A different view of a Woomera spaceport

As noted here last week, NASA astronaut and Australian native Andy Thomas has become a major advocate of a spaceport in Woomera, one that could serve the space tourism market. The article mentioned a meeting he had with science minister Julie Bishop about the topic. However, Bishop, in an interview Sunday with Barry Cassidy of the Australian Broadcasting Corp., has a different recollection of that meeting, and the importance of space tourism to any Woomera spaceport plans:

BARRIE CASSIDY: Now finally, if I could ask you to put on your science cap for a moment. And Andy Thomas, the astronaut, wants Woomera to become a space sport for space tourism. Is this pie in the sky?

JULIE BISHOP: I believe it’s serious about it. I happened to meet him during the Commonwealth Games. We sat next to each other at a lunch hosted by the Melbourne Lord Mayor and he spoke about his passion for a space program, about what we could do in Australia compared to other nations. And his view was that we could use existing resources at Woomera for a satellite program that could be exported to other countries. And I was interested in his views. I respect him as an astronaut and as a scientific thinker and I invited him to send me his thinking. We’ve corresponded. He’s back in Houston and I’m looking forward to receiving a more detailed paper from him.

BARRIE CASSIDY: What is the prospect that 10 years or so down the track there might be enough tourists around who’ll want to go into outer space and then it would justify that sort of expenditure?

JULIE BISHOP: I don’t think that’s what he was talking about. He was talking about launching satellites from the existing infrastructure at Woomera for use by other countries. So he was looking at it on a commercial basis. He wasn’t talking about sending people to the moon or Mars or anything like that.

BARRIE CASSIDY: So he hasn’t raised space tourism with you at this stage.

JULIE BISHOP: No, not at this stage. The breakfast didn’t last that long!

Of course, in the original Advertiser article, Thomas was talking about space tourism. It makes little sense to build up Woomera simply for satellite launches: the market is limited for the foreseeable future and Woomera would have to compete with many other spaceports worldwide. The addition of space tourism—particularly if any operator there could draw upon the East Asian market—could generate enough activity to warrant government investment in spaceport infrastructure.