An Australian Space Agency At Last? 189
Dante_J writes "In the Australian Federal budget presented last night, as well as big national infrastructure spending, an amount of $48.6 million over four years was allocated for an 'Australian Space Science Program.' Normally a space program is managed by a space agency.
Does this now mean that Australia will follow the recommendations of the Senate Space Science report and give up its rather inadequate title of the only top-20 GDP nation not to have one? With nations like Vietnam, Bangladesh and Bulgaria forming or maintaining space agencies, this government infrastructure is obviously not limited to G-20 nations. Discussions to combine Australian and New Zealand airspace have been undertaken; should that translate to aerospace too, and both nations form an ANZAC space agency together?"
Australian Labor Governments (Score:2, Funny)
Re:Australian Labor Governments (Score:5, Insightful)
Unlike the Liberal government, which just pulls existing public spending, sells national assets to their crony mates, burns the cash on useless services and calls it "privatization".
Hello Telstra sale. What did the public get for their money there? A short term tax cut. What did that tax cut cost us? A royal ass fucking from a now unleashed national monopoly.
Thanks Howard, you bushy eyebrowed hobbit.
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They can reuse that chunk of Skylab and save a little money.
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Hello Telstra sale. What did the public get for their money there? A short term tax cut. What did that tax cut cost us? A royal ass fucking from a now unleashed national monopoly.
Are you kidding? We'd still be using dial-up if the telceomms industry wasn't de-regulated - and I'm sorry, but you can't de-regulate without privatising. Their big mistake was not splitting Telstra up before they privatised... though in fairness they needed a high price for it in order to retire the public debt.
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Link [wikipedia.org]
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Then maybe to do it correctly is not to do it at all. You know, you don't HAVE TO privatize everything.
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OK, not a troll, just misinformed. And it's hard to blame you with the FUD that's coming from Turnbull et al.
The accepted method of getting through a financial crisis is to spend big to replace the demand that has dried up, in order to get it going again. Failing to do so results in a bigger recession (or even depression) and bigger problems. Deficit spending is a tried and true way to get your country out of recession, and every major power is doing the same.
Unfortunately it also gives the chance for the L
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Citation needed for your statistics. FDR is actually widely regarded as having fixed the depression in 1938 with his "New Deal". WHat had proplogned things up to that point was the Governments of the world sitting on their hands and doing nothing. Neville Chamberlain is on record as saying that it was just the economic cycle and his government was powerless to do anything.
Of course then the war came, and what helps you fight a war? Deficit spending! No recession after that, everyone was busy cranking out we
ASP (Score:2, Funny)
Kangaroos in space!
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Now, can we actually achieve less, but have the remains fall on Canberra's parliament during a full sitting
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There must be a reason for that...
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Not enough (Score:5, Insightful)
Funding of $40.0 million over four years will be available for the establishment of the Australian Space Research Program, which will support space research, innovation and skills development.
Funding of $8.6 million over four years will help establish a Space Policy Unit in the Department of Innovation, Industry, Science and Research to coordinate Australia's national and international civil space activities, including partnerships with international space agencies.
Umm.. yeah. $10 million a year, until the next government gets in and cancels it. That should, umm, do a lot!
Re:Not enough (Score:5, Funny)
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Australia's Space Agency = Ralph
The children are right to laugh at us.
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Until the tiles^H^H^H^H^Hfur falls off it !
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Given that you're a UQ follower, I would have thought you'd be for giving the cash to the scramjet (Hypersonics) lab. Those guys can make little money go a very long way [spacenewsfeed.co.uk]. It would certainly be deserved.
Such a shame the original dude had a stroke. His understudy shows promise though.
Possible NZ Contribution (Score:5, Insightful)
Just a quick google so I am sure there's lot's more
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It went a little further than that;
President of Caltech University, Thomas Everhart said of him, "More than any other individual, Bill Pickering was responsible for America's success in exploring the planets an endeavour that demanded vision, courage, dedication, expertise and the ability to inspire two generations of scientists and engineers".
There was a good biography for him donated to almost every NZ library by IPENZ last year called William H. Pickering: America's Deep Space Pioneer: America's [amazon.com]
Re:Possible NZ Contribution (Score:4, Insightful)
Notice how he had to leave New Zealand to accomplish that.
