Australasian Bigelow Prize Entrant

Just wanting to chuck a thread in here in case someone searches for it one day.

I want an Australasian Bigelow entrant. As far as I know there was never an X-Prize entrant, so we have to make up for it.

I want someone to chuck money at and somewhere to go watch launches where it won't cost me my life's savings for the airfares.

Plus outback Australia seems the perfect testing ground for space operations as I get the impression the Australian goverment isn't particularly tight on environmental policies.

ANZPAC - Australia and New Zealand Private Aerospace Corporation.
Edit: As far as I know ANZPAC doesn't exist.

Yes yes yes, we could start it up, don't know about australians tho, but if we need them to use their outback spose we gotta put up with them!! hehehe.

Seriously its not to bad of an idea,as long as we dont have to get the government in to bail us out when we get in trouble....................like a certain company i work for.....

Someone should do it,or else its gonna happen sooner or later.

Iain

Good luck, considering the trouble that guy in New Zealand got for his $5,000 cruise missile I would tend to think the government there would not look too fondly at private rocketry ventures. I could be wrong but being a paintball player and air cannon enthusiast I tend to take a dim view on Austrailias law makers.

I've actually been surprised how few Australians there are here. As far as I know there aren't any, and there's at least three NZers.

Maybe we could launch in central Canterbury or something.

I liked the idea of involving Australia as I felt that finding NZ$200m might be a bit tricky just from New Zealand's economy.

Who knows. Maybe we'll see something, maybe for the third prize, the moon landing prize.

Central canterbury wouldn't be that bad of a place to launch actually! Although have you seen the airspace map for CHCH airport,no matter where you are a plane is flying over your head! lol.

Was actually talking about it to a guy at work today about where we can launch our model rockets and out towards akaroa or south abit are our best chance's.

We'll jst get eric watson to fund us,might like to or he might be to tied up with nicole!
or Dick smith, he likes this kinda stuff and i bet he would be half interested!


Iain

i think its a bad thing what's Bigelow is doing. Only for US based companys.??? What the hell. I don't see the point of this. Are they really so blind or aren't they willing to spend just 50k to transport 1 of their hotels to another country, which is still a fraction of the launchprize. Even if they would get it a lot cheaper, a lot higher or whatever.

Australia is probably one of the best suitable areas, except that its not really near the equator, it has a large desert where practicly no one lives, so it would be ideal for a Australian spaceport. Bigger and better

There's a few aussies around ...

DKH

Yeah, I just heard abt the US only rule. Is there a official press release from Bigelow or what? I can't seem to find anything beyond the Aviation Week article. No press release, no websites, nah dah on XPrize too.

I know he is still trying to tie down the funding but i would like to know the rules and terms of this prize.

The US only rule is silly. Beyond Scaled, only Armadilo have fairly concrete plans and progress to be considered realistic in the next few years. (no offense to the HARC, AA, etc etc teams)

On the other hand, several foreign based teams have a decent shot if they had the funding. Starchaser's vehicle would seem to be scalable, and so would the Canadian Arrow (recall the Nazi plans for multistaged A9/10 Amerika bomber)

Maybe we could go into Space on treaty money?

The Waioru desert is the place to test, east cape or just south of Chch would make decent spaceports.

If you want to launch nearrer the equator, Tonga has a monarchy. Sell Space to the king of Tonga and yer away.

I'm one Aussie that's serious about getting something going, even if I have to deal with Kiwis. Apparently we won't be eligible for the Bigelow prize, but some of the Centennial Challenges would be more achievable anyway.

I'm proposing a VTO/VL computer controlled rocket, like Armadillo's. For sub-orbital tests you don't need to be near the equator,so Woomera would be ideal. Manufacturing needs a reasonable local industrial base, so Melbourne should do nicely.

What I need:

Money: If someone has a spare $5 million, we could be in space within 2 years. Failing that we will need to raise funds from private investors, sponsorship and maybe government grants.

People: I need volunteers with all sorts of skills. I have the necessary computer hardware and software skills, but more never hurts. Apart from the obvious propulsion, engineering, electronics, machinist, welding etc, we can also use legal, accounting, PR, fund-raising and transport skills. You name it, we can probably use it. Above all I want enthusiasm, cooperation and well-supressed egos.

The first step will be a research project to decide technology, regulatory environment, financial & organizational structure.

Anyone interested, please message me with your contact details.

Just thought I would point out that New Zealand has a several billion dollar annual surplus that nobody knows what to do with...

For crying out loud, you're complaining that your government can't figure out how to spend its tax money? Ours is busy trying to figure out how to come up with the money to pay off what it's already spent!

They are thinking maybe a tax reduction or something. The Healthcare and educations systems need work, but not more money.

I am thinking maybe we need a space program. It would fix the Brain Drain among other things.

Hello, idiom,

I have understood yopur post as if you are not talking about ta money and a gornment budget surplus but about a balance of trades surplus which simply is a surplus earned by foreign trade.

That surplus would inaccessable for the goverment - but to everyone else also since the trades have been done already: The numbers are numbers about the past. The money has been spent already and the surplus isn't money in total - a lot of it will be commodities and services. Cars for example, PCs, TVs, raw materials.

Because of interest - wuld you clarify if you were talking about budget or trade surplus?



Dipl.-Volkswirt (bdvb) Augustin (Political Economist)

No, Tax money thats is unspent. Economy went up more than expected so tax take is bigger than planned.

Mind you this was last time I checked. Economy took a hit on the Oil constriction.

My point is that even small countries have billions floating around. If it was spent on a concentrated effort instead of random research, a lot of countries could get to a lot of places.