Re[FT] Oz Shoestring Space Program

> Two days and I've already got some tiny little country
> annoyed at me!

Not all of it. And I spose Oz is tiny compared to, say, Russia. It's
only the size of the Continental US, quite small really. 

> A ball point pen that works in zero-g is important.
> You'd realize this if you had a space program

Hey, we have a space program. Not much of one, but it exists.

Quote from http://www.spacedaily.com re Hypersonic Ramjet tested
yesterday
-----------------
The $1.5 million program is working within a small budget in
international space terms. The program led by UQ's Dr Allan Paull has
resulted from three years of scrounging and cobbling together of
scientific and engineering partnerships, and the goodwill of
universities, governments and scientists in Australia, the U.K., the
U.S., Germany, France, Korea and Japan. It may be a scroungejet, as well
as a scramjet, but if nothing else, financial adversity has inspired
ingenuity.
...
In the U.S., NASA's more complex Phase 1, Hyper-X, X-43A scramjet
mission has different objectives, and is funded in the vicinity of $185
million. NASA's first flight ended in mishap on June 2.....
----------------------
The FedSat project I'm heading the spaceflight software for is, in
comparison, very well funded. Something like $2 million US. This for a
satellite that has 5 different experiments on. Including a High
Performance Computing Experiment taking programmable gate-arrays into
space, and an experimental payload for NASA. All on a bird the size of a
bar fridge.

It even incorporates an Interocitor as part of the Attitude Control
System.