http://www.fourmilab.ch/documents/rocketaday.html

Its time Australia had a Space Program. India, China and Russia all have one. It seems we are the only advanced nation without one. Unless you count America. Ofcourse they are trying to get back up there. I can see several ways we could make an australian program possible despite the current global financial climate.

Firstly do it for profit. None of that zero profit silliness NASA employs. We go after space mining resources. There is a consortium already preparing to do this. They have contracted Virgin Galactic to launch satellite telescopes. Plenty of resources out there to go around.

Secondly we assembly line rockets in the same way we used to build cars in this country. As described above in the article published by fourmilabs back in 1993. This brings down costs dramatically.

Thirdly we use robot technology instead of humans to eliminate the risk to life. Robotics have come a long way and payload can be reduced by not adding life support systems.

We can't rely on mining Australia forever. At some point we are going to run out of resources. We should prepare now to tap into new resources while we are still an economic leader.

Parallel Universes,

We can't even make our car industry viable in this country. Do you have any idea how much money it takes to run a space program? Apart from the scientific aspect, most countries run a space program as a signifier of prestige. America and Russia deployed their space programs in order to puff out their respective chests during the Cold War. India has huge problems providing for its population, yet finds money for a space program.

Your plan involves bringing back masses of ore. How do you propose to enable that sort of haulage when, even if we could manage to collect it, re-entering Earth's orbit is fraught with difficulty even with finely tuned and balanced craft? Perhaps if we could get our shuttles to crash in a line inland down the east coast, we could solve the problem of the mountain range you envisage being built in your other thread. Of course, our shuttles would have to be one use only in that case.

"Earth's orbit" should read "Earth's atmosphere".

(grrr)

Perhaps Australia could look at ways to get rid of politically inspired and unnecessary programs and put funds in use to secure the future of Australia.

Possibly the most productive use of government funds for the future of Australia would be to provide an adequate public school system for all Australian children. End funding for the chaplaincy program and private schools. Australia should neither promote nor restrict religion. End funding for prestige items. One earns prestige. You can't buy it. The olympics and other orgies of commercialism and national chauvinism such as a space program, miitary hardware other than what is necessary for the defense of Australia and figureheads such as the governor-general are all items that Australia could do without.

Rockets are a lot simpler than cars Poirot. Do I know how much it costs? Well, the NAZI's did it for about $150 per V2 rocket. Ofcourse they used them as weapons instead of launching them into orbit but they were space capable. The Canadian Arrow is based on that engine. You must be thinking of NASA. A perfect example of how not to run a space program. Those ridiculously heavy shuttle craft cost 500 million dollars(US) per launch. It was basically a welfare program to keep government engineers employed. Smaller vehicles is the sensible way to do it. Lots of small simple rockets instead of giant boosters. Scaled Composites and other private firms are now launching satellites for a fraction of the cost. Virgin Galactic is even preparing to send up tourists. Yes its still costly but that cost is vastly outweighed by the potential profits. Asteroids are rich in Gold, Platinum, Beryllium and other rare resources. Thats why a whole bunch of billionaire entrepreneurs are investing in a new startup company called Planetary Resources.

Haulage is a lot easier the other way. Parachutes.

Mining is all that has kept Australia out of recession and as Access Economics recently pointed out, the industry has about peaked. Either we open up new sources of mining revenue or become a third world nation. Asteroids contain trillions of dollars in refined ores.

Yes lets play out there.
OR we could spend it on other things, I vote other things.