Saturday, April 08, 2006
Woomera Spaceport
According to the Adelaide Advertiser, South Australian born astronaut Andy Thomas wants to make Woomera into a space port, for launching both satellites and tourists.
That takes me back. When I was young, Woomera was one of the few rocket launch sites in the world. For a brief while, Australia was a space-race nation, launching the Black Arrow, Skylark and the Blue Streak missiles (oddly, the Woomera Pad site doesn't list the Bue Streak, even though they were launched there). I had dreams of working in space, and in a (now embarrassing) rush of youthful enthusiasm, a mate and I wrote to Woomera asking for funds to develop Cavorite for spacetravel (well, what did we know, HG Wells sounded authoritative). They never replied, but my dream of space flight persisted.
Time passed, Britain and Australia lost interest in rockets, and the Woomera facility was largely moth balled. We did have a very successful sub-orbital upper atmosphere rocketry program and and X-ray astronomy program, but that finally finished, and now the Woomera launch site is mostly silent (except for the occasional ScramJet flight).
When Stuart came over, I dragged him off the to aviation museum down the road, which had a display of rockets and paraphernalia from Woomera. It was a mild day (for Adelaide, which means our eyes weren't actually boiling in our sockets) and we managed to walk for the Train Museum Carpark (which I had mistakenly parked in under the impression it was right next to the aviation museum) to the aviation museum without getting heatstroke. I rushed in to show Stuart the display…
And it wasn't there. The Museum had moved last year, and they hadn't unpacked most of the Woomera stuff yet. There were a couple of unlabeled launching bodies, and what appeared to be a satellite motor, but that was it. The staff were helpful as they could be, but weren't space enthusiasts, they had no idea when the display would be restored, or what the launching bodies were, or where the thruster came from.
Don't get me wrong, the aviation museum is fascinating, but I had specifically taken Stuart out in heatstroke conditions to see the rockets that his dish at Jodrell used to monitor, so not having them there was disappointing. Later we peered through the chain-link fence at the back of the museum at a Blue Streak hulk, partly buried under bits of a flying doctors plane. It was a bit sad.
Now Andy Thomas wants the Government to spend $150 million to set up a commercial launch and space tourism center. Shooting the wealthy into the edge of space in a glorified glider wasn't what I imagined when I wrote to Woomera all those years ago, I had in mind a more gleaming Gernsbackian spaceprot where I would fly to Mars to study lichens, or explore the steaming Jungles of Venus, but it would be great to see it used again, and Australia join the space capable nations.
That takes me back. When I was young, Woomera was one of the few rocket launch sites in the world. For a brief while, Australia was a space-race nation, launching the Black Arrow, Skylark and the Blue Streak missiles (oddly, the Woomera Pad site doesn't list the Bue Streak, even though they were launched there). I had dreams of working in space, and in a (now embarrassing) rush of youthful enthusiasm, a mate and I wrote to Woomera asking for funds to develop Cavorite for spacetravel (well, what did we know, HG Wells sounded authoritative). They never replied, but my dream of space flight persisted.
Time passed, Britain and Australia lost interest in rockets, and the Woomera facility was largely moth balled. We did have a very successful sub-orbital upper atmosphere rocketry program and and X-ray astronomy program, but that finally finished, and now the Woomera launch site is mostly silent (except for the occasional ScramJet flight).
When Stuart came over, I dragged him off the to aviation museum down the road, which had a display of rockets and paraphernalia from Woomera. It was a mild day (for Adelaide, which means our eyes weren't actually boiling in our sockets) and we managed to walk for the Train Museum Carpark (which I had mistakenly parked in under the impression it was right next to the aviation museum) to the aviation museum without getting heatstroke. I rushed in to show Stuart the display…
And it wasn't there. The Museum had moved last year, and they hadn't unpacked most of the Woomera stuff yet. There were a couple of unlabeled launching bodies, and what appeared to be a satellite motor, but that was it. The staff were helpful as they could be, but weren't space enthusiasts, they had no idea when the display would be restored, or what the launching bodies were, or where the thruster came from.
Don't get me wrong, the aviation museum is fascinating, but I had specifically taken Stuart out in heatstroke conditions to see the rockets that his dish at Jodrell used to monitor, so not having them there was disappointing. Later we peered through the chain-link fence at the back of the museum at a Blue Streak hulk, partly buried under bits of a flying doctors plane. It was a bit sad.
Now Andy Thomas wants the Government to spend $150 million to set up a commercial launch and space tourism center. Shooting the wealthy into the edge of space in a glorified glider wasn't what I imagined when I wrote to Woomera all those years ago, I had in mind a more gleaming Gernsbackian spaceprot where I would fly to Mars to study lichens, or explore the steaming Jungles of Venus, but it would be great to see it used again, and Australia join the space capable nations.
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 12:41 pm 
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Hey Ian, thanks for taking me along to the aerospace museum. I've just got back home to the UK so I can finally get around to posting a picture or two from the museum.
# posted by 
: 6:14 pm
: 6:14 pm
Great to "see" you back Stuart. I look forward to the pictures and more stories from your travels. W ehave to discuss the "tangled bank" idea too.
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