Dear Candidate,

Good luck with the election.

Have you considered whether Australia should be investing in a serious space program?

Survival and life go hand in hand and if there is a failure to survive, there is no life. When life is secure, we can pursue prosperity and enjoy all creative opportunities.

We have immediate problems in Australia that demand everyone’s attention, including climate change and a growing homeless population, the face of poverty in our nation. As we strive to solve our problems, we need to also remember the long-term needs of our nation and future generations.

A report on the ABC warned, “Australia’s economy rides on the red rocks of the Pilbara, but scientists predict we may run out of high quality exportable iron ore within 50 years.”
Stephen Pincock   ABC online   14 July 2010

http://www.abc.net.au/science/articles/2010/07/14/2953402.htm

Unless we effectively plan for Australia’s future prosperity, we could now be sowing the seeds of Paul Keating’s fabled “banana republic”. Successive governments have built a strong foundation for our nation, a ship of state that has so far weathered the global economic crisis, but if we fail to effectively plan for the future, our ship of state could end up dead in the water.

We cannot expect to remain the “lucky country” if we fail to prepare for the next great shift in development. At present our mineral wealth gets sold off for a fist full of dollars, but what does the nation have to show for it and offer for Australia’s future?

Many nations, including China and India, are now preparing to access the mineral wealth of space and Japan, the United States and Europe are looking to access the Sun’s energy directly in space and beam it to Earth. The Sun’s energy is much stronger above the Earth’s atmosphere and beyond the Earth’s shadow, where it is available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, all year long.

Should Australia’s mineral wealth be used as a stepping-stone toward serious space development and as a way to secure Australia’s future prosperity? If we are not prepared and ready to act and miss this opportunity, we could be left with holes in the ground and nothing to show for all the mineral wealth that has been exported.

Labor’s recent mineral tax may have been viewed more generously by industry, if it had been connected with furthering Australia’s development in space through investment in research and education, especially science and engineering.

We need to lift our game with space in this nation and launch a real space program, collaborating with industry, setting real goals and forming partnerships for space development with other nations, which could include India and the United Kingdom.

Australia could provide all its energy needs, if we wished, by collecting the Sun’s energy directly in space and beaming the power to Earth for the national grid. We would never have to burn another lump of coal and be a global embarrassment with our greenhouse gas emissions.

We could also forget about drilling in the deep ocean for oil, and avoid another Gulf of Mexico type catastrophe, which might happen in our waters.

With access to unlimited power from the Sun, we could desalinate large volumes of ocean water and pump it to wherever it is needed in Australia, overcoming the droughts brought on by climate change and even turning the desert green. Access to this energy could also be used to help keep communities cool, where we may need to build protected oasis environments as global warming makes normal life in many locations quite impossible.

With unlimited energy from the Sun and resources from the Moon, asteroids and planets, automated factories in space could in the future be able to produce any product for the markets of Earth and future human settlements in space.

Why shouldn’t the Australian flag fly high and proud among the stars? It is only a shortfall in our confidence to imagine what is possible that is holding us back and we can surely overcome this, if we have a will to.

Australia could be part of this future now by investing in this direction, rather than being left to count our diminishing supply of bananas.

With access to the wealth of the Solar System, we will be in a position to send poverty into history, locally and globally and make sure that each child on Earth has a healthy life. This will include ending the plague of homelessness that has become entrenched in Western society and on Australia’s streets, by using the wealth of space to build an inclusive society on Earth.

We don’t need to wait for such a society to happen, as when we have confidence in our future direction, we can start building the future now.

The good-will generated by ending poverty globally will help to maximise security in space, where human settlements are fragile bubbles in a vacuum, easily burst from within or without by conflict and or terrorism. Ending poverty and fighting for a healthy Earth will also help to deliver a far more peaceful society on Earth and this is a worthy objective of space development.

By securing a survival position beyond Earth, we will be in a confident position to work toward a healthier Earthly environment. If we need to cool the planet because of global warming, a spin-off of space development could be to build an adjustable sunshade in space, which would be a far safer approach than pumping sulphur particles into the upper atmosphere, imitating the eruption of a volcano, a geoengineering approach that is now under serious consideration.

We are proposing a “Giant Leap” conference for July next year, to include the anniversary of the Moon landing, to explore all these issues. We are looking to this event being held in Australia, but connected internationally via the Internet.

A key subject at this event will be whether Australia should be investing in a serious space program and directing our resources and human talent toward achieving this. The benefits to our nation will be great and it is a sad irony that we are already four decades late in getting serious about the opportunities that space development will deliver for the future survival and prosperity of Australia, as well as the creative opportunities for our children and future generations.

If we miss this opportunity to access the wealth of space, including the unlimited energy of the Sun, we really will be found to have holes in the head, not just in the ground from our aggressively mined and exported mineral wealth.

We hope that you will be a voice for Australia’s future.

Yours sincerely,