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More telling would have been saying how he never came back.
New Zealand is a very small, very young, country. Many of our best and brightest go overseas. Possibly the experience is part of what makes them our best and brightest. Furthermore, getting funding for large projects just isn't going to happen in a country of just over four million people. I think you would find that we aren't so unhappy that we lost them, we're just happy that they
Yeah, but - (Score:5, Funny)
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Re:Yeah, but - (Score:4, Funny)
MHOOSH!!!
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Your 'S' is upside down.
Re:Yeah, but - (Score:5, Funny)
We just unbolt them from the ground and they fall into space.
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Re:Yeah, but - (Score:5, Funny)
We just unbolt them from the ground and they fall into space.
Well, it's well known that anything not bolted down in this country just disappears. It's been a mystery up until now. Thanks for clearing that up.
Be Serious (Score:2)
Any practical space program from scratch will cost closer to $50B than $50M.
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Well, to be fair, they're not talking about launch capability, they're talking about satellite development..
But $40 million over 4 years isn't enough to make one sat and have it launched.
Re:Be Serious (Score:5, Insightful)
To put it in perspective, its enough to pay 100 peoples salaries/etc over the four year period. This assumes an average of $100k salary+benefits+overhead per employee, which seems if anything an underestimate for hiring people you'd want running a space program. Put another way, a non-ground-breaking, standard satellite like the ones used for broadcasting XM/Sirius radio in the US cost closer to $300M to build.
Not to say you can't do quite a bit with a small amount of money if applied right... theres certainly some interesting work you could do with autonomy and constellations with microsats that you might be able to do in that cost, particularly if a lot of its contracted out to universities (students are cheap labor).
Still, I find that number awfully low, and it sounds like simply playing politics... making a small thing sound more important than it is. Or maybe its additional funding on top of other things that are already going on.
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hehe, how do you figure? It's $10m/year.. not $40m/year.
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$100k/year/person * 100 people = $10M/year.
Am I missing something? Over four years you have enough to pay those people for the same amount of time.
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You're missing that it's a government agency.. they'll spend more on the director's travel budget than all the other employee's combined.
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I also didn't mention anything on facilities, furniture, computers, paperwork, power, phone, internet, etc. I was just trying to give a sense of how small that amount of funding is.
That depends on how they're doing it. If they give money to universities that are already doing something in that area, desks and computers and paperwork and power and internet are already largely paid for and they can plough some of that money into getting the wacademics already there to research and build shiny toys. Plus, universities are sometimes quite good at making use of government money - look what happened at MIT and Stanford and various other places when Licklider and his successors splashed all
It's all about satellite remote sensing. (Score:2, Interesting)
Australia is heavily involved in a number of satellite remote sensing initiatives. There is currently a push on to get international coordination on satellite sensor specs. I think this is about getting Australia a seat at that table.
Spaaaaaaaaace (Score:5, Funny)
Ten Million a Year! (Score:5, Funny)
Just enough to fund the committee that will take four years to discuss whether an Agency is necessary.
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ANZAC? (Score:5, Funny)
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"form an ANZAC Space Agency together" So that'd be an Australia and New Zealand Army Corps Space Agency then?
Thats not going to end well [wikipedia.org] you know.
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"form an ANZAC Space Agency together" So that'd be an Australia and New Zealand Army Corps Space Agency then?
Thats not going to end well you know.
Be extremely careful. You are about to subject us all to some teary-eyed Aussie reciting the line how it was all the fault of the British general who couldn't tell time and sent those brave ANZACs to their deaths in Simla Bay at 5 past ten instead of 10 past five. And he'll be humming the Walzing Mathilda all the while.
None of us want this. So just lay off on how they bungled Gallipoli and we'll all be the better for it.
Re:ANZAC? (Score:4, Insightful)
I dunno. Gallipoli ended excellently, it was everything else that didn't go well.
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Kinda makes you think of Star Wars doesn't it! :)
Considering how much debt we took on (Score:4, Insightful)
I'm guessing "no".
