Commercial spaceport in Australia signs its first launch contract
The red dot marks ELA’s location, on the north coast of Australia.
Australia’s first commercial spaceport, Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA), has signed a multi-launch contract with a South Korean startup rocket company, Innospace, with the first launch targeting April 2025.
Though Innospace successfully launched a suborbital test flight in March, it has not yet launched a rocket to orbit. Meanwhile, ELA is negotiating with a number of other rocket companies, but it also appears it is having problems with the administrative state in the U.S.
The South Korean company is first off the blocks as it is not subject to the strict technological transfer regulations applied by the United States.
[ELA’s CEO Michael] Jones says delays to the signing of a Technological Safeguards Agreement (TSA) between Canberra and Washington is holding up several potential US customers. “We’re still waiting with bated breath for the TSA, despite a bilateral announcement by Biden and Albanese in Japan in early June that the deal was done and dusted,” he explains. “We were all expecting it to be released by the end of the financial year and the process of being endorsed by Parliament begun”.
A pattern of delay and intransigence in Washington, blocking commercial space, does seem to be developing since Joe Biden took over as president.
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 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
The red dot marks ELA’s location, on the north coast of Australia.
Australia’s first commercial spaceport, Equatorial Launch Australia (ELA), has signed a multi-launch contract with a South Korean startup rocket company, Innospace, with the first launch targeting April 2025.
Though Innospace successfully launched a suborbital test flight in March, it has not yet launched a rocket to orbit. Meanwhile, ELA is negotiating with a number of other rocket companies, but it also appears it is having problems with the administrative state in the U.S.
The South Korean company is first off the blocks as it is not subject to the strict technological transfer regulations applied by the United States.
[ELA’s CEO Michael] Jones says delays to the signing of a Technological Safeguards Agreement (TSA) between Canberra and Washington is holding up several potential US customers. “We’re still waiting with bated breath for the TSA, despite a bilateral announcement by Biden and Albanese in Japan in early June that the deal was done and dusted,” he explains. “We were all expecting it to be released by the end of the financial year and the process of being endorsed by Parliament begun”.
A pattern of delay and intransigence in Washington, blocking commercial space, does seem to be developing since Joe Biden took over as president.
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 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
Looks like an open sea to the East with a convenient land mass for landing first stages