Koonibba and Whalers Way on the Eyre Peninsula are the (literal) launchpads for bolstering Australia’s space manufacturing capability.
For Southern Launch CEO Lloyd Damp, space is simply an enabler.
“If you don’t have access to space – getting to or coming back from space – you are missing out on the true benefits that space can provide,” he told create.
After seven years of environmental, economic and regulatory studies, operator Southern Launch has secured all the necessary approvals to begin regular commercial orbital rocket launches from South Australia’s Whalers Way Orbital Launch Complex later this year.
Damp said it will service global launch providers seeking to meet niche but significant satellite markets. This doesn’t involve catapulting massive constellations into the sky, but offers smaller operators quicker and cheaper access to essential trajectories – and that’s a hotbed for innovation.
“We are starting to see companies undertaking on-orbit manufacture. These companies have identified that, if you can turn off gravity and undertake a chemical reaction, the chemical reaction can potentially yield different results.”
It’s opening up a whole new realm of pharmaceutical manufacturing.
Damp said organisations are seeking to exploit zero gravity to grow ultra-high-grade silicon wafers. This extreme purity is needed for next-generation quantum computing.
“Australia has, as a nation, stuck up our hand saying we want to build quantum computers. Fantastic – let’s ensure we can capture and manufacture those raw products here as well.”
Ultimately, it’s just another step in the transport revolution. Just as steamships and refrigeration opened up the world for Australia’s meat exports, similar opportunities will result from facilitating orbital services.
“People far smarter than I will start to dream up and offer services I never thought were possible,” Damp said. “That’s when we’ll begin to see the true benefits of what access to space means.”

Go to launch
Time is money, but, for the global space industry, so is weight. For Damp, that’s what gives Whalers Way a competitive edge.
Its position on the tip of the Eyre Peninsula – a long way from anywhere from an international perspective – is its selling point on many different levels.
“We developed the orbital launch complex because we observed a significant shift in overall satellite and constellation positioning,” he explained.
Most launch sites worldwide have been optimised to boost rockets into a traditional equatorial orbit. Here, low-earth orbit satellites usually circumnavigate the planet every 90 minutes, including a 10-minute window to communicate with their home ground station below.
Polar orbits, however, go roughly north-south. This enables a sun-synchronous orbit where a satellite passes over the same piece of ground at precisely the same time every day. This is ideal for hyperspectral surveillance of crops, bushfire fuel loads and soil moisture content.
But it’s an angle that’s difficult and expensive to access from traditional launch sites such as Cape Canaveral and Vandenberg Air Force Base, on the east and west coasts of the US.
Put simply, rockets don’t have to twist and turn to avoid population centres, burning precious (and heavy) fuel in the process. That means significantly more weight can be dedicated towards the rocket’s job – lifting a payload into orbit.
It’s all because “nowhere” is relative.
Far horizons
“A lot of people say: ‘Why don’t you just use Woomera?’” Damp explained. “Well, even if Defence wasn’t using it 365 days a year, where’s the closest civilian airport? Where’s the regular delivery service for the area? That’s where things get complex and expensive.”
Southern Launch began its search for a suitable launch ground in 2017.
“Now, we’ve got 3500 km of open ocean. Our launch vehicles can fly safely over that with very little risk to anyone below.”
Whaler’s Way is near the major regional centre of Port Lincoln, with all of its facilities and services.
“A lot of these operators want to launch frequently. They don’t want to have to hire a specialised transport service every time. They want economies of scale, and they want to be able to buy a standard airline seat and load their stuff on twice-daily logistics services already operating to the area”.
Over sweeping plains
Some 40 km west of Whaler’s Way is Southern Launch’s Koonibba Test Range. “The total area is about 41,000 km2 – almost the size of Ohio or three-quarters the size of Tasmania,” Damp explained. “We can even launch from there into the Woomera Prohibited Area. We have that agreement in place.” It’s among the least populated regions on Earth, and that means anything falling from the sky isn’t likely to hurt anyone. “The key concern for us was to make sure there’s incredibly low population density beneath the flight path, and that there are formal agreements and understandings in place with those who use the land.”
To the north of the launch facility is a national park with no public roads.
“The only real risks are to the Trans-Australia railway line and a single farm.”
It’s an ideal testing ground for space-related technology. New propulsion fuels and systems can be pushed to the limit. Electrical and mechanical systems can be sent to the edge of space to prove they work. Most importantly, they can return again for analysis afterwards.
“If your rocket conks out halfway to orbit, well, there goes a brand new piece of tech. The only way to avoid that is through thorough testing. Sure, all the tests on the ground may give it the thumbs up. But only a real launch can provide certainty”.
The world’s emerging space manufacturing industry needs somewhere to deliver its orbital products safely, regularly and with ease of access. That’s where Australia’s high standard of regional infrastructure comes back into play.
“From an Australian perspective, what this means is we can leverage our wide open spaces to receive the capsules coming back down.”
And access to space, Damp said, is just the starting point.
“Ultimately, we want Australia to step up. We should take the advanced products produced in orbit and use them in our industries.”