Best Place in Australia for a Space Force Military Base?

Laer Carroll

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I'm 80,000 words into the projected 100,000 word end of the Space Orphan trilogy. At this point Earth is building up the ability to fight a war to protect the planet from an alien space attack.

Australia seems likely to play a significant part in the battles. Where would be the most logical location for an Australian Space Force base?
 

Sarahrizz

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Granted, I've never set foot in Australia, nor outside of the USA for that matter. my advice: It probably doesn't matter where, but it sounds like your piece will include some piece of logic as to why the base was put where it gets put. That would make it up to your writing talents to make that seem logical to us. Some factors your characters are likely to consider:
Proximity to sources of goods, materials, and fuels needed to keep it running.
Proximity to human residences- This one is tricky, because on the one side they'll want lots of people to work there to keep the place running, but they also know that it will likely be a site bombed first, and too close means more lives lost. Perhaps the government would build special residences for the employees/ service men.
Since it sounds like your threat is extraterrestrial, you also may want to consider placing several bases around the globe. Perhaps, somehow, a floating base or an air-ship type base would be useful. I don't know how far ahead you are technologically.
 

Muppster

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Woomera has a long history of military/aerospace R&D, including space-launch vehicle flight testing. Blue Streak (the British space launcher) was going to fly out of there before the project was canned in the 50s, and they did a lot of sounding rocket work.
 

aguywhotypes

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somewhere in the middle. You could camouflage it by putting it in/around a strip mining site. Lots of that going on for real. They have fly ins/out hauling the workers back and forth over the weekends. This could also add in more cover.
 
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Helix

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Woomera in northern South Australia is a military test site, but there was a proposal to put a rocket launch site on Cape York Peninsula, because of its proximity to the equator. In both cases, they're a long way from major towns, and in the case of CYP, it'd be unusable during the Wet Season.


ETA: I don't know what I was thinking about Woomera and I was only there last year. It's about 550 km from Adelaide, on sealed roads and, fwiw, right next to Roxby Downs.
 
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frimble3

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Speaking on behalf of the international readership, Woomera is the one Australian aerospace location we'd likely have heard of.
It was the only one to spring to mind when I thought they'd use a location that had already been used for that kind of work. I even know that it's named for an Aboriginal spear-throwing tool. (Thank you, CBC.)