My understanding is that this is part of the Defence Whitepaper's plan for Australia to develop orbital remote sensing that doesn't rely on asking the USA very nicely if we could please have some photos.
That much is pretty much safe from budget cuts in future. But everything else except pensions is now up for grabs. I know it's a recession blah blah blah but they just put in a $58 billion dollar deficit for this year alone, plus more to come. But it's OK, because Treasury predictions (which have NEVER been accurate) say that all the debt will all be paid off by unicorns and pixie dollars when GDP growth snaps up to 4.5% in a few years time.
When, inevitably, that does not happen, everything that's not discussable on talkback radio (like space science) will get fucked. The CSIRO will scraping along on patent money in just a few years from now, you watch.
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The labor government understands that national debt is the new colonialism.
Just look at the US.
why? (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm an Aussie. I love space.
But really - I'm quite happy to let the USA (and other countries) spend the money on space. It needs to be done. It's good it's being done. But for the time being - I'm happy to sit and watch.
Of course - if we think we can make this a commercially sound venture - go for your life.
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Glad you asked.
http://www.thespacereview.com/article/1369/1 [thespacereview.com]
"As the report says "The ADF's primary operational environment is a vast area. We need to have comprehensive situational awareness and an ability to operate within this environment with decisive military effect, if required." This means that Australia must have a fairly comprehensive set of space-based assets, not just communications and imaging satellites but eventually, at a minimum, GPS augmentation and electronic intelligence gathering spacecraf
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We basically just beg the americans for everything at the moment. If they cut off our surveillance imaging we just don't have any options.
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We need it for defence?
From who? Micronesia?
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Try: Indonesia. A few miles off our north coast. 300 million people compared to our 22 million. Overcrowded and politically not that stable (although by no means that bad either).
Besides, physical proximity doesn't really matter in modern war. Potential threats to Australia are basically just the same potential threats as the US or any other country could face...
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So long as it is funded by voluntary donation and not compulsarily via taxes, I agree with you.
ANZSA (Score:4, Interesting)
The Australian New Zealand Army Corp Space Agency?
I'd prefer ANZSA - sounds like answer (in an aussie ascent)
You ask it, they find it!
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A Moment (Score:2, Funny)
About time ... (Score:4, Funny)
And the first drongo that mentions Stroon!... (Score:4, Funny)
As (possibly ;-) ) heard in a pub recently...
"Look. Its not a foolproof plan but its still pretty bloody awesome. The pollies and their gready wanker mates have ruined the planet. Our country might cop it up the arse harder than any other poor bastard. So, we go with their grandiose bloody scheme and when it comes time for them to bugger off, we create a diversion, give 'em space suits with dodgy visors and pack 'em into a welded-up bus with lox flowing down the sides and pull the lever on a bloody big rubber band! Voosh! Hello Great Southern Bight!
Then we can grab ours beers, our horses, dogs, sheep, cats and sheilas and piss off in the real one. Waddya reckon?..."
Space Science != Space Program(s) != Space Agency (Score:5, Informative)
The following is fairly negative, but is posed honestly, not as flamebait, troll or other such nonsense.
It seems to be becoming a standard /. format to raise a topic, pose a question, and then proceed to discuss the issue and/or raise more questions as though the answer to the first was affirmative. The result is something that looks like it belongs in Ask Slashdot, and makes sense mostly if you read it while nodding vigorously. The real answers to the questions could often be found by doing some real research on the subject, but that doesn't happen as it would disrupt the chain of wishful thinking. The same could be said of locating information disproving the imaginary thesis, but that's even less likely to occur.
Space science encompasses pretty much anything that goes on over that magical 100 km altitude, even studying things up there from down here as well as technology associated with such work. $10M/year could fund your traditionally fine radio telescope program. It could as easily apply to using that hardware to support a space based radio-location (ie. GPS) program or even satellite relayed telecommunications. $10M/year might be able to get stretched to develop a sounding rocket if you scrimped by using something like Indonesia's sugar based solid fuel motors. It could also get swallowed whole easily maintaining your existing launch sites and related infrastructure. $40M would cover the initial training of a shuttle mission specialist but not the technical training for a specific mission. Many space related projects could be funded by the budgeted amount, except a "space program", taken to mean something like an Aussie spam-in-a-can riding into the black in an Aussie capsule on top an Aussie booster -- a home grown manned space flight program. Ain't gonna happen for that amount. That amount over 4 years might be able to fund the development of an administration and engineering group capable of doing something like that at some later date for a much greater amount. Given such an organization, that amount/time frame could go to make good progress on the proposed Ausroc LCLV, but almost certainly not enough to finish it.
