The Chaser Report - One Small Step For Queensland-kind

Episode Date: July 30, 2025

Avid astronomer Dom Knight has incredible news about how Queenlanders are pushing into the final frontier. Meanwhile, Charles shares his solution for reviving the Australian space program, as well as an unlikely cure for multiple sclerosis.---Buy the Wankernomics book: https://wankernomics.com/bookListen AD FREE: https://thechaserreport.supercast.com/ VOTE OPTICS FOR A LOGIE: https://vote.tvweeklogies.com.au/Follow us on Instagram: @chaserwarSpam Dom's socials: @dom_knightSend Charles voicemails: @charlesfirthEmail us: [e-mail] CEO’s Super-yacht upgrade Fund: https://chaser.com.au/support/ Send complaints to: [e-mail] Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The Chaser Report is recorded on Gadigal Land. Striving for mediocrity in a world of excellence, this is The Chaser Report. Hello and welcome to The Chaser Report with Dom and Charles. And today, Charles, some science. Not always our strong suit as a podcast, so I think it's time to address this, by talking about good old Aussie innovation. They're kind of, I mean, we're talking about essentially genius inventions on the scale of the hills hoist. Yes, and this is an important episode, Dom, because.

I don't know whether you've seen the latest figures, but the Australian economy, I think, is something like the 113th most diverse economy in the world. Is it really? Yes. So it's behind far more diverse and rich economies like Botswana. Yeah. And I think probably North Korea might be more diverse of a lot of economy. By diverse, do you mean almost all of our money is still made out of mining? Is that basically?

Yeah. Our entire economy is essentially digging dirt up and then selling the dirt. dirt to China. That's essentially how everything works, right? I mean, what could possibly go wrong with that model? Yes, imagine if one day the Chinese decided they didn't like dirt anymore. Oh, yes. We ran out of valuable things to dig up.

Lucky there's so much space in the middle of Australia. You know what they should dig up. What's that? The Epstein files. Oh, right. There's a non-tech to talk. I'm just thinking, Charles, there are so many more things we could do with Australia to diversify, though. Why not more pine gaps?

Why don't have a Chinese pine gap? Yeah, we should have every country, we should host a pine gap for them. Because I feel like this is the era where, you know, other great superpowers are going to emerge, right? Sure. And we have a sort of bidding war where part of being a superpower is defined by how many bases do you have in the Australian out there? There's a lot of space. I'm just saying, you could have more pine gaps a long way from the current pine gap. You have an Indian pine gap.

Yep. A Russian one, wouldn't be any problem with that that I can think of. I think the whole point is, it's best that we don't know what's going on. Like, the whole agreement with Pine Grapp is we just don't really ask what they're doing there. No. So it was same with Russia. Like if, whatever. Yeah, they're the surveillance facility.

We can't surveil the surveillance facility. No, exactly. It's going to be absurd. Saudi Arabia could set up one. Oh, that's a good idea. Europe. I mean, imagine how fashion. Maybe the European one could be, you know, in the inner city.

Yes. Because it'd be a laneway. Yeah, and they could sell. Yeah. sell fashionable spyware. Very good. We've just solved the Australian economy. Take that for Activity Commission.

But we're going to, look, there's another way to solve the Australian economy, and that's not to focus on what other people are doing, but to focus on good old Aussie innovation. And I think both of these tech stories today, Dom, come from Queensland. Amazing. Who would have thought? So it's not just Aussie innovation, it's Queenslander innovation. Queensland are!

Yeah. And I'm sure. there's nothing wrong with either story. No. These are encouraging stories of innovation and the word triumph is painted around too readily these days and I certainly won't be using it in this episode. We'll get into it in a sec. Thank you for your patience.

Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.com. Okay, should you go first? Sure.

So, I mean, space, the final frontier. Oh, great. These are the stories of... Because there's an Aussie space program, isn't there? Absolutely, of course there is. Yeah, yeah. I think my friend from primary school might be in charge of it. There's an Australian space agency in all that case.

Yeah, yeah. No, a guy I know is involved with it as well. There's a lot of stuff going on there. So the Australian space industry... It wasn't the brightest space. in the room, but, you know, good on him for having a go. Isn't that lovely? That won't be awkward at your next reading.

No, no, no, no. I'm joking. He was brilliant. Brilliant, right, okay. So, yeah, Australia. I just like the idea that the dunts became in charge of the Australian space program. Today, Charles, today, as we're recording this, history was made. Yeah, and can I just say after this, I want to tell you my specific idea for how to rescue

the Australian space industry. Not that it needs rescuing, but I've got to thought about who should run the space program. So the eris, the eris space rocket. Australia's first orbital rocket in our history. Yeah. Was launched today. Oh, wow. Yeah, by Gilmore Space.

