Tonight I went to a Unimelb event celebrating the 50th anniversary of the launch of the first satellite built in Australia (wording deliberately convoluted - satellite was built in 1966, but not launched till 1970, by which time other Australian satellites had been launched). A student-led project with a budget of $600 (which I'm sure was worth more then than now, but still sounds small. Incidentally, that was the first year of decimal currency in Australia).
The project: OSCAR 5. One of the original models is in the Museums Victoria collection
(here), and was on display tonight.
Many of the original team were at the event, and I talked to a few of them.
For antennae they used tape measures. That's right, tape measures. One of the people I was talking to was the person who went down to the local hardware store and bought the tape measures. And for final deployment of the satellite to try and orient it correctly, they used bed springs. Actual bed springs that they had to go to a bed manufacturing factory and negotiate for.
Another one I talked to was the only one of the original project team who had a car, meaning they were the driver following the weather balloon on testing runs. And possibly a few traffic lights were run to make sure the balloon wasn't lost...
They had to basically figure out everything from scratch, since understandably neither the US nor the USSR were going to share what they had learned about space. And were very relieved that it actually worked after launch, since they had only been able to test pieces, not a fully assembled module.
All in all it was a fun event, and with ASA as event sponsor also reminded us that Australia has done great things in the past and can continue to do so, particularly when working with other space agencies and private enterprises round the world.
One final note: Among other people, I talked with a student who had just graduated with a masters in mechanical engineering, after initially studying a double degree including law because they'd got really high marks, even though they had always been on the Maths/Science side of the fence. They said they had great experiences and learnt a lot in the years they practiced as a lawyer, so it wasn't wasted time, and I respect that there are many on here who really
want to practice medicine, in particular - but don't just do law/medicine because you've got the marks to do it.