Australia has a decent record of booster and payload/program development and execution without having burdened itself with a top heavy centralized administration. Sites have been operating quite well on an independent basis. For instance, Woomera has operated 15 pads and launched well over 500 missions in the past half century without a hint of need for an oversight agency. It's fairly inactive now but could wind back up if needed for the Ausroc or similar projects. Other sites have similar records, and the cumulative national record is impressive (see http://www.astronautix.com/country/ausralia.htm [astronautix.com] ). It ain't broke. Don't fix it. Have the sense not to replicate programs long since superseded elsewhere, such as early (ie. Mercury and Gemini) NASA, when one could obtain far more for the money via partnering with present day US or Russian programs. Sure, you could develop a manned program, or you could put that money to better use and get more out of it, as you have been all along.
And please do your homework so you can jump past the leading questions rhetoric and approach it from a position that lends to more fruitful discussion. If the quoted figures are your actual budget, then it was discussed and voted on. That means your own representative politicritter was at least peripherally involved, and an inquiry in their direction could well provide much more solid information (or at least proposed intentions) than the referenced vagaries and attached hypotheticals.
Finally, a piece of synchronicity. As I was writing this the following fortune/tagline was at the bottom of the page: "Mitchell's Law of Committees: Any simple problem can be made insoluble if enough meetings are held to discuss it."
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Can I say it, can I, can I ?
You must be new here (aww damn, I just saw your ID).
The real answers to the questions could often be found by doing some real research on the subject
Hell, most ./ users have trouble RTFA, or even RTFS ... now we have to "research" something before we answer ? Unless you want even more wikipedia citations than usual, I'd retract your request for research.
We're all terminal ADD sufferers here, and usually lose track of what ...
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... <i> tags we opened.
Hehe, that was clever wasn't it ?
knifey spooney (Score:5, Funny)
"You call that a ruby dye laser? Now *this* is a ruby dye laser!"
This is a knife! [youtube.com]
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water? (Score:2, Funny)
First order of business: how to harvest water ice from space?
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Asimov - The Martian Way
Comment removed (Score:4, Interesting)
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It's always the same problem with anything science and tech related in Australia. Politicians, and maybe even the wider population in general, have no real interest in science, technology, startup companys, innovation etc. as it's far easier and simpler to just sell food and natural resources and buy everything we need from North America and Europe.
Do they ever wonder why so many young Aussies live in Europe (or even the US) or why our trade deficit is always so huge, no matter how well the economy is going
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Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk! (Score:2)
Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk!
What's that, Skippy, the space shuttle is in trouble?
Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk!
Well what can we do, Skippy?
Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk!
Start up our own Australian Space Agency? How much money do we have?, Skip?
Tsk tsk tsk tsk tsk!
Just over $10 million a year? Crikey mate, you ain't too smart for a bush kangaroo, are you, Skippy?
They've been preparing for this for years. (Score:2)
How does NZ expect to run a space program and remain a nuclear-free zone? Sorta limits your options for powering satellites, doesn't it?
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Re:obligatory (Score:5, Funny)
Australian Regional Space Exploration. How's that sound?
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How else are we going to get our stroon?
Re:g'day mate (Score:5, Interesting)
Well drag me to hell...what does an island nation, sitting well below the equator, need with a space program anyhow.
Because future technology may come out of space science and astrophysics. Things like GPS and satellite communications are already here now. But to really benefit from advancements, you have to be properly in it.
And then there's the 'prestige' of not having to send people overseas. It's a good thing that space science is getting funded in Australia along side other scientific disciplines and hospitals.
Re:g'day mate (Score:5, Insightful)
what does an island nation, sitting well below the equator, need with a space program anyhow
Allow me to rephrase the stupid troll's question: What all representative governments should ask before starting a new agency (and therefor cost center) is "what's in it for our taxpayers"? This is a completely valid question.
