -c "x='python -c %sx=%s; print x%%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))%s'; print x%(chr(34),repr(x),chr(34))"
For the most part. Where you want to launch from depends on what type of orbit you would like to wind up in. If, for example, you would like to launch a communications or weather satellite into geosynch (parks it over some place on the earth), then by launching close to the equator, you don't have to use up fuel getting from some N/S lat to the equatorial plane (letting you use more of the payload for insturments rather than fuel). This is the motivation behind sea-launch, where a big platform is lugged into the middle of the ocean and a rocket is launched from it. Since a geosynchronous orbit is one of the most popular and valuable, this is why there is so much of an interest in launch areas close to the equator. (However for other types of orbits, Siberia would work quite nicely).
Is this a true interest in science by John Howard's gov't (which has spent too much time cutting back science spending) or an attempt to raise the Liberal party's dwindling popularity to Labour? I don't see OZ coming up with the bucks on a sustained basis. The GST has had a misearble effect on the aussie dollar (nearly 2:1 to the US buck) so effectively, it will be MORE expensive than in a dollar with a strong currency, to undertake this boondoggle.
The culture of Russian science, at least from what I've experienced first hand, has little respect for "details" and a lot to do with making data fit theories.
Anyway, my vote would be to send Steve "croc hunter" Irwin. But I bet it'll be Murdoch instead. :-)
anyone who can explain why canada is special member of european space agency ? wouldnt it be much more logical to 1) start own agency 2) join with usa into some kind of north american space agency (nasa :)
list of esa member states
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Look at the similarities between Mars and Middle Austrailia....
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Maybe this will lead to another space race. I can already picture G.W.Bush saying,'The first man on Mars will be an AMERICAN man, not a kangaroo!'.
D
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There was talk of a space "port" being setup in FNQ, Cape York, ten years ago with help from both the russians and nasa, the idea just seemed to fizzle out though.
h tm
From what I can remember, Cape York was favourable due to it's proximity to the equator, more centrifical force, thus making it a more ecconomical place to launch large payloads. Australia is also probably the most politically stable country this close to the equator as well and the weather at Cape York is very predictable between April and November, it just doesn't rain.
I don't know why they'd bother trying to setup a space station on xmas island, the extra costs of getting the stuff there would be more prohibitive than Cape York, ie, you can just truck the stuff to the cape (if they build a road, it's just a sandy track) and how many rocket scientists would want to go and work on a tropical island in the south pacific?
The woomera rocket range is much further south, no real advantage other than it's and old rocket range, nuclear test site and is closer to the major cities. It's also got an abandoned town there, big enough for hundreds of people to live quite comfortably, with shops and a cinema.
more detailed info on the cape york proposal:
http://www.gbhap.com/fulltext/free/S960040F793.
I think that having some sort of active frontier is valuable for the huminity in general, as it is something that we have had for most of our existance as a species on this planet.
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While this is obviously a significant move for both governments, I am most impressed with the Russian space agency. It looks to me like the Russians realized that their own country wasn't going to be spending a lot of money on launching anything into space, so they decided to shop around and sell themselves. They must have done a good job of it, too, since they convinced Australia to fund them some. It's things like this that make it easy to believe Russia really was a very formidible foe during the cold war.
Mr. Spey
Cover your butt. Bernard is watching.
Your right - America is a becoming irrelevant in World Affairs. The problem is that the American Government has very literally sold out to its Native TransNationals.
c es-so-the-plutocrats-can-exercise-their-stock-opti ons' kind of 'near term...)).
Kyoto was scuttled. The farce that is the 'energy crisis' is being sold to hood-wink the public. The 'resurrection' of the cold-war for the purposes of giving gifts to the military-industrial industry... The result of obvious cow-towing to business is really just beginning to show. The media outlets dump propaganda on the people like no tomorrow (and shore up the initiatives mentioned above). The American Public looks really foolish considering the crap they ingest. Look at Bush.. The guy is a literally a moron - and he's your president!
The rest of the world knows it. They realize that your government is are smiling, palm-pushing shills for your industries - and the AMERICAN PEOPLE let it continue.
