Well, they were and are failures in this field, Archie. Hidebound. They had to make rail guns like they make cannon, more or less the way Genghis Khan did. And they cannot go beyond their limitations, evidently.
Once upon a time under PM Keating, Australia was trying to become a clever country. Or so Keating said.
But his vocal supporters were anti-family, etc. so the opposition under John Howard won on the family first platform.
Howard made the brilliant discovery that stupidity is the reason for wealth creation - you do the same thing again and again, like sell anything from burgers to land, to make wealth; so whatever creates and boosts stupidity is good for the economy, so
good for the country. So, there was no use for research done in the land, why not with the vast money made from stupidity buy the research from abroad?
Very brilliant, and it did work. By sacking us Telecom researchers, he got the money to pay some USAn hitmen to sack half the company's workforce and privatize it as well. Very brilliant, indeed. Heaps of money was made, really Australians never had it
so good.
Point is, that with so much stupidity in power, no scope for cleverness except in the health and finance sectors, there is no one left to do new and great things in engineering. Especially when out of certain considerations, certain sorts with such
background as I get automatically filtered out of reckoning.
So it is, that unless they acquire and internalize the wits to understand all that I have posted online, they cannot do what it takes to make very powerful rail guns, that will blast objects out of the Earth and put heavier objects into orbit. Which no
doubt, is what the NATO wants to do to beat Russia in Ukraine.
Who knows, if clever technical people still exist in US, from where Australia gets its research and business know-how.
From the impression I get, from the likes of whodat, Alsing and Moroney, stupidity is catching, like the virus. The USAns are now looking extremely stupid, from such types and those shown in the pseudoscience sitcoms like Big Bang Theory.
Ah well, Archie, what to say, but, que sera sera, whatever will be, will be; the future's not ours to see.

Cheers,
Arindam Banerjee

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