Australia must be part of the 'Final Frontier'

It must have been quite a shock to those people in the United States who happened to tune their ham radios to the steady "… beep … beep … beep …" of Sputnik 1.

The launch of this Soviet satellite 50 years ago is widely seen as the start of the Space Race.

The Soviet Union got off to a flyer. Sputnik was the world's first artificial satellite and the Soviets built on that milestone by sending the first animal into space later that same year, and then the first human in 1961.

Playing second fiddle was a huge blow to US national pride. In the wake of Sputnik, one US headline hysterically proclaimed "US Must Catch Up with Reds or We're Dead".

But the Space Race was not a sprint, it was a marathon - and the US, with all its resources and human capital, is nigh on impossible to beat when it gets up to full speed.

Galvanised into action, by the end of the 60's the US had pulled off the one achievement to rule them all - landing humans on the Moon and returning them safely.

The rest, as they say, is history and ever since, the United States has been the pre-eminent space power.

Now, “pre-eminent” is a relative term because those heady days of the Space Race are long gone. The end of the Cold War has seen space research and development subject to hard-nosed economic pragmatism and competing demands on national budgets.

This is particularly the case in Australia. During the Apollo era, Australia played a pivotal role as a communications hub for NASA. And Woomera in South Australia was a major testing ground for aerospace technology, at one stage with a population of about 6,000.

That Woomera now has a population of 200 indicates the extent to which Australia has removed itself from international efforts to research and develop space.

In 1996 the Howard Government sent a signal of its antipathy to space research by closing the Australian Space Office. It also shut down Australia's Near-Earth Object Survey effort, one of the few operating in the Southern Hemisphere, with former Science Minister Peter McGauran rather savagely describing it as a "… fruitless, unnecessary, self-indulgent exercise".

In 2004, the Cooperative Research Centre for Satellite Systems lost its bid for continued funding.

The one bright spot for the Australian space research community has been the backing the Federal Government has given for Australia's bid to host the Square Kilometre Array radio telescope, a truly international project that would place Australia at centre-stage in the astronomy field.

Space research is one of those areas that often has people rolling their eyes because it seems so removed from our everyday existence - but it isn't. The descendents of Sputnik provide us with high-speed and widely available communications and navigation. Many other everyday products we now take for granted come from space research.

In fact, it is quite possible that we are on the verge of another Space Race of sorts. India, China and Japan are all adopting increasingly grand visions of space exploration, and the US and the EU may increase their own efforts to ensure they stay ahead. And as these countries adopt ever more ambitious and expensive goals it is likely that competition will make way for co-operation and pooling of resources. Australia will want to be a part of this.

I must admit that I am fascinated by bold, adventurous, big-picture research. I like that we ask “what's next?” – that, instead of sticking with what we know, we continue to test our abilities. A renewed international space research effort may be just the thing for a world increasingly focused inwards.

It could be just the thing for Australia. It is a well-worn cliché, but space is the final frontier for research and development. If we do not have a seat at the table of space-faring nations we may miss out on all the benefits exploring that frontier may offer.

The Australian Academy of Science's National Committee for Space Science has marked the 50th Anniversary of the Space Race with a call to arms. They want to ensure that this country is seen as a player on the global stage, and have put forward a number of realistic goals that Australia could adopt.

I will endeavour to ensure that this issue is on the agenda of our new Parliament, whatever it may look like after Election '07. A cross-party inquiry into Australia's space policy could be an ideal springboard for the Government of the day to advance this country's interests in space research. If we do not take this opportunity to “buy in” to this huge frontier soon, it could cost us in the future.