I’ve been busy this week so there won’t be a new article until next week, but today there was an interesting news article on ABC News: NASA scientists visit NT site which could eventually blast rockets to the Moon.
NASA is interested in building a rocket launch site in Australia. Where have they chosen to build it? Near Nhulunbuy, in the far north of the Northern Territory. As well as Cape York Peninsula (mentioned in 20. Rocket launch sites), this is also pretty much as close to the equator as you can get within Australia. In fact it’s even a tiny bit further north than Weipa.
12° off the equator, compared to 28° for Cape Canaveral. Definitely an improvement, though not quite as good as the 5° at Guiana Space Centre used by ESA.
It occurs to me that if someone owns a big chunk of land right on the equator on the east coast of Indonesia, Brazil, or Somalia, then they could probably make a bunch of money by building a spaceport and renting it out to all comers.