SA Economy

[Goodsy]

SA wouldn't be a good location for SpaceX for a couple of reasons. They currently do a lot of US government business, and there are both legal considerations regarding ITAR and the fact that if they are doing more development work overseas they lose a lot of lobbying ability. The other reason is a practical one related to our geographical position. We're a long way from the equator, and Woomera is far in-land, both disadvantages when it comes to launching rockets. There also aren't the rail or canal links to Woomera for easily transporting large hardware. If you were tempting a company like SpaceX to set up operations in Australia, and could somehow get around the insurmountable political difficulties in that, then far north Queensland would be the best location.

That said, looking at that sort of scope and scale is the type of thing SA needs to be doing, but unfortunately the Federal Government has done lots to dismiss manufacturing here, and the State Government is extremely uncompetitive even compared to other Australian states.

The first thing we should be doing is nationalising our railways and rebuilding the SAR workshops, or atleast entice a train/tram manufacturer to setup shop here

[Nort]

Yep exactly. It all sounds so simple and awesome to do this, but even if we give them cheap/free land and even pay them to move here, the ongoing costs of doing business here compared to Asia will not stack up. High wages, electricity, construction costs, superannuation, insurances, freight, yada yada yada. Until Australia does some restructuring then it's very unlikely to entice any manufacturing back from Asia without any ongoing subsidies, that would then make most likely make it uneconomical in the long run. Think Holden for the last 10 years of its life, it was pretty much just an expensive form of welfare.

In the 12 years before 2013, the government supported Holden with $700 million more than it received back in income taxes from Holden workers. So basically out a bit over a million a week to have them manufacturing here, those employees in work, and all the associated supply chains also in business and employing people.

It's largely academic now given Australian car manufacturing is dead and gone, but that's much cheaper than welfare at the scale of job losses and economic loss we got from Holden leaving.

[Nort]

SA wouldn't be a good location for SpaceX for a couple of reasons. They currently do a lot of US government business, and there are both legal considerations regarding ITAR and the fact that if they are doing more development work overseas they lose a lot of lobbying ability. The other reason is a practical one related to our geographical position. We're a long way from the equator, and Woomera is far in-land, both disadvantages when it comes to launching rockets. There also aren't the rail or canal links to Woomera for easily transporting large hardware. If you were tempting a company like SpaceX to set up operations in Australia, and could somehow get around the insurmountable political difficulties in that, then far north Queensland would be the best location.

That said, looking at that sort of scope and scale is the type of thing SA needs to be doing, but unfortunately the Federal Government has done lots to dismiss manufacturing here, and the State Government is extremely uncompetitive even compared to other Australian states.

The first thing we should be doing is nationalising our railways and rebuilding the SAR workshops, or atleast entice a train/tram manufacturer to setup shop here

100% agree with you on that.

Repurpose the former Holden site for the production of as much of SA's public transport requirements as possible. Trains, Buses, Trams, do as much work as possible here. Sure they'll cost more, but that's money which stays in the state rather then heading interstate/overseas.

[rev]

SA wouldn't be a good location for SpaceX for a couple of reasons. They currently do a lot of US government business, and there are both legal considerations regarding ITAR and the fact that if they are doing more development work overseas they lose a lot of lobbying ability. The other reason is a practical one related to our geographical position. We're a long way from the equator, and Woomera is far in-land, both disadvantages when it comes to launching rockets. There also aren't the rail or canal links to Woomera for easily transporting large hardware. If you were tempting a company like SpaceX to set up operations in Australia, and could somehow get around the insurmountable political difficulties in that, then far north Queensland would be the best location.

That said, looking at that sort of scope and scale is the type of thing SA needs to be doing, but unfortunately the Federal Government has done lots to dismiss manufacturing here, and the State Government is extremely uncompetitive even compared to other Australian states.

1. Rockets have been launched from Woomera before. What are you on about?

2. Who said anything about launching? Rockets and what not aren't simple tin cans. A lot of research and development is involved with many components.

3. If something was to be launched from Woomera, why couldnt it be built nearby?

Do you think the infrastructure that supports US space launches, such as rail, was just sitting there? Its all been purpose built.

Yes they do a bit with/for NASA. So?
Boeing is one of the major US defence firms/suppliers. They just rolled out the first Loyalwingman drone developed here in Australia for the RAAF.

What insurmountable political difficulties?