Full credit to Gilmore Space. Oh, great. It was actually 29th of July, which I presume. Oh, okay. No, that's US time. So 30, I think it's our time. I at 35 a.m. today, it was launched. Wow, that's amazing.

And just in time for the meteor shower. Absolutely. Yeah. So the first Australian made orbital rockets, says it, says for more space, to launch from Australian soil. And what will it do? Will it launch satellites or something over Australia as I mean? No, it didn't quite manage that.

Oh. But it achieved something, a new record. Oh, yeah. 14 seconds until it exploded. Oh, right. So was it an Elon Musk designed rocket? And in fact, they've said here, 23 seconds. conventions of engine burn.

So it kept burning longer than it flew. It had nine seconds where it wasn't going up when it was burning. And then. Yes, but I mean, on the bright side, it, it, it, and 14 good seconds. 14 good seconds. And was it seen as a triumph? Is it a, they're calling it progress. Progress.

In a very sort of Elon style. And where was it launched? Queensland. North Queensland. Oh, right. So it was like Cape York or something. Something like that. Yeah, it was a title.

And what was it? it going to do? What was it going to be the first koala in space? Was it some sort of animal experiment type thing? Because that would have been very sad. So they were in Bowen in North Queensland and he was happy that it got off the pad. This is the co-founder Adam Gilmore of Kimmel Space. It got off the pad. I'm happy. Of course, I would have liked more flight time, but happy with that. And they're calling it unprecedented, which I suppose it was. And so how big was this rocket? Pretty big. Look, I've got a picture of it there. It's got an Aussie flag on it. It's a decent-sized rocket.

Yeah, so it's probably, it looks sort of five meters or something. Yeah, it's pretty, pretty big. Yeah. History in the making. And I think the commentary was, I'm trying to find the quote, but the commentary, something in the lines of, it's going, it's gone. Yeah. They needed to get Bill Laurie in.

Oh, marvelous. Oh, what a miss. It's all happening here. It's all happened here. What a crash. Okay, and so it was unmanned. Oh, yeah. No, there's no one on.

Okay. Yeah. Yeah, because I feel like it should be bigger. news. Like, are we the only media outlet covering this? No, no. It's in the Guardian. It's in a lot of these things.

Oh, no, here you go. Right. Here's the quote. Here's the quote from, so I was live streamed by a YouTube known as Ozzy Nort, Josh Keegan. I'll give you the commentary. Okay, we're going. We're going.

It's going. It's gone. It's gone. Oh, no, I didn't go. There wasn't sufficient thrust to actually keep it up. But the good news is, it was in the middle of nowhere. So if you're wanting, if you're wanting to not crash into any humans, except perhaps the odd YouTuber or two.

Yeah, North Queensland's the place to do it. Well, the Bowen Basin is part of the coal mining sites that Adani. Wow, isn't that great synchronisation? Because when it craters, that's the start of another coal mine. Of another coal mine. That's the perfect. And then that gets back to Australia's core economy, which is digging dirt out of the ground. And government subsidies, because taxpayers got them $5 million to do that.

Oh, right. Do you think we could get $5 million from a? the government and then go to Hobbicco and have you ever done the Rock Yeah my brother was given them when we were a kid yeah it's so cool they're so cool and if you get the ones where you're only allowed to buy them if you're over 16 they are the funnest ones I remember he got it for Christmas yeah and we put it all together we did to know basically a stick of dynamite with yeah exactly kind of ailerons on the end and the parachute yeah and the maiden voyage was the

only voyage it crashed it into little pieces it was irredeemable after all one go, but was in the country where my grandparents lived at the time. We had a very nice approximately 10 minutes with that first rocket. So I had more success because I've launched the same rocket about half a dozen times. Oh, that's very good. Yeah. And there's a little bit of an art too, but the thing that I found most interesting and most sort of space program like of the whole experience was it's all quite expensive. Like buying a stick of dynamite, it's sort of like 50 bucks and the actual. model that you build is another hundred bucks or something.

Yeah, no, it was genuinely a financial loss when it's crashed in the first attempt. But what fascinated me most, and what made me want to get into the sort of selling side of this whole thing, was you needed wadding to go between the rocket and the, like, your sort of built structure and the, essentially stick of dynamo. They were like all the engine. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, and you needed some sort of loose-fitting but, you know, plausible piece of wadding that would sort of hold everything stable in place.

And Hobbicow used to sell sheets of thin paper, much like toilet paper and exactly the same size. Okay. For like $10 for a pack of four. That's the business to be in. Yes. And then I was doing it with a friend and he said, what were you doing buying that wadding? You can just use toilet bag. paper, it's the same thing.

Like, it's bad quality toilet paper. I think that these people from ERIS, that might have been the problem. Yeah, five million dollars worth of toilet paper. Yeah, that's right. Anyway, so that's, that's, look, I, I, I don't want to shit on it too badly, because they've kind of done that themselves. No, look, who knows, the first attempt, it can only get better than 14 seconds, surely. Yes.

