I should just mention that, whilst it is highly desirable to get submissions in by the formal closing date, most Senate Committees will still accept submissions after the deadlines. Deadlines try to make people aim for a date and keep people disciplined, but the Committee will still receive (and thus usually read) any submissions that come in right up until they begin drafting their final report. The Committee also uses the deadline to look at all submissions that have come in by then to help them plan potential witnesses and locations for any public hearings.

If people know their submission is going to be late, it can also help to give the Committee Secretariat a call so they at least know its coming so they can take that into account in their planning.

This advice obviously applies for all future Senate Inquiries, but in regards to the Inquiry mentioned into Stolen Generations compensation, it is also a reminder that its not too late – the Committee isn’t due to report until mid-June, so submissions in the next week or so would still be of some value.

Even short submissions expressing general support for (or against) an idea or for some of the larger submissions already put in can help the Committee get a better sense of how much public support or interest there is in an issue.

Patrick: You’re living down to my expectations, yet again.

tactical rockets arent terribly interesting

Well that’s a matter of disputadum de gustibus, not pedantry. Non-à propos I’ll cop, pops.
Seriously though, the tactical imagination does lend itself to space-mindedness. Witness the Verne-on-roids space-gun and space-slingshot.

Ahem: rocketrys only as expensive as you want to make it, Fyodor, ask any guerrilla. Its the space nerds problem that they want the launch point and target to be on different planets.
/warnerd

You mean, of course, guerillero. And, speaking of pedantry, tactical rockets aren’t terribly interesting – or even

There is a tendency, which deserves encouragement to differentiate enquir(e)(y) and inquir(e)(y) by using en- as a FORMAL WORD for ask and in- for an investigation…

Jacques is correct.

Inquiry is the word used on the Senate website. I’ll check the usage in my copy of the Chicago Manual of Style when I get back from uni.

We got pretty close with part of Blue Streak, but rocketry is an expensive hobby for second- and third-rate powers. Oh, and Sir Hugo Drax.

In the meantime, keep watching the stars, live long and prosper, yoda yoda.

Here’s a vaguely-related clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=guzQXTEoDE8
Apparently this old Zulu folk song reinterpreted by American musical folkies is now used as the standard wakeup music on the Earth’s only functioning space station. By request of the Russians.

Now that’s globalisation.

Sure Canada was fourth but at least we beat the Brits, who had to use an Australian launch site anyway.

But yes, good reminder Jacques. I’ll be putting in a personal submission (“Dear Inquiry, I still want be an astronaut when I grow up.”) But intersteller laffs aside, Australia’s world-leading expertise in composite materials, MEMS and fluid dynamics should be focused beyond just this planet. Maybe we would could team up with Brazil and Japan. They’re really shaking arse now with lightweight control and propulsion systems for powered heavier than air flight.

Also, why not tip a seven figure Government sweetener into getting Virgin Galactic based in Australia? I reckon at least a 40% ROI in terms of through the gate tourism, international branding and tech spinoffs within five years.

While I find serious libertarians generally risible (present company excepted Jacques) I certainly have a soft spot for that whole “Man Who Sold The Moon” approach to the high frontier.

Space may be expensive to get there but it’s free for anything once you arrive. And we wouldn’t be the human race that I know and often love without it taking on apparently ludicrous challenges and succeeding.

“OK, let me get this straight. You’re gonna crawl out of our mother ocean onto that “land” stuff and “walk”? You fool. You’ll be back.”

And we did return – with Bill Beebe’s bathysphere, Jacques Costeau, driftnetting, scuba diving in purpose-sunk ships, telecom cables, hydrocarbon extraction technology, big black submarines and underwater hotels in Dubai and Florida.

Space awaits.