Comments by "Tony Wilson" (@tonywilson4713) on "The Project" channel.

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  6. ​ @Imagineering100  The Australian Space Agency was labelled as Australia's NASA but in fact its nothing but a PR exercise. I was at the First Meeting/Seminar in Melbourne where they told us what "The Plan Is!" The very first thing they said was there would be no launch program which we had already heard whispers of. When we asked why and pointed out that if you want to be in space you need to be able to LAUNCH THINGS. We got this odd answer about promotional work. When we queried that we got this whole pile of nonsense about how the ASA was going to be a promoter of space technology. So we asked how they'd do that and they then replied that's what they wanted to hear from "us, the aerospace people" so they could formulate a plan to promote space. It just ended up as the circular discussion where they told us what we wouldn't be doing and every time we asked what we would be doing they told us that's what they wanted us to advise them on. We found out that the ASA was made up of a bunch of public servants and NOT ONE OF THEM had any technical qualification at all, except for the Head of the Agency who not only wasn't at that meeting but whose actual background was in geology. Yes - someone thought a rock expert would be good with rockets?? Of the first 30 or so people directly hired by Oz NASA not one had a background in any sort of engineering, but they did include a couple of IT guys full time to do a web site that had at its core some merchandise to sell - t-shirts & hoodies. They had a pile of administration staff that included a qualified spray painter. Yeah their profiles were all on LinkedIn. Maybe the worst insult was the announcement of "Mission Control" to be located in Adelaide. When we asked what "The Mission was?" We got silence. Then we got (with great public fanfare) the announcement they would be spending several million dollars on a large multi screen TV system that would live stream Mission Control from NASA with the comment by Karen Andrews (The Minister for Space) "It will be a great tourist attraction." That comment was actually on the front page of the Adelaide news paper. When you tell everyone your "Oz NASA" and then you do none of the things NASA does because you're NOT a science organisation its hard to see what it is your meant to be. To this day nobody is sure what the ASA does other than it occasionally makes some noise in an attempt to be relevant.
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