So, the thing is, Dom, that there is another tech story out there from Queensland. Let's have some ads. Okay. Well, no, actually, before we have some Eds Lockland, what we're going to do is, before we do this, I just want to tell you my theory for who should actually run the Australian Space Program. Right. Because I came up with it about 10 years ago, and it's never happened. And it was actually in a, I had a brainstorm.

I had a series of brainstorms with my friend Nick Richardson, do you remember? Yeah, I do. He used to be the showrunner for the roast. And Pinky Beecroft. Do you remember machine gun fallacious? Yeah, yeah, yeah. And we, I don't know why we were hanging out, but we're hanging out and we must have got drunk or something like that. And we came up.

You think Pinky Breedcroft should. We came up with an idea for a sort of almost documentary based around the Australian space program, which at that point exists, right? Yeah. And the idea was, it was called astronaut people, which we thought was a great name at the time. And I kind of feel like, you know, this should one day be made. Sure. But the idea being that actually, what does most space programs lack? Right.

And the answer is, ironically, star power, right? Wow. So, and in Australia, things only really get funded if you've got a star attached to them. Yeah. Right. Like, you don't just commission a documentary. You commission a documentary from Craig Roocastle or a documentary from Mark Humphreys, you know. Just to choose too random and not at all topical examples.

Yeah. And so our thought was that you would attach to the space program Jimmy Barnes. Oh, wow. Right. And that would get the whole space program up. Of course. Right. And the whole thing is being the star, he would be expected to drive the ship and everything.

Right. But he wouldn't know how to drive the ship because he's not a space astronaut. Yeah. He's like a rock star. Right. And so what would have then forced the Australian space industry to do? is massively automate everything and come up with the most high-tech rockets in the world. Oh, because you can't explode Barzzi.

Yeah, exactly. Like, that would be a disaster. And every time, you know, you're going, oh, we need more money because Barnsey's life is at risk. The funders would go, yes, we've got to protect Barzzi. There you go. I don't want to be the bureaucrat in charge of blowing up Barnsey. I mean, that's really, I can't think of any Australian who would seem more precious, really, to put in one of those. Certainly not Craig Rookastell and Mark Humphrey.

Yeah, that'd be a lot more expendable than Barnsey. And you probably wouldn't want to take your chances for sort of like the lower rung of pop stars in case somebody went, oh, no, we can do without them. That's sort of angry Anderson. Yeah, Angry Anderson or even Kate Sobrano. There'd be a dollar value. At upper limit.

Not that they're not valuable, but I mean, Barnsey is priceless. Of course, the whole thing, ran into huge troubles as we were ideating this. I'm just astonished that you are able to so vividly recall the results of some incredibly 10 beers in. No, I've got a doc. I'm sure I wrote it up. I wrote it up as an idea.

I think the plan all sort of came crumbling down because we realized that Barnsey is so charismatic. Yeah. That every time he touched the delicate electrical equipment in the spacecraft, it would just short circuit. I was like, I can't believe we haven't launched a spin-off podcast where you go through all of your ideas that never got, that never got commissioned. Oh, I've got to. There are hundreds of episodes. We will do an episode on Get Rich Tonight.

Have you ever heard my pitch for Get Rich Tonight? No. It was like a, it was a late night tonight show style thing for the ABC. But its promise was that you will get rich tonight. The unproduced masterpieces of Charlesville. By the way, it included things like launch. an ironic fashion brand in Bangladesh called Human Misery, right? Oh, why?

There's never get greenlit. And doing it ironically, but making a whole lot of money out of it. I'm sure that the Bangladeshis would have found that hilarious. And I'm just sitting here bemused at the realization that you are, in fact, having multiple late career triumphs at the moment. And it's funny, it just goes show if you throw enough pieces of shit against a wall over 30 years of a career, this thing's going to happen. Well, it gives faith to all, to all tries and chances.

And in fact, I'd like to say that the success of Charles Firth, with both optics and wankanomics in the same couple of years. Yeah. I'm hoped the Gilmore space people are hearing this, because you've had several projects that had a lot less than 14 seconds. Yes. Yes. Farley at a launch has been a theme.

And that they should not give up hope, but they should also contact Jimmy Barnes as agent. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Okay. This is an episode, isn't it? Yeah. this is an episode, but we should, we will just cover the other tech story straight after this.

Thank you for your patience. Your call is important. Can't take being on hold anymore. FIS is 100% online, so you can make the switch in minutes. Mobile plans start at $15 a month. Certain conditions apply. Details at fizz.ca. The Chaser Report. Less news. More often. So I want to tell you about this because it's been in the news just today and yesterday, which is that scientists think they might have actually cracked. If not a cure, then a sort of symptomatic relief cure for multiple sclerosis. Oh, wow. Which is actually, it's huge, right?