The nation's geographic situation does not come in to this equation except in the question of launch costs. Oh, and when did the continent of Australia get downgraded to island status? I missed that one.
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Australia is an (well actually, "the") island continent. The mainland is the worlds biggest island, and Australia is also the worlds smallest continent.
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Errrr - thinking here. While in the Navy, rumor had it that plans were underway to float Long Island away from New York, to create the world's largest aircraft carrier.
Now - uhhhhm - you seem to be suggesting that the world's smallest continent might become the world's largest spacecraft?
But, how you gonna throw that big damned rock OUT THERE?!
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Australia has had a long history in space exploration purely because it's an island on the opposite side of the world to the US and most other space age nations. This includes broadcasting the pictures back from the moon and being a hub for a large number of satellites.
Basically, you can't contact a satellite directly very easily from the US if the satellite is on the other side of the world. Australia's always going to have its place.
Re:g'day mate (Score:5, Informative)
I know the parent is a troll but...
./ to render a proper degrees symbol.
Using " to indicate degrees as I haven't figured out how to get
Australia's most northern point is 10"41 S (cape york, QLD), the US's most southern point is 18"56 N in Hawaii or 24"33 N on the US mainland (Key West, Fl)
Australia's most northern capital city Darwin, NT is 12"29 S whislt the US's most southern capital city is Florida, FL is 25:46 N
Australia's biggest problem is that it's fairly low lying country but really so is Florida, where Cape Canaveral is located. As I pulled all of this out of Google Earth fairly quickly I don't have avg elevations for NT, QLD and FL.
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Well what does any nation sitting well above the equator need one for ? (Merrit Island 28 DEG, 8 min North - Woomera 31 DEG 11 min South) You can get much closer to the equator in Australia than that. Much closer than anywhere in the USA actually. The northern tip of Australia is at roughly 11 DEG South, while the most southerly point of the USA is still at roughly 24 DEG North.
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umm.. it's $8.6 million for that, $40 million over 4 years for the Space Agency. Which, frankly, means paper studies and not a lot of them.
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"Research" is generous. They'll do paper studies.
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But remember, we're Australians and we're already upside down. The sort of engineering we'll be doing is most likely 'reverse' engineering.
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Really? The CSIRO also does "research only", and were the ones that developed all of the wireless technology the world now relies upon. If by "fail" you mean "world-changing technological success" then yes, I agree.
(Of course, the corporate world tried to rip them off by not adhering to their side of the agreement with respect to patents, but that issue has been resolved in the CSIRO's favour.)
No, we won't be launching any manned space expeditions any time soon. However, if the research is well-directed and
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Nobody is going to pony up $50 billion to give to a group of people who haven't proven they can do anything useful with it
Obama gave considerably more to the banks I believe.
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riiiight. Cause outsourcing our satellite imaging to the americans is just so much more peaceful than doing it ourselves.
Re:As an Australian... (Score:4, Interesting)
Well I'm no Australian but considering the size of your population I seriously doubt promoting mostly national projects would help your scientists and the overall return on investment.
If all these European countries (having roughly a population similar to yours) have founded the ESA, this is precisely to share costs and having bigger projects. (see for example the special relationship between Canada and ESA) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ESA [wikipedia.org] Why not Australia as well?
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But the ESA is grossly underfunded. The NASA budget alone is larger than the budget of every other space agency on earth combined, and it's the smaller of the two US space agencies.
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Nice. NZ will become the first country without an air force to get a space program.
You mean.. besides the Royal New Zealand Airforce [airforce.mil.nz]?
You know we don't have any planes, right?
Apparently you don't know you have any planes.
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Which has the P-3C Orion as it's only combat capable aircraft?
Just get it over with give the PC3's to the navy and the rest to the army.
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You know, I'd never wondered quite how the stillsuits cooled themselves... the body is so terribly wasteful of its water precisely because it needs to cool down in desert conditions, maybe it's just that stillsuits were well insulated and very shiny?
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I thought of Farscape as soon as I read the headline. Didn't remember what the agency was called though.