[BRIEF NOTE] Canada, Apollo, and space
Jul. 20th, 2009 07:20 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rfmcdonaldToday is the 40th anniversary of the Apollo 11 moon landing.
I appreciate fully the Tin Man's observation that even though the technology available to us all is vastly more advanced than that which NASA enjoyed in the 1960s, the fact that our world--the United States, of course, but with extensive foreign contributions, von Braun et al for instance--sent people to the Moon and brought them back is impressive. I agree entirely with Andrew Barton's argument that the moon landings were premature and uneconomic one-off expeditions which happened only because of Cold War rivalries, and that future lunar expeditions will probably be driven by a pragmatic interest in the Moon, presumably more open to cooperation between nations.
This would suit Canada just fine, actually. Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, "Canada's broken dream" as the CBC archives calls it and the event surrounding it, was supposed to be the military aircraft that would have made Canada a top aerospace power. When the project was mysteriously canceled, the skilled professionals gathered together for the project spread out in a diaspora. NASA took advantage of this and recruited skilled Canadians who, as Sheryl Ubelacker wrote, made critical contributions to the Apollo project.
Canada's role in space arguably hasn't changed that much from the 1960s. A Canadian Space Agency certainly exists, the space shuttle's Canadarm is reasonably high profile, and a fair number of Canadians have gone into space from Marc Garneau in 1984 to Julie Payette and Robert Thirsk who are orbiting the Earth on the space shuttle even as I type. The Canadian space program, though, is dependent on the existence of partners who'll allow Canada to contribute, not least since we don't have anything like the United States' space shuttle or the ESA's Ariane series or Russia's Soyuz or China's Shenzhou capsules and rockets. Quietly, carefully, in measured fashion, Canada and Canadians will continue to play the role pioneered by the Avro Arrow engineers, contributing useful details but not doing much more.
That's fine with me, actually--a Canadian space program remotely comparable to the four I named above would be disproportionately expensive, and rather pointless. If the space programs of the future are driven more by pragmatism than anything else, though, that added openness might well make Canadian contributions more visible. Who knows? Perhaps the Canadian contributions to the first Mars missions will be that much more widely known.
I appreciate fully the Tin Man's observation that even though the technology available to us all is vastly more advanced than that which NASA enjoyed in the 1960s, the fact that our world--the United States, of course, but with extensive foreign contributions, von Braun et al for instance--sent people to the Moon and brought them back is impressive. I agree entirely with Andrew Barton's argument that the moon landings were premature and uneconomic one-off expeditions which happened only because of Cold War rivalries, and that future lunar expeditions will probably be driven by a pragmatic interest in the Moon, presumably more open to cooperation between nations.
This would suit Canada just fine, actually. Avro Canada CF-105 Arrow, "Canada's broken dream" as the CBC archives calls it and the event surrounding it, was supposed to be the military aircraft that would have made Canada a top aerospace power. When the project was mysteriously canceled, the skilled professionals gathered together for the project spread out in a diaspora. NASA took advantage of this and recruited skilled Canadians who, as Sheryl Ubelacker wrote, made critical contributions to the Apollo project.
When the world marks the 40th anniversary Monday of man's first landing on the moon, it will be paying tribute to American ingenuity and what arguably is one of that country's finest moments. But it was one of Canada's proudest moments, too.
Many Canadians are unaware that a group of their countrymen working at NASA was instrumental in delivering the Apollo 11 astronauts to the lunar surface on July 20, 1969 - and getting them safely back home to Earth.
In fact, even before Neil Armstrong's booted feet stepped onto the rocky, crater-pocked surface of the moon, Canadian-made legs on the lunar landing module had settled into the satellite's dust first. The splayed legs were produced from light-weight aluminum using a compressible honeycomb design by Quebec's Heroux-DEVTEK, which won the NASA contract.
The landing module was primarily designed by Sarnia, Ont.-born Owen Maynard, an engineer who worked on the famed Avro Arrow before the federal government under Diefenbaker abruptly canceled the supersonic jet program in February 1959.
Maynard and about 25 others laid off from Toronto's A.V. Roe aircraft on what was dubbed Black Friday were quickly snapped up by the Americans to help them fulfill President John F. Kennedy's 1961 edict that the country land a man on the moon within the decade.
"Canadians contributed a massive amount to the space race and Apollo," says Robert Godwin, a curator for the Canadian Air and Space Museum in Toronto that houses a full-scale replica of the Arrow.
"Not meaning it to be a derogatory remark, but the Americans benefited greatly from the demise of the Arrow," he says. "All of these genius engineers ended up going to help put men on the moon."
Canada's role in space arguably hasn't changed that much from the 1960s. A Canadian Space Agency certainly exists, the space shuttle's Canadarm is reasonably high profile, and a fair number of Canadians have gone into space from Marc Garneau in 1984 to Julie Payette and Robert Thirsk who are orbiting the Earth on the space shuttle even as I type. The Canadian space program, though, is dependent on the existence of partners who'll allow Canada to contribute, not least since we don't have anything like the United States' space shuttle or the ESA's Ariane series or Russia's Soyuz or China's Shenzhou capsules and rockets. Quietly, carefully, in measured fashion, Canada and Canadians will continue to play the role pioneered by the Avro Arrow engineers, contributing useful details but not doing much more.
That's fine with me, actually--a Canadian space program remotely comparable to the four I named above would be disproportionately expensive, and rather pointless. If the space programs of the future are driven more by pragmatism than anything else, though, that added openness might well make Canadian contributions more visible. Who knows? Perhaps the Canadian contributions to the first Mars missions will be that much more widely known.
