Old RAH site in Adelaide is a perfect launch pad for future of Australian space industry

All the states and territories clamoured for the right to host the National Space Agency, but South Australia went in boots and all.

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The Eagle has landed. And it has landed in the right place.

Adelaide will be home to the National Space Agency. When the Federal Government announced its creation, all the states and territories clamoured for the right to host.

Melbourne went all-out with a picture of a spaceship taking off from Collins St. Sydney offered an airport site. Perth made a decent case but you could hardly hear them from so far away.

An artist’s impression of Lot 14, the old Royal Adelaide Hospital site, which will become the base for the National Space Agency.

South Australia, though, went in boots and all. Premier Steven Marshall offered to wash cars and mow lawns – in reality, he lobbied up a storm.

From the Prime Minister (current and former) to the private sector. Opposition Leader Peter Malinauskas was on board. NASA astronaut Andy Thomas joined in. Other envious states are sure to ponder the politics or pork-barrelling of the move. Let them ponder.

Because Dr Megan Clark – former CSIRO boss, now head of the Agency – is a woman of science.

Premier Steven Marshall and Astronaut Andy Thomas.

Australian Space Agency head Megan Clark.

She would be aware of the state’s long history in space, and newer history in defence. She would have seen how the defence and space industries are entwined. How SA has had to step up and start tailoring its schools and its universities for the world of advanced manufacturing.

While Mr Marshall naturally showed off our burgeoning space start-ups, she also would know that before him, then-premier Jay Weatherill had set up a state space industry centre, Australia’s first.

A lot of work went into securing last year’s International Astronautical Congress, bringing the world’s astronauts here. SA has form.

And Dr Clark surely clocked the opportunity of Lot Fourteen, the site formerly known as the old Royal Adelaide Hospital.

No one else has a site such as Lot Fourteen available.

No one else has such a site available. Hectares of space in the city transformed into an innovation precinct where the bright can brainstorm.

Innovations are about ecosystems, organic interactions. Lot Fourteen brings together offshoots from major corporations and start-ups, researchers, mentors and investors. There they are working on the industries of the future: robotics, artificial intelligence, cyber security. And space. The agency itself is exactly that – an agent. Not a swollen bureaucracy but a nimble operator. It will connect and support the space industry to do what it has already started to do, ensuring the sky is no limit.

More of today’s space agency coverage

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THE HISTORY: 50 years ago, we were Space Centre. Now we will be again

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