Quote:
Originally Posted by Peter Ward
Interesting! Sadly Oz politicians sniffed at thermal solar some years back, and predictably lost the technology to China. A UNSW team did the ground work and for about $ 9 billion could have built a base load system that would have covered the entire eastern seaboards electricity load.....
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That's par for the course in this country, and not just for anything to do with energy production. The pollies are as nearsighted as you can get. There's also quite a few in industry that are exactly the same. Look at the Sarich Orbital Engine. He had to go to the US to produce it because no one out here would back his ideas up. Most of the solar technology the world uses was originally developed here, but ended up out of our hands because no one would lift a finger (or hardly a finger) to get it into production and fund further research. Then you have the Helicon Double Layer Thruster....conceived of and developed at ANU. A revolutionary new type of ion propulsion system for spacecraft. They had to goto the ESA to get funding to even get it off the ground!!!!. Most of the politicians and such out here couldn't even spell the first word in the name, let alone understand what it was about. Most probably have never heard of it.
Nope, all we are is a huge open cut pit so far as the pollies are concerned. Mining, agriculture and tourism. A hole, a few sheep and a couple of waiters is what we've been reduced to. What's left are process workers.