Founded by ex-banker Adam Gilmour (a 20 year veteran at Citibank) and his brother James (a marketing graduate), Gilmour Space Technologies is one of the more than 60 estimated nascent space start-ups in Australia awaiting an expert panel report on what exactly the nation's recently announced space agency will do. The report is due by the end of March. Adam Gilmour told Fairfax Media he visited NASA in 2016, when the agency first became interested in what he and his colleagues were doing back in Australia. His company plans to conduct its first launch of a commercial sub-orbital sounding rocket to an altitude of 150 kilometres in the first quarter of 2019. But according to Adam, Australia's "draconian" space laws may prevent it from being launched here, with compulsory third-party insurance protection of up to $750 million required. A quote for insurance Adam recently received put the actual cost for this at around $1 million, he said. Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video

"This is a very expensive thing to do," Adam said. "No other country in the world requires a company to buy that much insurance. [For comparison], we got quoted by the US Federal Aviation Administration that we would only need to buy $10 million to $20 million in insurance." If the laws don't change, Adam said Gilmour will "have to launch our rockets somewhere else". Adelaide-based Fleet Space Technologies is another of the Aussie space start-ups, having raised $5 million in funding to date, also from Blackbird Ventures as well as Mike Cannon-Brookes' Grok Ventures and Horizon Partners. It plans to launch the first of more than 100 nano-satellites this year to create a global, free connectivity network that will plug directly into the millions of digital sensors used by industries including agriculture, logistics, and mining and gas. Fleet Space Technologies CEO Flavia Tata Nardini with one of the company's nano satellites. Just last week, the company was awarded a grant from the Netherlands government — the amount of which was undisclosed — to fast-track a program aimed at assisting the agricultural industry through nano-satellite technology. Under the grant, Fleet will conduct a "world-first" trial to connect data from irrigation systems on the ground to nano-satellites in orbit. The company has also secured a $500,000 Future Jobs Fund grant from the South Australian government, allowing it to launch a mission control centre in Adelaide.

Fleet also revealed in September that it has entered into an agreement whereby the French space agency, CNES, would track and support its first nano-satellites once launched; an important step for any satellite player in order to avoid damage to other spacecraft and their own. Loading Niki Scevak, a Fleet board member and co-founder of Blackbird Ventures, said he hoped the Australian space agency would make it easier for Australians to launch spacecraft. "At the moment you need a huge amount of insurance … to be able to launch regardless of the risk profile," he told Fairfax Media. "The process to navigate the application is also incredibly complicated and ad-hoc. Creating streamlined guidelines for people to launch should be action number one." The Turnbull government and the space agency should also "help foster a launch facility in Australia", Scevak said.