Australian government issues $1.75 million grant to study spaceport concept in Western Australia
Australian spaceports: operating (red dot) and proposed (red “X”)
The Australian government has awarded a Perth-based company, Space Angel, a $1.75 million grant to study whether it will be practical or possible to build a commercial spaceport in that country’s largely empty Western Australia province.
The company will receive $1.75 million, which it will match, to carry out site assessments needed for planning and regulatory approvals and to develop a business case for proposed spaceport sites in Western Australia. The funding was awarded through what the government described as an open and competitive process.
The Labor government first put forth this grant program in February 2025, with Space Angel proposing spaceports at the Christmas Island and Eucla locations, and a different startup, WA Australia, proposing the Albany site. Space Angel’s proposal has apparently won out.
Whether there is any real potential for economic profits from such a commercial spaceport remains very uncertain indeed. Based on the track record of similar government-supported spaceports worldwide — with no specific rockets linked to the port — that potential is not very high. Without the commitment of a specific rocket company to launch from the location, the spaceport just sits there, unused (Spaceport Nova Scotia in Canada is the best example). It is like building a mall without a major department store as an anchor. Without that anchor no one has an incentive to show up, especially because there are plenty of established launch sites available elsewhere, with full facilities already in place.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The print edition can be purchased at Amazon or from any other book seller. If you want an autographed copy the price is $60 for the hardback and $45 for the paperback, plus $8 shipping for each. Go here for purchasing details. The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
No
They should pour money in Christmas Island and fund space professionals to live their out of reach of protester scum.
The kind of money football players here get–needs to go to folks like them.
If you can figure out a way to make space professionals being space professionals a match for the size of audience drawn by pro athletics, then sure. Pro athletes get the big bucks – for a few years – because a lot of people want to watch them at work.
I would ask how you have managed to reach adulthood while retaining your essentially magical view of money and economics but then I recall the existence of the Democratic Party and conclude that you are nothing particularly special in that regard. You have lots of company.
Christmas Island has a few problems with getting propellants there. Likewise Eucla. I’ve been to Eucla (or through or over a few times), there’s a gas station and cop shop and the east west highway and an airstrip suitable for light aircraft.
” the government described as an open and competitive process.” Pork for a few favored mates is more likely. We are talking the Australian Labor Party, as corrupt a bunch as any other Marxists.
Heh. I am working up a longish essay on spaceports, on what works and what doesn’t. Australia will figure in this, for sure.
Spaceports, as a general use case, always have the problem of needing to be in the middle of nowhere for reasons of public safety, minimizing environmental impact and even physical site security. But any even marginally suitable bit of “middle of nowhere” will, perforce, also lack any significant pre-existing infrastructure. There is really no alternative to biting that particular bullet and establishing needed infrastructure. That’s what the US government did at both Canaveral and Vandenberg and also what Elon did at Starbase.
What is needed, of course, will vary based on the projected scale of operations. Thus, Starbase and SpaceX’s combined installations at KSC-Canaveral are enormous multi-billion-dollar complexes and the upcoming Pecan Island spaceport is likely to put all predecessor sites in the shade.
Those with more modest plans can, of course, get by with much less in the way of infrastructure – e.g., a certain concrete slab in far-off Canuckistan.
On a technical level, Western Australia could be a winner. Launch from the western coast with multiple site inland recovery. Some Australian routes allow vastly oversized trucks that possibly could drive the stage back to the launch site. Downrange recovery is a strong bonus for increased payload over RTLS when economically feasible.
The politics, technical capabilities, available markets, and other factors matter more than the bare technical capability though.
Seeing that this second foray into Iran has–in six months–cost more than the whole SLS program–I’d say backers of interventionism are guilty of magical thinking in that citizens like me answer to DoD, not the other way around.
The stole FAR more of my tax dollars, and yet the Hormuz Strait is still a mess.
War Department is socialism too. The immense logistical nightmare left to us by LeMay means we are on the all-guns/no-butter path of the Soviets.
I am no limp waisted pacifist, being an aficionado of Law’s Brigade, Rhode’s Division and the 15th Alabama.
They also had to learn to do without.
My point is that a black program with more in house SLS men (if I could hand pick them…I still don’t fully trust what goes on in Boca–I hope they don’t have spies)–would make America stronger than Trump’s more direct intervention.
I would have no problem defecting asteroids upon America’s enemies and having plausible deniability.
That could be less costly than this Cold War burden we were left with. There is another reason why a reduced military is a plus….it is my opinion that, had Obama ordered attacks on Red States, some of the kids would have had no problems carrying those out.
The real enemy
https://phys.org/news/2026-08-starwashing-space-companies-greenwashing-playbook.html
Wars tend to be pricey. But then their goals and requirements tend to greatly exceed those of a leisurely pork-barrel domestic jobs program. So it goes.
Which is not to excuse the generally feckless conduct of the Iran War to-date. Trump’s obsession with getting some sort of “deal” with religious psychopaths has been an entirely pointless – and fruitless – diversion from what should have been the plan all along – bomb the whey out of them until they can’t shoot back, then put boots on the ground to finish the extinction of any remaining jihadis, round up the fissionables inventory and complete the destruction of Iran’s entire war industry if the air campaign left anything of it standing. Then, leave the long-suffering Iranians to the task of rebuilding their country into something that is not an inveterate pest and with the firm admonition that, should another jihadi regime arise, we can – and will – come back.
As with the Germans and Japanese in WW2, the Iranian bad guys won’t acknowledge being beaten unless they are physically stood upon by American boots and bayoneted in the throat. The Allies didn’t do that to the Germans in WW1, hence WW2. George Bush the Elder didn’t do that to Iraq in Desert Storm, hence the Iraq War of 2003. The problem with thoroughgoing psychopaths is they always interpret survival as permission to continue. So they all need to be killed.
If Trump and Hegseth don’t figure that out pretty soon, the Iran War will be lost according to the only scorecard that matters – did we get what we wanted or did they get what they wanted? We want an end to Iran as a source of trouble in the world. We can still have that, but only if Trump and Hegseth are willing to do what is necessary – including paying a certain additional price in American blood – to accomplish that. Failing that, the Iranian regime’s survivors will get what they want – namely, to continue drawing breath and doing their best to continue their half-century of previous mischief. It would not be a pretty victory for them, but it would be a victory. Right now, I fear that is the most likely outcome. Future consequences for the US will not be good in such a case.
As for your fantasy of “Top Men” from MSFC saving the day, spare us all. The MSFCers are a doddering crew of 2nd- and 3rd-raters serving out their sinecures until retirement. And – key point – they are NASAns, not military. The US military has been offered their handiwork any number of times and has always – and quite correctly – turned it down flat.
Be suspicious of “Boca” all you want. Your personal superstitions will not prevent the future salvation of The Republic resting more and more on the very capable shoulders of its residents.