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.

Comments

Christmas Islands

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe one of their giant rockets will explode and take out the Christmas Islands. Hurrah! No more goatse.cx!

Goodbye Ozone

[FFFish]

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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Re:Not our first move

[sien]

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.....

Antidote to stagnation?

[babbage]

A few weeks ago, NPR had an show on the sad state of the space program. Among the speakers was very cool astronaut Story Musgrave, who pointed out that the shuttle, even though it has flaws, went from design to deployment faster & more cheaply than anything NASA is doing today. In the time the recently axed successor to the shuttle was in devlopment, it cost far more & achieved far less than the shuttle developers had done in the 70s. And the shuttle itself is no pinnacle of success either -- apparently the entire Apollo program was cheaper (not to mention far more ambitious) than a few shuttle launches.

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....

Someone's gotta do it.

[derrickh]

This is good. Otherwise we'd only have NASA reaching into space, and let's face it, NASA's been dragging their feet(which have been shackled by congress).

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
Mad Scientists with too much time on thier hands

Re:Someone's gotta do it.

[smaughster]

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!'.

Considering Bush, he'd say something along the lines of: 'The first man on Mars will be an AMERICAN man, not some aussie elephant!'

There was a similar idea ten years ago...

[maaaaanis]

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.
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.h tm

Go Russians

[jspey]

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

look out!

[shokk]

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!

nice

[fons]

Nice to see that the experience the Russians have isn't going to waste.

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 :-)

Not our first move

[DrSpirograph]

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.

Re:When the US was a world power

[mech9t8]

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.

When the US was a world power

[sharkticon]

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.