Australia Hoping a Remote Northern Site Will Propel It Into Space Race

For rent: space base, in remote and sparsely populated area near Equator, excellent climate, ideal for commercial space ventures, low overhead, guaranteed longer life for satellites. Owner will clear area of crocodiles. Call Queensland, Australia.

Australian scientists have drawn up the outline of such a base for a site on Cape York Peninsula in northeastern Australia and say it could be ready to launch a commercial payload within 10 years if private enterprises or countries are interested.

In a recent feasibility report on the project, the scientists also said that launching a satellite into an equatorial orbit from there would save 120 pounds of fuel, adding two years to a satellite’s life.

Perfect Site

The base would lower the cost of satellite launches and earn millions of dollars for the operators, said John Simmons, a Queensland University scientist who helped write the report.

The study, commissioned by Queensland’s premier, Sir Johannes Bjelke-Petersen, and compiled by the Australian Institute of Engineers, has been endorsed by the government’s top science organization, the Commonwealth Scientific and Industrial Research Organization, and space engineering companies.

“The site is perfect,” said Ken McCracken, the organization’s director of space sciences.

The proposed spaceport is in a 4,000-square-mile area of Cape York, which is 15 degrees below the Equator. Nearby in the currently crocodile-infested area is the port town of Weipa. The weather is described as near-perfect.

$14-Billion Market

Australia hopes for a major slice of an estimated commercial world space transport market of $14 billion between 1990 and 2005.

Bjelke-Petersen, citing Australia’s political stability and geopolitical position near the Pacific “rim of technology,” has ordered a second study to assess the environmental and economic impact of the site and ways to market the project overseas.

The premier said that in July the state government will consider inviting “formal expressions of interest” from multinational consortiums capable of financing, constructing, operating and marketing a space launch and recovery site, which is expected to cost nearly $1 billion.

“This project is attractive not only to private companies, but will be of interest to other national governments,” he said.

New Opportunities

Australia pulled out of the space race in the late 1960s. Its launch site at Woomera, north of Adelaide in South Australia state, closed after two satellite launches because of fears that eastern trajectories threatened the federal capital, Canberra, and Sydney.

“The world space scene has changed very rapidly, largely due to the Challenger space shuttle disaster,” Simmons said in an interview. “It has opened up opportunities for commercial consortiums to get into the act.”

He said the launch site used by Europeans at Koura in French Guiana in South America and another in Brazil were the only other desirable locations to send rockets into orbit.

The report said that U.S. and European rocket failures and a decision last year to open the U.S. market to commercial expendable launch vehicles “provided an incentive for private enterprise within the United States and for organizations in other countries to enter the relatively lucrative commercial launch business.”

“The number of launching days per year from Cape York appears to be higher than at any other potential equatorial site,” Simmons said. He said that the area within a 60-mile radius of the bauxite mining town of Weipa offers a rare combination of positive factors.

Most important, it is only 10 degrees from the Equator. “The closer a launch site is to the Equator, the less fuel it takes to get into orbit,” Simmons said. “And the extra fuel in orbit allows for larger vehicles.”

An equatorial site is particularly important for the increasing numbers of satellites that must go into orbits parallel to the Equator, such as communications and some weather satellites that go into 22,300-mile-high stationary orbits. In such orbits, a satellite’s speed matches Earth’s rotation, and the spacecraft remains over one area of the globe.

The only operational equatorial site now is the one at Koura.

The Cape York site offers favorable weather conditions, Simmons said, with less rainfall than at Koura. Prohibitive “thunder days” number 81 a year at Koura but only 39 at Cape York, he said.

Rocket boosters can be brought down safely in the vast surrounding seas. And Weipa, on the cape’s west coast, offers the core facilities for the necessary infrastructure, including airports and seaports.

The availability of large tracts of government-owned land is also an advantage, Simmons said, because it would facilitate the establishment of additional launch pads in the future.

The isolation of the site and its proximity to central Australia offers opportunities for flight paths over water or land. Possible commercial projects include scientific experiments for research institutions, atmospheric sounding work and launching communications systems.

“Australia has lagged behind in space technology,” Simmons said. “And that’s a disadvantage, but one we can overcome in this entrepreneurial project.”

Noting that the Koura launch facility has a backlog of up to five years, Simmons said that “there is certainly the need” for a new facility.

The Cape York site was first proposed last year by a group of business and science executives, including representatives of Hawker de Havilland, British Aerospace and the Commonwealth Scientific Industrial Research Organization.

Stanley Schaetzel, technical director of Hawker de Havilland, is convinced of the superiority of the Cape York site.

“The Russians offer cut-rate prices, but their facility (at Baikonur in the Soviet Union) is 45 degrees off the Equator,” Schaetzel said. “And the Chinese launch site is near Mongolia, 41 degrees off. That really makes a . . . difference.”

The main U.S. spaceport at Cape Canaveral is 28 degrees north of the Equator.

Japan Site Unfavorable

Japan’s only site available for commercial launches is Tanegashin, which is 35 degrees off the Equator. It is limited by weather factors, air traffic problems and its threat to the fishing industry.

At the minimum, Schaetzel said, there will need to be an alternative spaceport located somewhere in the Southern Hemisphere as an emergency landing site for pilots returning from long interplanetary missions.

“We would cover half the globe,” Schaetzel said.