Gilmour Space Technologies prepares for first Eris rocket launch in Bowen

The countdown is on to a milestone moment in Australian space and manufacturing history, with Gilmour Space set to launch its first Eris rocket into space on Thursday morning.

The launch, if successful, would mark Australia’s first-ever domestically designed and produced rocket launching into orbit and would make the country only the 12th in the world to achieve the complex engineering feat.

Blast-off will take place from a launch pad in Bowen, North Queensland, and Gilmour CEO and co-founder Adam Gilmour said he would “hit the town” hard with a successful launch.

“I think it will be like winning an Olympic gold medal,” he told NewsWire.

“I think I’ll be extremely happy, and I’ll give my brother a big hug.

“I intend to hit the town of Bowen hard that night for a party and buy everyone a beer.”

Mr Gilmour and his brother James founded the Gold Coast company in 2015 to uplift Australia’s sovereign space capabilities and compete with American giants like Elon Musk’s SpaceX.

The company’s Eris rocket is designed to send small satellites into low earth orbits for commercial and government customers.

The countdown window to launch has now begun following final approvals from CASA and the Australian Space Agency and Mr Gilmour said he was feeling “pretty good”.

“The weather forecast looks really good for Thursday to Sunday,” he said.

“We’re going to give it a good crack. We’ve started the launch countdown process already.”

Key “dry” checks take place 36 hours out from launch, with the Gilmour crew checking avionics and power systems, before moving to fluid checks closer to launch.

“That basically happens pretty much right up to the launch window. That will keep us busy,” he said.

“We’ve done two wet dress rehearsals before … so there is some confidence we can proceed through, but you never know on the day.”

Mr Gilmour said his key metrics for success were getting off the pad and then flight time, with 10 seconds a crucial marker.

“That’s like winning a soccer match one-nil,” he said.

“Two-nil is 30 seconds and all the way to first stage is three-nil and then it just gets better from there.”

No space company has successfully entered orbit on its first launch attempt.

SpaceX achieved orbit on its fourth attempt in September 2008.

Mr Gilmour said the company hoped to reach orbit on its third attempt.

A jar of vegemite and a camera will ride on the rocket.

“If the payload fairing goes off, that’s halfway to space already, and then we can take some fantastic shots of space and the earth,” he said.

“If we get to orbit, that camera will be taking shots of the earth.”

The company is backed by venture capital firms Blackbird and Main Sequence, the Queensland Investment Corporation and superannuation funds HESTA and HostPlus and last year raised $55m to fund its manufacture and test of Eris.

Eris was designed and manufactured at the company’s Gold Coast factory and Mr Gilmour said Australia could succeed in manufacturing if it went after “high margin” industries.

“The nuance of it is, we’re not good at manufacturing things that have a very low margin because our labour costs are so high,” he said.

“What we should do is focus on things that have a very high margin. Anything to do with software, chips, high tech, anything to do with defence, all of that has very high margins and we are as competitive as anyone in those industries.

“Space is a great example. Space is an industry that has very high salaries around the world, and even with our high salaries in Australia, we are still competitive with America and Europe.

“That’s what Australia has to focus on, not low-value widgets.”

Mission control is a “big donga” about 7km outside Bowen, Mr Gilmour said.

The launch window runs from Thursday through to Sunday.