Im sorry - this appears to be flamebait - but if some NON-Americans can please 'back-me-up' here Id appreciate it. This is why NASA is virtually irrelevant - they dont provide profit (directly in very near term(as in 'cash-for-someone-next-quarter-to-raise-stock-pri
BTW, your foreign policy is also tainted by self-interest. This is why America was recently shunned by the UN members... and that IS ALSO obvious to the rest of the world - how Americans can pretend its not the case (or think they are kidding anyone) is beyond me.
Folks, everyone knows the Australians can't go into space. The ship is just going to come flying right back at the thrower after traveling a few yards!
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I wonder... does an orbit from a launch in the Southern Hemisphere go in the opposite direcion from an orbit launched in the Northern? Kinda like a toilet bowl?
Your reality is lies and balderdash and I'm delighted to say that I have no grasp of it whatsoever. - Baron Munchausen
I've always feared that now Russia is in a big recession a lot of experience might be bought by criminal organisations.
So obviously Australia is better then that :-)
The fact that the US delegate was ousted from the Human Rights council may have something to do with the fact that under the rule of the current US president as governor in Texas, more death sentences were issued there every year than in Iran. (In Iran officially, that is, of course.) As far as the replacement with countries like Sudan (which has a civil war, is the poorest nation on Earth and has a very poor human rights record either) is probably symbolic, seeing the exposed role that the US have and that the US government every now and then admits to having and enforces; it's probably something like if you insist to behave like the world's police force, better make sure that you're morally qualified to do it...
I am rather sure a large percentage of Slashdot readers is not going to like this, but being a non-American, I can only say that this is indeed what an unsettlingly large number of people over here think; I've talked mainly to Germans, some Sudanese, one from England and four from Central Asia, and they'd all agree with you: that the current US government is acting rather imperialistically, mainly in the interest of the US industry and cares for little else.
Outside America, we notice a growing anti-Americanism at the moment which is due, of course, to current US politics. This is not good - in Germany where I come from, much of our current wealth is based on US funding (after the more or less destruction of the country during the war) and US protection during the first decades of the Iron Curtain, and other countries on this planet used to owe the US as well. At the moment, however, there is a growing notion of "It's US, so it's bad, morally insufficient and new-economy-style imperialism". It's probably the US's turn at the moment to convince us that this image is not justified.
PS: This is probably going to be moderated to flamebait, but that's probably the price of being outspoken in a forum with a large US majority in the readership...
As a state gets corrupt, its laws multiply; the most corrupt states have the most numerous laws. (Tacitus, Annales 3:27)
for dumping Skylab on them in the 70's.
/.'ers that probably remember that.
I'm one of the few
Better throw another space station on the barby.
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Bleah! Heh heh heh... BLEAH BLEAH!!! Ha ha ha ha...
China will have an increases presence in space, which will most likely trigger more spending in the US, cause you know, the last thing US polititans want is the Chinese showing them how mindlessly stupid they are. They don't need any help doing that.
Personally I can't wait until the first manned Aussie space flight is handed over to Dallas, and the Dallas controllers all look at eachother with blank stares commenting "Was that english?" You think slang in America is interesting? "I just got rooted" has a whole different meaning down under...
I'm going to go back in my box and will think within the limits of my box: MS Sucks Linux Good I read too much Slashdot.
Australia became the fourth country to launch a satellite (WRESAT) way back in 1967.
In order to optimitize the weight that you can launch with a given rocket, you had to be as close as possible of the equator. Being close to the ocean is a good idea too, just in case your rocket crashes. That's why:
*Americans launch rockets from Florida.
*Europeans lauch rockets from French Guyana (almost on the equator).
*Russians rockets are big, because Baikonour is far away from the Equator.
*SeaLaunch (launching a russian rocket from a platform rig on the Equator) can launch very big satellites.
*This Australian project doesn't seem to make a lot of sense.
Nobox: Only simple products.
I'd say the russians have plenty of room for their space program in Siberia. So why lug all their heavy rockets and stuff over to australian Islands? I'd say the aussies got invited in for the money. Either that, or the russian kosmonauts have to thaw ...
Ever try to launch a rocket in freezing weather? If I'm not mistaken the cold weather was one of the key factors in causing the o-ring on the Challenger's booster rocket to fail. We all know how that ended.
