A bold new frontier for Australia. The visit comes amid a fierce national debate over energy policy, but also as a (much quieter) debate around Australia's possible role in what is being described as "the second space age" begins to play out. On Monday, the government announced it will establish a new national agency to grow Australia's domestic space industry. The first space age was dominated by governments. Against the backdrop of the Cold War, it set off a race between the US and Soviet Union to get humans into orbit, and eventually, on to the moon. The second space age, which is under way, is being dominated by private companies. Musk's SpaceX, BlueOrigin, a company owned by Jeff Bezos, the Amazon CEO, and Virgin Galactic, Richard Branson's space travel company, are among them. What ultimately emerges from this new era remains to be seen, but with Musk aiming to colonise Mars, Bezos wanting to see all manufacturing moved from earth to space, and Branson wanting to make commercial space travel an actual thing, it seems like the sky's the limit.

There is speculation Australia will use the visit of SpaceX CEO Elon Musk this week to confirm Australia will establish some form of space agency. Credit:AP Even though private entrepreneurs are driving this space renaissance, there is still a role for governments to play. Especially for a country like Australia, if it wants to be part of it. Despite the lack of an operating space agency, a thriving mini space economy is starting to emerge in this country. Fleet Space Technologies CEO Flavia Tata Nardini Credit:Daniel Kalisz Flavia Nardini, the CEO of Fleet, an Adelaide-based "nanosatellite" company, estimates that Australia now has more than 30 space-related start-ups.

"There was never a serious space industry in this country," says Nardini. "It is starting now." There is a new wave of passion for space, and it's not completely impossible. Flavia Nardini Fleet is this week poised to sign a partnership with the French space agency, CNES – a strategic collaboration that signals it is becoming a significant player on the world stage. The company wants to build a constellation of low-orbit satellites, roughly the size of a shoebox. These satellites could be used to transmit data for the increasing array of devices connected to the internet (the so-called "internet of things").

Think of a farmer deploying monitors on a farm to track livestock, or a mining company tracking its goods as they move around the world. Fleet raised $5 million from Blackbird Ventures, the Sydney investment firm, last year. Nardini describes the current space revival, which is being fuelled by rapid declines in the costs of hardware, as "Space 2.0". "Australia has got this competitive advantage to create an agency or an office, an entity that can support a Space 2.0 revolution," she says. "It could create three or four unicorns in five years, it could create 3000-4000 jobs." We don't have to look that far for inspiration. New Zealand, which does have a space agency, has already birthed one space "unicorn" (a start-up valued at more than $1 billion) Rocket Lab. Loading

"The feeling is that it is not so unachievable any more," says Nardini. "It's not like my mother, sitting on front of a black and white TV watching the Apollo launch," she says. "There is a new wave of passion for space, and it's not completely impossible." The global space industry is estimated to be worth more than $400 billion. With Australia engaged in one of its periodic bouts of introspection over its post-mining boom, post-property bubble future, now seems like the time to start taking space seriously.