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ing the space frontier and an unspoken promise that we would all get a
chance to go,” says Peter Diamandis, founder of the X Prize Foundation,
which awards vanguards in commercial space technology. “None of that
ever materialized.”
Canadian astronaut Dave Williams has his own take. “One of the most
challenging things we face as astronauts is conveying exactly what it is we
do—the excitement of it. The early years of space exploration were filled
with red-letter events. But as we went deeper into the work of space, it
lost some of the obvious dynamism.”
Advances in space were being mea-
sured in metre sticks, not milestones—
In the five decades since Canada’s space effort first got off the ground, or so it seemed. In fact, a great deal
was going on: Skylab was put in orbit;
not once have we sent someone into space without hitching a ride. And Soviet Soyuz and American Apollo
yet, for most of that time, we have ranked among the top five space- ships kissed in space; Voyager 2 jour-
faring nations, producing more ground-breaking technology, pioneering neyed to the edge of our galaxy with
the famous golden record stowed at
more research and logging more manned space hours than programs its heart.
with operating budgets hundreds of times larger than our own. Unfortunately, most of what the
public heard was bad news. The
bloated Soviet and American space
TT he Canadian Space Agency has done well as facilitator to the programs were plagued by setbacks: Mars probes that wouldn’t respond;
interstellar interests of the larger agencies—NASA, ESA and space station malfunctions; orbital telescopes launched with poorly
Roscosmos. But the global space initiative is entering an unfa- mounted lenses; and, of course the explosion of the shuttle Challenger
miliar paradigm. New players have emerged. Commercial interests have just after take-off. This tragedy—televised live around the world—killed
successfully put men into suborbital space and sent unmanned rockets seven crew members and grounded the shuttle program for two years.
into geosynchronous orbit. And China, the sleeping giant, is advancing Ironically, just prior to this, Canada’s space mandate had attained
its ambitions beyond the earth. grand new heights. At the invitation of NASA, Canada had initiated its
But that’s just the prologue. own astronaut program.
SPACE t ODDI T Y Turkey, Iran, Brazil and India all have designs on space. The com- Until then, Canada’s focus had been technological in nature, satellites
mercial NewSpace industry is eager for the opportunities of space tour- for telecommunications, remote viewing and scientific research, as well
ism and resource speculation, while terraforming becomes more feasible as the advanced robotics work that had produced the remote manipula-
every day. The space rush can only help to speed humanity’s ascent to tor system known as Canadarm.
C a n a d a ’s U n c o n v e n t i o n a l S p a c e R a c e the stars. But where Canada fits into this new hierarchy is still anyone’s Still, Canadian ingenuity in these areas of specialization had given
guess. Partner or sidekick? Tag-a-long buddy or odd man out? Will the country a lofty place in space history. Canada was already the bronze
Canadarm be enough to maintain our status, or will our greatest con- medal-winner in the race for the stars—thanks to the 1962 launch of the
tribution to cosmic exploration come to be seen as little more than an Alouette 1 research satellite—and its robotic systems had quickly become
orbital reach-around? the international space effort’s MacGuyver-tool of choice. Canada
b y D y l a n Yo u n g seemed set to take fourth place in the ranks of space-faring nations.
a dd it ional research by Nelly Au ste r “TIME TO LEAVE THE CAPSULE, IF YOU DARE”
Forty years ago, a man stepped onto soil no one had ever touched and, “COMMENCING COUNTDOWN, ENGINES ON”
with a foot insulated by a boot four inches thick, kicked a pebble across When Marc Garneau became the first Canadian in space—on October
the surface of our planet’s only moon. Eight years before that, a different 5, 1984—there was no centralized Canadian space program. Instead it
man rocketed skywards, away from all that was familiar, and became the was split over several smaller projects, distributed between the National
first human to witness earth as the swirling ball of blue, white and green Research Council, Industry Canada and, to a lesser extent, Natural
that is now one of our most ubiquitous symbols. Just four years before Resources Canada and the Defense Research Board. It wasn’t until 1987,
that, a man-made moon circled the globe, chiming from high above the as part of Canada’s collaboration on the International Space Station
clouds with the audible clarity of a truck backing down a driveway. (ISS) that the government set about forming a unique agency dedicated
These were watershed events. Human imagination and ambition had to Canada’s endeavours in space. In 1989, the Canadian Space Agency
been made concrete, and not just for Yuri Gagarin, Neil Armstrong and (CSA) became the torchlight for Canada’s renewed vision for space.
the men who succeeded in flicking Sputnik 1 into the sky. For every NASA began shuttle operations again in 1988. But four years would
human being able to peruse a newspaper, huddle around a television, or pass before another Canadian would experience the stillness of space. The
tune into a radio wave, in those instants, humanity’s place in the universe pitfalls of relying on NASA were not lost on Marc Garneau. A year after
was forever resituated. We had entered a brave new world. the Challenger mishap, he contacted the Soviet space program, hoping
Holding onto that sense of wonder hasn’t been easy. The public fascina- to explore opportunities for putting Canadians on Soyuz rockets.
tion with the final frontier has suffered a steady decline since the Apollo In the meantime, the CSA was slowly coming into its own. The first
missions ended. Through the 60s, ambition and ingenuity took us from five years had provided the by-the-books leadership needed for the
PHOTO: NASA
the surface of the earth and put us on our nearest heavenly body. In public fledgling agency’s stability. But, in 1994, a more intrepid style of helms-
relations terms, nothing has come close in the forty years that followed. manship arrived in the form of Mac Evans.
62 Sharp Dec/Jan 2009 SHARPFORMEN.COM PHOTO: NASA PHOTO: NASA SHARPFORMEN.COM Sharp Dec/Jan 2009 63