Australia Launched a Rocket. We Should’ve Lost Our Minds.

Australia launched its first ever home made rocket yesterday.

Built by Gilmour Space Technologies, powered by local engineering and a few government grants, it made it 14 seconds into the sky before fizzing out.

But that’s 14 seconds more airtime than we’ve ever had.

As an amateur rocketeer, whose youth-hood was peppered with LINX Apollo propelled lemon cannons and sparkler bombs, I’m excited by anything that yeets into a horizon line. But I couldn’t shake another, more familiar vice grip feeling as I watched the rocket come back to Queensland.

The darkest force in the galaxy: Australian Tall poppy syndrome.

How many people (the ones who knew about it) watched that post-launch vid and felt the urge to cut it down before it even cleared the trees? Drawing on a deep force stronger than Yoda to keep that rocket on the ground and fail for the good of mediocrity?

And where was the hype? Where was the national moment pre-launch?

We should have been packed into Harvey Norman, 100-inch TVs beaming it live in glorious 5K. There should’ve been school excursions. Watch parties. An Aussie flag rippling at the launchpad with hands on heart, baring witness to Australia’s first venture into the stars.

Instead, we all joined in the Musk-era smirk of a rocket fail. We should have been shattered.

And where was our leadership drumming up the national spirit or guiding the ignorant naysayers through the many attempts it takes to get an object into space?

The PM, who arguably has one of the most finely tuned social media accounts our country has ever seen, didn’t post a single thing about it. Seriously?

What happened to ‘a future made in Australia?’ The ‘first home made rocket launch in Australia’s history’ feels plum bang at the heart of that multimillion dollar campaign. You can’t get more ‘futuristic’ than Australian made and owned rocket ship. The easy win optics feel obvious to me.

Instead, on launch day, we got a 20 minute press conference about the dripped in inclusion of YouTube in the teen social media ban.

I wonder if the government has considered the impact on our future innovation via cutting off young curiosity at the cost of safety like Baby Sharks won’t find a way.

This is the problem. Our national allergy to backing anything before it’s already broken through. We don’t celebrate potential. We celebrate proven results, preferably after the world has told us it’s okay.

But how do you break through when no one’s willing to stand next to the rocket at liftoff?

This mindset has to go. We can’t keep pretending we’re “above it all” while ranking 105th on Harvard’s Economic Complexity Index, with Côte d'Ivoire, Ghana, Namibia lapping at our tails. New Zealand is 68.

We claim to be a nation built on smarts and spirit, but our innovation record is the true failure to launch fizzer. Tall Poppy is the rocket fuel that makes this results status qu’OK.

We need to face facts: We are the Jamaican bobsled team, but with more lithium. And we need to start backing innovation the way we back the Matildaroos. Full-throated. Full-tilt. From the start.

Actually, I take that back. Jamaica ranks in at 84, a cool 26 places higher on the index. We should have been celebrating this rocket like we invented fire.

Yeah, 14 seconds isn’t much. But it’s something. And that something sends a signal to the international community that we’re finally on the launchpad. We are in the game.

And if it’s 15 seconds next time, it’s still a giant leap. We need to get around. Even if it feels stupid to do so.

There will always be galleries of keyboard galahs squawking about money waste, the loudest critics usually have the least feathers in the game and crying for the waste to come their way.

These missions aren’t about flashy success. They’re about building momentum. And those 14 seconds mean more than most realise. How could we miss this?

It’s time to blast the Round up on Tall Poppy and go full ‘not here to f*ck spiders’ on this stuff.

We need more Fed Square at 2am energy around the Have-a-go. Less one hand, one bounce on the telescope.

I didn’t see the launch live, but I’ll be tuning in next time. And I’ll be doing my best not to crash the rocket with tall pop telekinesis.

In the meantime, I might put some ideas together for some Aus Space merch. Help us get us into the spirit.

(AI concept mock. Not real merch)

To Gilmour Space Technologies:
Congratulations. Good luck with round two. And f*ck the haters.