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It's Official, Australia Needs a Space Agency
Dante_J writes "In the final report published by the Australian Senate inquiry into 'The Current State of Australia's Space Science & Industry Sector' entitled 'Lost in Space? Setting a new direction for Australia's space science and industry sector,' it calls for the formation of a 'Space Industry Advisory Council' to oversee the creation of a fully-fledged Australian Space Agency. Of the top 20 GDP nations, Australia is the only one without a Space Agency, which impacts on many aspects of ordinary life, not to mention Research and Engineering endeavors. Every satellite operated by Australia is owned by another party and the costs of this alone are comparable to that of a Space Agency. The report is a tidy piece that drew upon submissions form Andy Thomas, and an impressive collection of Australian Academics and Space Science entities frustrated by successive generations of government apathy. While this report is welcome, lethargic Government action in a climate of competing concerns is not expected to stem the flow of Space Science brain drain out of Australia any time soon."
You're a troll but I'm going to feed you.
I am speaking to the politicians of course, not the regular people.
You fail. The voices of reason that you have been hearing here on Slashdot are the minority. The vast majority of Australians think the Internet needs filtering. They actually like the fact that certain films are banned in Australia. These are the people who had police intervene earlier this year to prevent a Bill Henson exhibition from showing images that were later given a PG rating by the Office of Film and Literature Classification. Had the classification board bowed to public pressure, Henson and the gallery could have been facing criminal charges.
We have exactly the government that we deserve. For those of us who want better, we have to get out there and do something. No-one will do it for us.
Similarly, and to bring this back on-topic, the space activities sponsored by our government are a direct result of the work put in by academics to make the case that it is to the benefit of our country to do so.
How we know is more important than what we know.
The closest Australia has to a Space Agency is the Australian Space Research Institute. It falls into the category of a serious amateur effort, staffed by volunteers and funded by donations. Underfunded Australian research programs tend to hit above their weight with innovative solutions, simply because they don't have the money to pay for a more conventional solution.
The vast majority of Australians think the Internet needs filtering.
Citation needed. Because as an Australian the only time I hear about internet filtering is here at slashdot. I'd be surprised if the vast majority of Australians know about the government's plans, let alone have an opinion on them.
I'm not a troll, and I don't mean to deliberately offend anyone. My country is just as bad.
I do see many of those laws and policies in Australia as dangerous towards freedoms. They are backwards, shortsighted and stupid. Australia is not alone either. I think there is a "race to the bottom" between the US, UK, and Australia as far as this goes anyways.
Somehow I doubt there are really that many Australians that want to be censored and have their freedoms taken away in exchange for *anything*. If you are really right about that, then yes I guess in this case the government is actually representing the will of the people. You will have to forgive me, I just find that shocking and unusual.
As for the academics making intelligent cases about policies that will actually benefit Australia it might be cynicism that makes me believe that a government so shortsighted and stupid with the rest of its policies could even listen and take action based on rational discourse.
Once again, I am not trolling with those statements. I honestly have no faith left in most governments that they can do the right thing at this point and hearing about Australia trying to take such an ambitious step to benefit it's people just brought out the cynicism in me.
I could not agree more that AU should establish and fund (well!) a proper space agency. I would fucking LOVE that. Perhaps we could start by redirecting all allocated funding for that ridiculous internet filtering scheme.
But let's keep it in perspective. Australia has 21 million people. We're two thirds the population of California. The other city I spend a lot of time in, Tokyo, has more people than my whole god damn country. I think visitors and foreigners often get a mistaken impression about this country - sure, the cities are fairly large, but there's only fucking FIVE of them. It's a big country - I was born in South Australia, we have a military base there that is BIGGER THAN ENGLAND - but there's no people and kangaroos don't pay tax. Yet.
We're rich enough per capita, sure, but the volume just isn't there. For fuck's sake, we're closing down the entire Navy for 2 months for Christmas. We can't get enough people to staff our fricking marine defences (the most important, since we're an island) - but we're going to build a space industry now? With who?
What I would really like to see is some kind of cooperative effort. Why all this competition between nations, duplicated effort, and misplaced nationalism? We'd get so much more done if we pooled our resources and really worked together. And I don't mean in the manner of sclerotic, ineffective jaw-fests like the UN, I mean cooperate like allies in a war, which we're all pretty good at.
We need a war, then. A War on Not Being In Space! Come on, you apes! Do you want to live forever?
Let my new 7-digit UID be a lesson to all - write down your passwords.
And China is building a carbon neutral city. Wind generators are $2000 / kW (actually $400/kW, but you need 3+ generators to produce the max output of one, since wind is unreliable). The 2 billion dollars to fund the space agency could be used instead to build 1000 GW of base capacity, which is almost the size of a big iron coal station. There are technical problems with distribution, smoothing and storage (can we use supercapacitors), which would be a great chance for our scientists to improve their technological prowess. Or we could try to knock off the US space program, gaining no new insight because NASA has already done the hard yards. Or better yet, lets use it to save the US car industry, because Komander Kevin wants to "build things". Can somebody buy him a Lego set?
"Because as an Australian the only time I hear about internet filtering is here at slashdot."
I second that, and most of those who have heard of it, will have also heard it all before. Our government has been planning to filter the net on and off since it 's conception. The reason for this is that with proportional voting we often have an independent that can hold the balance of power in either house on a split vote. In this case the senator in question is called Fielding from the "family first" party. KRuddy is buying Fielding's vote to pass funding for bigger fish throgh the senate by throwing money at a system he knows will never be implemented, Howard did the same thing by kissing up to Hanson and the "one nation" party.
It's a quirk of the system that keeps morons busy and occasionally creates the wonderfully democratic irony of people who promote censorship demanding to be heard in parliment. The whole thing is nothing more than a "Yes minister" epsiode that has been repeated so often it's no longer funny.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
Maybe they can cooperate with other countries? In a various cases some of the countries mentioned are rather crowded and lacking in the land for such things. Seems that far out in the remote outback deserts of Australia would be a really *good* location for a launchpad or something of the like. No people, not necessarily a lot of wildlife, but still fairly accessible by air, etc.