[Jaymz]

Moving to a tariff based economy is not the way Australia or any developed country should be aspiring to, unless we'd prefer living in the 1960's. The blame for the loss of manufacturing doesn't lie with the Govt as much as many would like to believe, but it lies with all of us.
Go back 15 years or so, right up until now. We were all given the choice between a $20 Chinese/SE Asia made t-shirt, versus the $40 Australian made t-shirt. Nine out of ten chose the cheaper one, even knowing the quality might be inferior. I use a t-shirt as an example, but it translates to pretty much everything we have in our home/garage right now. It has no doubt made our lives more prosperous... we have more money in our pockets left over for restaurants/entertainment/coffees/holidays. All the while our economy has become more and more based on services i.e things we CAN do for ourselves but don't feel like. Maybe this whole covid/self isolation thing might put us back on track a little bit.

[SBD]

@Rev, you complain that other people should think outside of the box, but then sit inside your own box.

SA doesn't have to copy other places, it could do something that nobody is doing yet. Australia is not a great place to build large heavy objects for a world market - they cost too much to transport. It's cheaper to build them near big markets and move a few to Australia. Other business models would be to focus on high-value short-run products, or to design and develop the object, then manufacture large quantities closer to large markets.

SA has manufactured all sorts of things over the years. Some are still made here. There are things in your house or that you use frequently that nobody made anywhere a few decades ago. It is likely that in a few decades to come, there will be common items that nobody has now.

Places like Lot 14 (the old RAH site) and the old Mitsubishi site are being developed in the hopes of incubating the creative thinking necessary to make something we don't have.COVID-19 vaccine doesn't seem to be getting worked on here, but cures or treatments for cranio-facial injuries and abnormalities is a niche medical area with the expertise here. There is still at least one pharmaceutical manufacturer in Adelaide. If any Adelaide research finds a way to treat cancer or MS or diabetes, it would be well positioned to manufacture here.

Nobody in the world currently builds commercial aircraft powered by hydrogen, solar or batteries. Maybe nobody ever will invent one that works competitively. Maybe the person who will comes from SA. What breakthroughs are necessary to convert interstate transport away from diesel power? Perhaps some of those could come from here.

A feature of out-of-the-box medical developments in SA seem to have been achieved through multi-disciplinary teams. I don't know if that's "normal" everywhere, or if Adelaide happens to be just the right size and culture to naturally build those teams to be effective.

[Nort]

SA wouldn't be a good location for SpaceX for a couple of reasons. They currently do a lot of US government business, and there are both legal considerations regarding ITAR and the fact that if they are doing more development work overseas they lose a lot of lobbying ability. The other reason is a practical one related to our geographical position. We're a long way from the equator, and Woomera is far in-land, both disadvantages when it comes to launching rockets. There also aren't the rail or canal links to Woomera for easily transporting large hardware. If you were tempting a company like SpaceX to set up operations in Australia, and could somehow get around the insurmountable political difficulties in that, then far north Queensland would be the best location.

That said, looking at that sort of scope and scale is the type of thing SA needs to be doing, but unfortunately the Federal Government has done lots to dismiss manufacturing here, and the State Government is extremely uncompetitive even compared to other Australian states.

1. Rockets have been launched from Woomera before. What are you on about?

Where did I say they hadn't? What I did say was that for launching rockets an inland location puts you at a disadvantage, which it does for lots of use cases. There are other uses where it doesn't matter.

2. Who said anything about launching? Rockets and what not aren't simple tin cans. A lot of research and development is involved with many components.

3. If something was to be launched from Woomera, why couldnt it be built nearby?

Distance from population centres, lack of support industries there. No reason it couldn't happen but it would be harder to get things rolling than in many other locations.

Do you think the infrastructure that supports US space launches, such as rail, was just sitting there? Its all been purpose built.

Actually, for the most part it's not purpose built. In rocketry a lot of the sizes of rockets are determined by the fact they are transported using existing road and rail networks. Now if you want to argue that that infrastructure should be built as part of a larger effort to turn that area into a manufacturing base that would be an interesting case to make, but it would have to be part of a larger nation building plan.

Yes they do a bit with/for NASA. So?
Boeing is one of the major US defence firms/suppliers. They just rolled out the first Loyalwingman drone developed here in Australia for the RAAF.

What insurmountable political difficulties?

SpaceX currently plans to consolidate all their activities around Super Heavy/Starship. Everything from their Starlink communication network to Deep Space probe launches to proposed lunar landing contracts would use that system. If you want to propose they develop a new system for Australian uses then I'd love to see the business case (seriously, as a space nerd I would love to see it). It would have to be a new system because we couldn't offer anywhere near the funding that the US government does, and moving elements of that system overseas would make their lobbying for US contracts a lot more difficult.

That's reiterating but not getting into the details of how it would be a massive headache to see how they would do so without running foul
of ITAR which has a long history of causing difficulties for any companies doing work for/in the US trying to operate research/development/manufacturing internationally. A good example of that is Rocket Lab. A company founded in New Zealand that developed a low cost orbital rocket with some innovative technologies, and exactly the type of thing that Australia should be encouraging but hasn't. However as they have grown as a company they have actually had to move more development and operations to the US simply because of the difficulties related to getting funding for US use cases when international operations are involved.

