‘It’s a joke’: New Zealand is thrashing us in the space race, says Dr Karl

Australia spends more on a pedestrian walkway than it does on four years of space exploration, says Dr Karl.
The beloved scientist and entertainer expressed his frustrations with the lack of aerospace investment to Steve Price.
“We’re putting in nothing. It’s a joke.”
Even New Zealand is leagues ahead of Australia, earning around $200 million in GDP from their 39 satellites.
Steve reminisced about growing up in SA, which once had a thriving rocket-testing facility at Woomera.
“We blew it up with dynamite. We destroyed it, so that we wouldn’t be in competition to the US or UK,” Dr Karl added.
Dr Karl’s Random Road Trip Through Science is his latest book, featuring all-new stories about space, nature, and beyond.
Using an app, readers can experience visualisations of the stories, such as a video of the Halloween asteroid that almost hit Earth in 2015.
“It’s possibly the first mainstream book in the world that has augmented reality with it.”
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