As I'm an Aussie I'm glad to see us finally making our first move into the space arena
Actually it's not. As far as I know Australia was potentially a big competitor in the space race before anyone got into space. But like so many Australian projects, our bone head government didn't see a future in it and pulled the plug.
The australian space program has a web site here that has a blurb about the new contract. Looking through the site's old news and programs, it looks like this new merger with Russia is far from the Australian excursion into space. They've launched several satelites, and done small scale research for quite a while. The new contract will expand their operations significantly however.
My Karma is so good, I'm the Dalai Lama...or something.
Which is why I'm wondering how the hell the Russians keep getting in the news for space-related stuff. First Tito, now this? Where the hell was the US? This isn't a criticism of Russia, but considering the funding difficulties they're having at the moment, they're sure as hell going out there and actually doing stuff. We seem to just be sitting on our asses and spending fifty time as much money to do so!
That's just a bit silly. Tito and this are happening solely because of the money - you think Russia's not making a handsome profit on this deal? Same with Tito... they *needed the money*.
Why aren't the States getting these? Because the $20 million that Tito paid is a drop in the bucket for NASA. Why is that? Bureaucratic inefficiency? Concern with safety to the point of standstill? Maybe, a bit. But the main reason is our engineers, workers, equipment suppliers, etc. are paid American wages. The Russians are paid in Russian wages, which are orders of magnitude less, when they are paid at all.
In any case, "sitting on our asses?" Being the primary builder and organizer of the International Space Station, possibly the largest construction project ever, bringing together the US, Canada, ESA, Japan, Brazil, and, yes, Russia and having it (minor issues with Russians aside) actually work? 6-8 shuttle missions a year? That's "sitting on our asses"?
Is there more we could be doing, space-wise? Yes. Could we be doing what we're doing better? Sure. But you shouldn't deify the Russians just because they're desparate to hawk their wares.
(Not to desparage the Russian space program, which, for most of its life, probably bested the Americans. But until they get their economy in good shape, launching tourists in 60's era Soyuz vehicles is probably the best they'll be doing for a while...)
--
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Convictions are more dangerous enemies of truth than lies.
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Ah, those were the days. When we were a nation that actually did something rather than reflect on past glories.
But well done to Austrailia for moving an important step closer to a true space program, something that any nation that wishes to remain or become an economic player needs. Already the economic impact of space is being felt in the expanding telecommunications industry, and we can only expect this to become more important in the coming decades.
Which is why I'm wondering how the hell the Russians keep getting in the news for space-related stuff. First Tito, now this? Where the hell was the US? This isn't a criticism of Russia, but considering the funding difficulties they're having at the moment, they're sure as hell going out there and actually doing stuff. We seem to just be sitting on our asses and spending fifty time as much money to do so!
With the ending of the Cold War it seems that this nation has lost a hell of a lot of gumption and has been content to let things happen without it. The US has gone from being the most respected country in the world to being the whipping boy of third-world nations with poor human rights records, all in the space of a few decades. And what's worse, nobody cares! Read the papers here, and it's all mindless US propaganda aimed at keeping the proletariat happy and patriotic.
And then there's our illustrious president. I honestly can't decide whether he doesn't care about the rest of the world, or if he's trying to recreate the Cold War, but this time with China. Either way, I feel almost ashamed that there are nations out there moving foward, and that we're not one of them.
In any case, Russia has been launching from Kazakhstan and is paying lots for the privilege.
According to an article on the Space and Tech website, the Avrora launch vehicle is a Russian designed and manufactured rocket capable of delivering satellites to both low earth and geosynchronous transfer orbits. APSC (Asia Pacific Space Centre) plans to use a new spaceport being developed on Christmas Island, an Australian territory located in the northeast India Ocean.
No technology or license on the production of rockets and spacecraft will be offered to the Australian partners. No Russian government funds will be invested in the venture.
The Avrora flight tests will be launched from Baikonur Cosmodrome. The first commercial launch out of Australia's Christmas Island is planned for the last quarter of 2003. After introduction, manufacturing and launch rates are projected to ramp up to as many as 15 launches per year by 2006.
Avrora is capable of delivering 4.5 metric tons (9900 lbm) of payload to geosynchronous transfer orbit at 11 degrees inclination and over 2 metric tons (4400 lbm) directly to geostationary orbit.
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