You seem awfully defensive/combative, when my post ended with:

That said, looking at that sort of scope and scale is the type of thing SA needs to be doing,

The particular SpaceX proposal doesn't stack up in many ways, but other proposals of a similar scale could. For example working to turn SA into a solar/battery hub.

[rev]

@Rev, you complain that other people should think outside of the box, but then sit inside your own box.

SA doesn't have to copy other places, it could do something that nobody is doing yet. Australia is not a great place to build large heavy objects for a world market - they cost too much to transport. It's cheaper to build them near big markets and move a few to Australia. Other business models would be to focus on high-value short-run products, or to design and develop the object, then manufacture large quantities closer to large markets.

SA has manufactured all sorts of things over the years. Some are still made here. There are things in your house or that you use frequently that nobody made anywhere a few decades ago. It is likely that in a few decades to come, there will be common items that nobody has now.

Places like Lot 14 (the old RAH site) and the old Mitsubishi site are being developed in the hopes of incubating the creative thinking necessary to make something we don't have.COVID-19 vaccine doesn't seem to be getting worked on here, but cures or treatments for cranio-facial injuries and abnormalities is a niche medical area with the expertise here. There is still at least one pharmaceutical manufacturer in Adelaide. If any Adelaide research finds a way to treat cancer or MS or diabetes, it would be well positioned to manufacture here.

Nobody in the world currently builds commercial aircraft powered by hydrogen, solar or batteries. Maybe nobody ever will invent one that works competitively. Maybe the person who will comes from SA. What breakthroughs are necessary to convert interstate transport away from diesel power? Perhaps some of those could come from here.

A feature of out-of-the-box medical developments in SA seem to have been achieved through multi-disciplinary teams. I don't know if that's "normal" everywhere, or if Adelaide happens to be just the right size and culture to naturally build those teams to be effective.

On the one hand (thinking aloud) I post various ideas and thought bubbles about doing something different, or creating new industries and so on, asking often WHY NOT IN SA.
And on the other hand we have people who are generally constant naysayers, always finding something wrong with every idea or suggestion and why it generally can't work here.

Think I prefer my "box"

[Nort]

On the one hand (thinking aloud) I post various ideas and thought bubbles about doing something different, or creating new industries and so on, asking often WHY NOT IN SA.
And on the other hand we have people who are generally constant naysayers, always finding something wrong with every idea or suggestion and why it generally can't work here.

Think I prefer my "box"

So you're asking a question and then being annoyed when people answer that question?

It's also the way you present these "questions", such as acting like the state Government was stupid in not trying to get SpaceX here and missing an obvious opportunity.

[rev]

On the one hand (thinking aloud) I post various ideas and thought bubbles about doing something different, or creating new industries and so on, asking often WHY NOT IN SA.
And on the other hand we have people who are generally constant naysayers, always finding something wrong with every idea or suggestion and why it generally can't work here.

Think I prefer my "box"

So you're asking a question and then being annoyed when people answer that question?

It's also the way you present these "questions", such as acting like the state Government was stupid in not trying to get SpaceX here and missing an obvious opportunity.

There's a reason why I have you on ignore and why I rarely respond to your nonsense.

You see what you want, based on what ever you can cherry pick to have a go at me.
Did I say I had a problem with SBD? I pointed out a fact, which was in regards to his box remark, it wasn't about SBD but a general comment.

So how about you mind your own damn business you troll instead of hoping you can instigate trouble and win an ally against me.

[Nort]

On the one hand (thinking aloud) I post various ideas and thought bubbles about doing something different, or creating new industries and so on, asking often WHY NOT IN SA.
And on the other hand we have people who are generally constant naysayers, always finding something wrong with every idea or suggestion and why it generally can't work here.

Think I prefer my "box"

So you're asking a question and then being annoyed when people answer that question?

It's also the way you present these "questions", such as acting like the state Government was stupid in not trying to get SpaceX here and missing an obvious opportunity.

There's a reason why I have you on ignore and why I rarely respond to your nonsense.

You see what you want, based on what ever you can cherry pick to have a go at me.
Did I say I had a problem with SBD? I pointed out a fact, which was in regards to his box remark, it wasn't about SBD but a general comment.

So how about you mind your own damn business you troll instead of hoping you can instigate trouble and win an ally against me.

Or I think that a discussion forum is a place to discuss topics that are raised.

