With endless vistas, thousands of miles of unadulterated coastline, and shockingly desolate red deserts, Australia would seem the logical spot for a launch/space economy.
But nearly sixty years into the Space Age, Australia is still one of the few technologically-advanced, international players without an official national space agency.
“Australia does look lonely in not having a space agency,” said Andrew Dempster, Director, Australian Centre for Space Engineering Research at the University of New South Wales. “When countries communicate with each other about space matters, Australia is locked out of that process. We don’t have a vision for what we want to be doing in space. There seem to be a lot of people arguing we do nothing, which I can’t accept.”
Even so, Brett Biddington, founder of a Canberra-based space and cyber security consulting company, says that those with no knowledge of the Australia’s classified defense and national security apparatus think that the government does nothing space-related.
He admits, however, that other than in “muted terms,” the government has seen “no need to devote time and resources to explain to the Australian people why its approach to space is as it is.”
In truth, the main reason may have more to do with geography.
“Somewhat surprisingly to some, Australia does not have good sites for orbital launches,” counters Biddington. “That’s because as the spent launcher casings come back to earth, they invariably threaten cities, other high value economic activities (such as mines) or the sovereign integrity of our neighbors.”
Biddington says the Woomera Prohibited Area (WPA), a 70 year-old defense testing range in the state of South Australia, simply lies in the wrong place.
“Woomera was great for sub-orbital launches to the Northwest in the development of 1st generation delivery vehicles for nuclear weapons,” said Biddington. “But it’s too far South for launches to Geostationary orbit (GEO). And to the Northeast, for Low-earth orbit (LEO) launches, there’s a very rich mine right in the path of 1st stage debris. Launch to the Southeast, and there’s the city of Adelaide.”
Since the 1950s, Biddington reiterates that most of the Australian government’s space activities have been highly classified; both in support of U.K. activities at Woomera and, since the 1960s, U.S. Intelligence-gathering and space-surveillance.
Yet before the conservative government of Prime Minister John Howard closed it down in 1996, Australia did once have a civil and commercial space office.
“The office basically defined its role as getting a launch industry going in Australia,” said Biddington. “It failed and one of the Conservative government’s first acts was to ax the space office.”
This past April, the Australian government did initiate its first national space policy; formally as a “Satellite Utilization Policy.” But there was no funding behind the policy itself.
“A commercial and civil Australian space sector would provide enormous benefit to the economy via technology transfer spinoffs and international knowledge transfer,” said space advocate Aria Colton, a South Australia-based strategic marketing consultant. “But it’s the business end of space that we need to develop. That conversation really isn’t being had.”
In response to a Forbes.com request for comment, the Australian Department of Industry and its current Space Coordination Office noted that the recent Satellite Utilization Policy is focused on three key applications recognized to have “nationally-significant security, economic or social impacts.”
Those are “Earth Observation; Position, Navigation and Timing; and Satellite communications.” The department says that over the next five years, it expects that Australia’s civil space sector would expand in all three.
Not everyone is convinced.
“The Satellite Utilization Policy is a gravely-missed opportunity,” said Dempster. “Subsequent to its release, the government’s “space policy unit” was replaced by the Space Coordination Office, which has much reduced resources. So, the cycle of funding space, then withdrawing funding, has happened yet again.”
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