Page 73 - Australian Defence Magazine November 2022

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space market, and the result of all this government investment is other countries develop technology quicker, hire a lot more people, and just succeed faster. Our real challenge is keeping up with the fast pace of technology with a lack of funding - not just in launch vehicles but in satellites as well. If our government doesn’t accelerate Australian technology development, then companies like us are going to struggle.
Funding doesn’t have to be dollar for dollar, but it’s got to be proportional. I think that’s the sad realisation in defence as well. One of my bugbears here is that other nations spend vastly more as a percentage of their defence budgets on R&D as compared to Australia. The US spends almost 10 per cent of its defence spending on R&D, and we spend less than 0.3 per cent. So 30 times less as a percentage. That’s an order of magnitude difference.
ADM: Any other bugbears?
GILMOUR: I think the government and Space Agency are trying to be as cooperative as they can. The industry gets along quite well with each other. I guess my other bugbear is seeing our government inviting competing foreign launch vehicles into Australia when they haven’t really supported Australian-owned companies like us. I have an Australian workforce, I have an Australian supply chain; they have a foreign workforce and foreign supply chain. The last thing Australia should be doing now in this early stage of space development in Australia is to encourage foreign rocket companies to come into the country. This is not a matter of a ‘free trade agreement’ – because rockets are excluded from FTAs by other nations. Free trade doesn’t mean giving opportunities away for free.
ADM: What’s keeping you awake at the moment?
GILMOUR: Putting the vehicle together. That’s what keeps me awake right now. I’m not an engineer by training, but I dip in and dip out of the weeds on the tech- nology side, especially if there’s a prob- lem. On the bright side, I definitely want to have a part in putting some of the ve- hicle together. Getting on the tools will be good fun. ■
LEFT: The Eris rocket is undergoing test and evaluation.
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