[SBD]

Woomera is a brilliant site for what it was built for. It is the world's largest instrumented range, so an ideal place to launch things when you want to watch what they do during the first minutes after launch, and find the pieces afterwards for analysis. It has several thousand kilometres of mostly-uninhabited land to the northwest coast, and Chinese interests were not allowed to buy a mine in the area. It is not as good as a general launch site, and fairly poor for launching into equatorial orbit.

I don't think this thread has mentioned the new launch site at Whaler's Way near Port Lincoln yet. That is intended to be a good place for launching polar orbits. Its first launch is expected to be in a few months' time.

[rev]

Woomera is a brilliant site for what it was built for. It is the world's largest instrumented range, so an ideal place to launch things when you want to watch what they do during the first minutes after launch, and find the pieces afterwards for analysis. It has several thousand kilometres of mostly-uninhabited land to the northwest coast, and Chinese interests were not allowed to buy a mine in the area. It is not as good as a general launch site, and fairly poor for launching into equatorial orbit.

I don't think this thread has mentioned the new launch site at Whaler's Way near Port Lincoln yet. That is intended to be a good place for launching polar orbits. Its first launch is expected to be in a few months' time.

My initial comment about Tesla/SpaceX etc, wasn't for SpaceX rockets and his big shiny silver 'space ship' to be launched here, it was a general comment. Perhaps they could launch things from here. Perhaps they could use the Woomera range to do test launches. But what they could definitely do is do research and development here, manufacture components and other things needed.
We are the spot for the Australian Space Agency HQ right? SpaceX is working with NASA. Australia & the USA are best pals, much technology is shared between both countries.
Why is it such a bad idea to bring the biggest private space company to South Australia? Particularly when the guy behind SpaceX is behind Tesla and he built the giant battery storage at Jamestown...? There's already a connection with Elon Musk to SA.

We also have a number of small start up firms in the space sector, some of which want to launch their own satellites. I haven't looked into them for a while but what you mention about Port Pirie is probably one of them. What a huge boost and benefit it would be for something like SpaceX to have operations in South Australia.

We aren't going to be making washing machines or assembling conventional cars again, if ever. Because of that everyone thinks manufacturing is dead, but it's not. There's more advanced levels of manufacturing for high technology sectors, that we should be gunning for at 1000 miles an hour. But we aren't.

[Nort]

My initial comment about Tesla/SpaceX etc, wasn't for SpaceX rockets and his big shiny silver 'space ship' to be launched here, it was a general comment. Perhaps they could launch things from here. Perhaps they could use the Woomera range to do test launches. But what they could definitely do is do research and development here, manufacture components and other things needed.
We are the spot for the Australian Space Agency HQ right? SpaceX is working with NASA. Australia & the USA are best pals, much technology is shared between both countries.
Why is it such a bad idea to bring the biggest private space company to South Australia? Particularly when the guy behind SpaceX is behind Tesla and he built the giant battery storage at Jamestown...? There's already a connection with Elon Musk to SA.

Seriously, just Google ITAR and read through the numerous stories about how that definitely is a lot harder than you think.

[rev]

My initial comment about Tesla/SpaceX etc, wasn't for SpaceX rockets and his big shiny silver 'space ship' to be launched here, it was a general comment. Perhaps they could launch things from here. Perhaps they could use the Woomera range to do test launches. But what they could definitely do is do research and development here, manufacture components and other things needed.
We are the spot for the Australian Space Agency HQ right? SpaceX is working with NASA. Australia & the USA are best pals, much technology is shared between both countries.
Why is it such a bad idea to bring the biggest private space company to South Australia? Particularly when the guy behind SpaceX is behind Tesla and he built the giant battery storage at Jamestown...? There's already a connection with Elon Musk to SA.

Seriously, just Google ITAR and read through the numerous stories about how that definitely is a lot harder than you think.

Nobody is talking about military systems.

In any case even if we were..
Australia is one of the few countries who has been given the AEGIS system for it's ships, specifically the Hobart class destroyers built here in Adelaide as well as on our future frigates. Australia is the only country which has certain other technologies shared by the United States that is currently also integrated into the Hobart destroyers.
We are receiving the F35 fighters, which only happen to be the most advanced fighter jets ever conceived and built. But sure you keep shouting ITAR ITAR ITAR, when we're talking about the civilian sector..(even though quite obviously the USA shares some of its top tech with our defence force already....)

Do you want to know how ITAR affects Australia?
People like you who are loyal ccp are prevented from getting a job at say ASC. Because there is the presence of US technologies such as the AEGIS system, therefore you are a national security risk not only to Australia but the United States.

That's what ITAR is about. Preventing US military technologies from falling into the hands of enemy countries, like China.
It's not designed to prevent close allied countries like Australia from receiving US military technologies.


Btw, Australia is already working closely with NASA on their next manned missions.
Australia has worked with NASA for 50+ years already.