Its pretty damned obvious from the following articles that Rupert Murdoch runs the British and Australian Governments, not electors.

http://www.smh.com.au/news/national/new-media-laws-would-threaten-democracy/2006/10/08/1160246001100.html

http://www.smh.com.au/news/World/Murdoch-noncommittal-on-Blair-successor/2006/10/09/1160246043086.html

If that's the case and we want our own SPACE PROGRAM, why the hell don't we just ask Rupert. Surely living in a TOTALITARIAN PRETEND DEMOCRACY ain't so bad if we get some new toys to play with.

On the other hand, Canberra is holding back an Australian space program by its political manipulation and underfunding of the CSIRO and by its crucifiction of Australian tertiary education in favour of the cheaper option of immigrating dubious foreign skills.

In fact DO WE NEED CANBERRA AT ALL?

Surely Howard's filching of all our GST and Mineral taxes in return for a few pissante tax cuts is no reason to keep his bloody shambles that we so politely refer to as economic progress.

Come on Rupert come on, come on. Buy us Mt Wilhelm and the research base necessary to get an Australian space program up and running and get this Howard monkey off our backs.

Do any of you have any reasons for believing a space program must be exhorbitantly expensive other than the fact that NASA says so?

A rocket is just a tank with a nozzle at the end. Rocket fuel costs a few cents per liter.

Who said anything about a Shuttle like the dinosaurs NASA employs? There are many options and allowing the private sector to compete for grants would reveal the most affordable and realistic choices available.

The V2 was capable of reaching Space but was instead filled with explosive. They were invented and thrown straight into service. Assembly line built for around $150 each if memory serves me right. It's the model for the Candian Arrow which was one of the X-Prize entrants.

Don't believe the hype. Space travel is only expensive if you allow Government bureaucracies to run the show.

We have enough problems on earth without searching space. Australia has a lot of problems which need attention before we reach for the stars.

Ventures like Virgin Galactic may be giving the impression that getting into space is easier than it is. The difficulty lies not so much in climbing high above the ground, but in staying there once you're up. For that you need orbital speed. Virgin's craft goes nowhere near fast enough.

Further, once you get to orbital speed you need a way of slowing down again. As the Columbia disaster showed, that's by no means a simple task.

Now, the space shuttle is a design monstrosity. It had certain requirements imposed on it that seriously impacted the design, and made the thing cost far more than it needed to.

But take a look at this

http://www.reactionengines.co.uk/skylon_overview.html

This is probably an example of what private enterprise could do (assuming that the design works). It's a fully reusable single-stage to orbit space plane with a payload of 12 tonnes. But even on their own estimates, development would cost $US 10 billion.

It would certainly be cool for Australia to be involved in something like that, but I'm far from conviced that we can afford it.

Sylvia.

They're murdering in Africa,
They're bombing in Spain.
There's hurricanes in Mexico,
And California needs rain
The whole world is festering
With unhappy souls.
The French hate the Germans,
The Germans the Poles;

Italians hate Yugoslavs,
From Macquarie Street lavs,
Triguboff hates Aussies like pox
Except when we buy a Meriton box
But we can be tranquil
And "thankfill" and proud,
For Kim's been endowed
With a mushroom-shaped cloud.
And we know for certain
That some lovely day
Someone will set the spark off,
And we will all be blown away!

There's genocide in Africa,
There's strife in Iran.
What nature doesn't do to us
Will be done by our fellow man!
Its time to listen and set a plan
Mt Wilhelm calls in PNG
A hundred thousand tons a year
To LEO and we're free.

The Private sector would foot most of the bill if the Government awarded grants based on results to the most promising research initiatives. The difficulty lies in reaching space. Then you are halfway to anywhere as Jerry Pournelle is rather fond of saying. Earth has an intense gravity well but we know how to beat it and its time we encouraged the private sector to pave the way toward a REAL Space Age. Entrepreneurs don't generally take on new high risk ventures previously untried. It doesn't make any business sense. Most will wait until somebody else opens the door for them by developing all the technology and learning from mistakes how to best go about it. Then the competition jumps aboard.

People like Richard Branson are an anomaly in the business world. He may perhaps be the last of the happy go lucky self-made gambler entrepreneurs. The two guys who threw all their millions into the first telecommunications satellites became billionaires and now there is so much junk up there its a traffic hazard for the ISS and space shuttles.

Space isn't a money pit but a huge opportunity for investment capitalists. However, to persuade these guys to take a punt we have to put a little money into it ourselves. Just to help convince them its worth taking a risk on.

Space is not something out there in the distant sky. It's the universe this little orb of ours is drifting through as it bobs up and down in the Galactic plane. We have to stop thinking like ants who have never stepped beyond the back garden. As intelligent beings at the top of the food chain its time we made serious efforts to show the universe we are major players in it. Over 200 planets have now been discovered around other stars and billions are thought to exist in this Galaxy according to current knowledge of planetary formation.