The space race is

heating up here in Downunder. Which state will get the proposed new facilities?
There will be complaints from the losers whatever decision is made.
I don't know nearly enough to even voice an informed opinion about whether the state I live in should get the prize.
What I do know is that my maternal uncle worked for the space industry. I have  no idea what he did. The only people who would have known were his colleagues in the same industry.
When I was in my teens my uncle would disappear periodically. The only thing we knew was that he was going to Woomera. There was what we called a "rocket range" there. You had to have a permit to visit the place.  
My uncle would go and, sometime in the next few days, there would be news of a successful - or not successful "rocket launch".
My brother and I, the only two of the four of us who were aware our uncle was even involved, knew better than to say anything to the other children at school. We had been told not to say anything.
I don't know what all the secrecy was about but apparently it was thought necessary.  
There was a school in the Woomera township. I know the Senior Cat hoped he would never be posted there. It was not just in a very remote location it was also isolated in other ways. Unless you had a permit you had to get permission even to just pass through - not that it was on the way to anywhere else. You were in the middle of the desert - marvellous for launching rockets. 
The Senior Cat had been posted to another isolated school when Yuri Gagarin went into space in April 1961. We were living much closer to Woomera than we had been but we were still too far awy to see rockets being launched and we only had very poor radio reception or days old newspapers to give us news. My uncle was away for weeks that time. Did he go to Russia? We will never know. I think it is unlikely. He didn't speak Russian - apart from a few polite phrases. 
By July 1969 men had landed on the moon. I remember seeing the grainy pictures on all the available television sets. The available film was shown all over the teacher training college. People marvelled at it...and yes, it was something to marvel at.
Now there are satellites...and more satellites. They provide us with the internet and other telecommunications. They monitor our every move.
And there is Mir - the International Space Station. People live up there for months at a time. They do "space walks" from there.
I'd hate it. The very idea terrifies me to the point that even thinking about it to write this makes me feel as if I am on the edge of a cliff looking down from an extreme height.
But, out there past all those things, there are the planets in our solar system and beyond that more stars than there are grains of sand on this planet. 
And yesterday they were boasting about catching a "neutrino". I wonder what they will think about that in fifty years from now?