The company has been busy over the past decade. For example, it developed the 82-foot-tall (25-meter-tall) Eris and built a private launch site on the coast of northern Queensland, called the Bowen Orbital Spaceport, with the goal of making Australia more of a space player.

Gilmour Space Technologies is performing final system checks before launching its homegrown Eris rocket. The vehicle is poised to become the first orbital launch from Australian soil by a sovereign-built vehicle when it makes its debut this week.

If we want more Australian-built rockets, space technology, and sovereign capability, we need more than funding rounds and family wealth.