Rocket range will shatter our peaceful lives
A family who moved near Port Lincoln for a quiet off-grid life say the space age economic boom the region is chasing will come at cost.
SA News
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Nel Taylor insists she’s not a NIMBY, she’s just not particularly keen on the idea of living next to a rocket launching facility.
Mrs Taylor and her husband Ian live at Fishery Bay, south of Port Lincoln in an off-grid house on 30 hectares of bush overlooking the sea. From their porch they can watch the surfers ride waves at Left Point.
It’s an idyllic lifestyle, but one Mrs Taylor believes is threatened by Southern Launch’s plan to use neighbouring Whalers Way region as a stepping off point into the space race.
Mrs Taylor plans on putting up a fight, though, spearheading a campaign of petitions and meetings which she hopes might see the project if not abandoned or relocated, then at least done the best way possible.
“It’s our own personal nightmare at the moment to be honest,” Mrs Taylor said.
“Our children, who have grown up here, they’re all devastated to think that all of the hard work we’ve put into living this way can be trampled on by a start-up company.”
For Southern Launch however, Whalers Way is a unique opportunity – a south-facing patch of privately-owned land that would give the company the ability to launch satellites into a polar orbit, as opposed to the more common equatorial orbit.
Mr Damp said this would make Southern Launch a particularly attractive option for companies or organisations looking to expand the capabilities of their satellites.
He said Southern Launch had ticked every environmental box and took its ecological obligations seriously, and that it would be a boon for the regional city.
Mrs Taylor remains unconvinced.
“It’s clear that this is simply the wrong spot to put this,” she said.
Port Lincoln-based native fauna expert Merrick Savage agrees, saying that the Whalers Way region was an important patch of remnant scrub.
“This is an experimental rocket launch facility in the middle of at least 20,000 hectares of Impenetrable mallee woodland,” Mr Savage said.
“It’s a pretty strange thing to do, I would have thought. That woodland is pristine, untouched”
It’s a sentiment shared by Nature Conservation Society of SA president Patrick O’Connor, who is particularly concerned about the fate of the southern emu-wren.
“This project is proposed for the wrong place,” Mr O’Connor said.
“Put simply, building a rocket launching pad in a recognised conservation area, right on top of a hotspot for threatened birds, is unacceptable.”
Mrs Taylor said her concerns included the potential for bushfires and accidents, the increase in traffic – including trucks – on the area’s unsealed roads, the project’s ecological footprint and the impact on residents who frequent Fishery Bay. The facility has been the topic of much debate in the Port Lincoln community, with some insisting it’s in the wrong spot while others maintain it will bring money and jobs into the regional city.
“I don’t want to be ‘that protester’, there are plenty of things I would rather be doing,” Mrs Taylor said.
“I’m not anti-technology – technology helps us live the way we do – and I’m not against the space industry. I understand how important it is, and I understand that young people in particular are excited by this. I just think that people need to understand that this isn’t about space exploration, this is about launching satellites.”
Mr Damp said Whalers Way was the ideal site for Southern Launch and ticked a number of boxes.
“Any rocket launch site in Australia must satisfy the Australian Space Agency’s flight safety code, and that’s a very mathematical document that defines what a safe rocket launch looks like,” he said.
“We used that document and looked at the southern coastline of South Australia and Whalers Way was the optimal location to do rocket launches.”
Mr Damp said there was an emerging market in launching small satellites – between 2kg and 200kg – into polar orbits.
“You can use groups of these small space satellites to get global coverage, and they’re driving things like early fire detection systems and helping farmers grow crops or tracking lost packages in the mail.”
Mr Damp said that while government approval had been given for test launches, the company still needed approval from the Australian Space Agency before becoming a commercial operation.
“That’s the final pieces of the jigsaw need to fall into place, but we are aiming to do three test launches this year,” he said.
“Next year we’d be very excited if we were able to do four launches, and grow from there. “
Mr Damp said there were no plans to evacuate people from homes or restrict access to Fishery Bay during launches, and that public access to Whalers Way would likely remain unchanged outside of launch times.
“We have no intention of closing or restricting tourism activities unless we’re doing something that we deem as hazardous,” he said.
Mr Damp said Southern Launch had been working closely with various fishing industry associations to ensure no commercial boats were in unsafe areas during launches, but admitted that recreational fishers would be barred from some areas for short amounts of time.
“If the regulator would like things to be more conservative then that’s their decision, but our goal is to try to minimise the effects on other users,” he said.
Mr Damp said Southern Launch was open to launching military satellites from the Whalers Way site.
“We would be very honoured to serve Australians currently serving overseas protecting Australian interests,” he said.
“Ultimately it comes down to if the Department of Defence is going to use a civilian service. Space is dual use, so to speak.”
Two community information meetings will be held with Southern Launch at the Port Lincoln Hotel on Tuesday. Written submissions on Southern Launch’s environmental impact study can be lodged through the PlanSA website.
A black hole is sucking our ideas
By Gabriel Polychronis
Australia is unable to keep up with the sheer volume of local hi-tech inventions and many fall by the wayside due to a lack of commercialisation, the head of a high-profile space company in Adelaide says.
Fleet Space Technologies chief executive Flavia Tata Nardini has told a space forum that Australia had a “pool of inventions, patents and ideas”, but there was a “massive gap” in commercialisation.
“It’s like a sucking hole,” Ms Tata Nardini told an online COSMOS briefing forum.
“There’s all these smart people (in Australia), then suddenly nothing comes out.
“I have to admit, I don’t have enough experience to understand why Australia has got this problem of commercialisation. I just know that there are some fundamental technologies that need to be developed on university levels.”
The 2021-22 federal budget released in May included a new $206.4m “patent box” scheme, offering targeted tax concessions on income earned from new medical and biotech patents developed in Australia.
Coming into effect from July 1, 2022, income earned from such patents will be taxed at just 17 per cent – nearly half the rate paid by corporates.
Treasurer Josh Frydenberg said the “patent box” was specifically designed to encourage greater commercialisation in Australia, a country famous for innovation, boasting world-leading creations such as Wi-Fi, the bionic ear and a cervical cancer vaccine.
Dr Ilana Feain, the CSIRO’s commercialisation specialist for astronomy, told the forum she believed Australia did not have a commercialisation problem.
“What Flavia might view as a bottleneck and a real problem, when you’re inside the system and see how it operates, it’s a very streamlined system and there’s a lot of opportunities,” she said.
Dr Feain said the perceived issue might be more prevalent in space, because of how new the sector was.
Education Minister Alan Tudge said one of his main policies was to “lift the impact” of university researchers, flagging possible changes to intellectual property laws “if necessary”.
“We want, and need, our universities to play a bigger role,” he told Melbourne University in his first major speech in February.
“We want academics to become entrepreneurs, taking their ideas from the lab to the market. We want them to be properly rewarded for their breakthroughs and their engagement with business.”
Ms Tata Nardini told the online forum that Fleet was started with “no tech”. “We started Fleet with an idea; we had no patents and now we’ve got 60,” she said.
Ms Tata Nardini said fellow Adelaide space start-up Myriota started with 25 patents and two co-founders with PhDs.
“I’m fascinated about this dynamic – what is the thing that actually works?” she said.
”I think time will tell.”
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