Gilmour Space Technologies prepares for first Eris | Australian Markets

The countdown is on to a milestone second in Australian space and manufacturing historical past, with Gilmour Space set to launch its first Eris rocket into space on Thursday morning.

The launch, if profitable, would mark Australia’s first-ever domestically designed and produced rocket launching into orbit and would make the nation solely the twelfth within the world to realize the complicated engineering feat.

Blast-off will happen from a launch pad in Bowen, North Queensland, and Gilmour CEO and co-founder Adam Gilmour mentioned he would “hit the town” arduous with a profitable launch.

“I think it will be like winning an Olympic gold medal,” he instructed NewsWire.

“I think I’ll be extremely happy, and I’ll give my brother a big hug.

“I intend to hit the town of Bowen hard that night for a party and buy everyone a beer.”

Mr Gilmour and his brother James based the Gold Coast company in 2015 to uplift Australia’s sovereign space capabilities and compete with American giants like Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The company’s Eris rocket is designed to ship small satellites into low earth orbits for industrial and authorities prospects.

The countdown window to launch has now begun following closing approvals from CASA and the Australian Space Agency and Mr Gilmour mentioned he was feeling “pretty good”.

“The weather forecast looks really good for Thursday to Sunday,” he mentioned.

“We’re going to give it a good crack. We’ve started the launch countdown process already.”

Key “dry” checks happen 36 hours out from launch, with the Gilmour crew checking avionics and energy systems, earlier than transferring to fluid checks nearer to launch.

“That basically happens pretty much right up to the launch window. That will keep us busy,” he mentioned.

“We’ve done two wet dress rehearsals before … so there is some confidence we can proceed through, but you never know on the day.”

Mr Gilmour mentioned his key metrics for success have been getting off the pad after which flight time, with 10 seconds a essential marker.

“That’s like winning a soccer match one-nil,” he mentioned.

“Two-nil is 30 seconds and all the way to first stage is three-nil and then it just gets better from there.”

No space company has efficiently entered orbit on its first launch attempt.

SpaceX achieved orbit on its fourth attempt in September 2008.

Mr Gilmour mentioned the company hoped to achieve orbit on its third attempt.

A jar of vegemite and a digicam will trip on the rocket.

“If the payload fairing goes off, that’s halfway to space already, and then we can take some fantastic shots of space and the earth,” he mentioned.

“If we get to orbit, that camera will be taking shots of the earth.”

The company is backed by enterprise capital corporations Blackbird and Main Sequence, the Queensland Investment Corporation and superannuation funds HESTA and HostPlus and final yr raised $55m to fund its manufacture and check of Eris.

Eris was designed and manufactured on the company’s Gold Coast manufacturing unit and Mr Gilmour mentioned Australia may reach manufacturing if it went after “high margin” industries.

“The nuance of it is, we’re not good at manufacturing things that have a very low margin because our labour costs are so high,” he mentioned.

“What we should do is focus on things that have a very high margin. Anything to do with software, chips, high tech, anything to do with defence, all of that has very high margins and we are as competitive as anyone in those industries.

“Space is a great example. Space is an industry that has very high salaries around the world, and even with our high salaries in Australia, we are still competitive with America and Europe.

“That’s what Australia has to focus on, not low-value widgets.”

Mission control is a “big donga” about 7km exterior Bowen, Mr Gilmour mentioned.

The launch window runs from Thursday via to Sunday.