I mean, it would really have transformed the Bartlett administration. And the whole idea, very good, is that actually a lot of the symptoms are caused by a couple of bacteria in your gut. Oh, right. Really? And that actually, if you can sort of get rid of them, then you can actually, you know, get rid of a whole lot of the symptoms, right? And actually the onset, because it's a very strange disease, MS, where it's sort of, you never to quite know whether it's going to sort of progress quickly or slowly and stuff

like that. But so I was reading up on this. And it turns out that actually, this is part of a much bigger discovery that it's happening in the University of Queensland. And it's good news not just for MS sufferers, but. Basically, for everyone in the world, especially people who are in their middle-aged and, you know, maybe could do with a few more visits to the gym. Yeah. Hello.

Right. Yeah. Not naming names or anything. But point is that so, and I think it's coming out of the same lab that you know those potatoes that you get that advertised 25% less carb. Yes. And I thought, well, that's a rubbish. Right. I bought them and went, well, these things.

taste identical. There is no way these are light potatoes or whatever. And yet? Turns out, not only are they absolutely legitimate. Smart chips. That is a GM product, like a horticultural product that was developed in Australia, right? And they actually are way less than 25% carbs. In fact, by some studies, they actually, you know, help you lose weight.

Right? Like they actually take off your kilo. So all of us have been, Negative killer jobs. Everyone who had spent all these years campaigning against GM foods and so on. Yes. Are they all idiots because in fact

GM foods are fantastic? They're all fucking morons. This reminds me Charles, one of my favorite stats. And I remember reading about incredible efforts being made to make less fatty ducks. So you can have, you know,

peaking duck or roast duck, whatever. See, that is worthwhile research. And I still remember. That's more important than an MIST research. And I haven't checked the numbers on this, but I remember it pretty vividly because I remember finding it so I'm using. They managed to

get the percent down, not going to believe this, from 42% fat Charles to 38. Extraordinary. Let's all go over as duck. That's worth it. Yeah. Whatever it costs. Yeah, yeah. Let's get the diet duck.

Priceless. It'll be all in the marketing. Well, this is slightly better than that. So because what this company, this UQ, David Craig, Professor David Craig, and he started in the 1990s, this is another story of, you know, if at first you don't succeed, keep going. Yeah, Gilmore Space. Yeah. What he would do is inject these peptides into the food

and see whether he could sort of actually have, you know, pharmaceutical effects just by distributing them using normal plants. And he started to have real success with it. So they've taken one of these, you know, how a Zen pig is actually like lizard venom? Is it? Yeah. It's just microdosing lizard venom. So the reason why you don't feel like eating is because it's like,

like you've just been stung by. You've been poisoned by a lizard. They don't put that on the jar in Hollywood, do they? Yeah. And so, I know, exactly. So, but he's been doing the same sort of thing, like putting little molecules of stuff into potatoes, right? And he reckons he can come up with diet French fries that actually help you lose weight

while you eat French fries. This is the dream. Right. And then, and then the other one is tomatoes, right? So they've put in, like, the multiple sclerosis, the thing that helps the multiple sclerosis, that drug, they put it into a tomato and they're saying, it may be the case that the best way to sort of serve this to patients is by giving them a bloody Mary each day. What? Because it's like tomato. No.

Are you making that up? No, I'm not. Sipping a bloody marty made with the potatoes and feeling their symptoms ease. Oh, my God. So you're having French fries and Bloody Mary's as a weight loss strategy. All around. Well, and to get rid of your MS. Bloody hell.

And then same with cholesterol, which is good news. Yeah. Just putting it into vegetables. Why wouldn't you put it into French fries again? That's true. Yeah, you're missing a trick there. Yeah. Actually, that's true.

If you wanted to get the people, shorting to get the cholesterol treatment to people who need it. Yeah, put it into Wagyu beef. That's right, exactly. Put it into bacon. Yeah, bacon. Weight loss bacon, that's what we need. Yeah. So, anyway, so look, I think it's fairly, it's fairly early stages, right?

So I don't think it's going to happen like tomorrow. But I think what I'll do is I'll start my health diet tomorrow and start just exclusively eating French fries and bloody marries. Yeah, that's a very good idea. Just in preparation. Just dip the fries in the bloody marries. Yeah. You know how we all poured shit on Queensland a while back because they're number plate to

the smart state. Oh. I mean, I'm not saying that that's been turned around, but it seems slightly, at the end of this podcast, it seems slightly less absurd than it did before. Do you think they were manifesting it? That actually just by saying it, they became it. If you put it on your number plates, it will come.

Yeah. That's, there you go. Pour one out for Queensland. Bloody Mary. We are part of the Iconiclass Network. I'll catch you tomorrow. Bloody Mary's and all. Thank you for your patience.

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