Canada Joins NASA's Gateway Project
Canada Is Going To The Moon, SpaceQ
“Today Prime Minister Justin Trudeau confirmed what many had hoped for by committing Canada to participate in the NASA led effort to return to the moon. Canada will contribute a smart robotic system to the NASA’s Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway (LOP-G) program. The smart robotic system includes a next-generation robotic arm, which is already being called the Canadarm3, other unnamed equipment, and specialized tools to be used on this unique system.”
NASA Secures First International Partnership for Moon to Mars Lunar Gateway
“NASA is thrilled that Canada is the first international partner for the Gateway lunar outpost. Space exploration is in Canada’s DNA. In 1962, Canada became the third nation to launch a satellite into orbit with Alouette 1.”
Would have been smarter to be SpaceX’s first client for passage to the surface of the Moon.
If all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail
Yes, they are just used to working with NASA.
If Canada is supporting the Gateway thing, they are a lot LESS smart than the robotic arms they are proposing!
Not at all. They aren’t paying to launch the robotic arm or get it to the Moon. They get to build it, be involved in using it, perhaps use that involvement to get an occasional astronaut sent up there, take credit for the whole thing. That’s a very smart deal for them.
It really is a deal, and for all parties. Given the high costs involved with sitting at the table, smaller countries with very capable scientific citizens must hitch the wagon to a bigger player (I lost count of the mixed references buried in there).
Similarly, for instance, Great Britain and foreign policy. I hope that the non-US readers hereabouts won’t take these comments to be jingoistic- that’s not the intent. I recall that Mr. Blair lamented that centuries on the world stage counted for little, and GB now must of needs align with the US to have any voice at all.
Our Canadian neighbors: living in southwest Florida we experience something akin to an invasion each year. The Canadians have the advantage, though; they look just like us…
Sure. The Canadarm is a good, useful product with more successful history than most people realize. Having one on a planned space station is a very good idea (even if I think that planned station is, itself, a bad idea…) And, after all the years I spent working on Cassini, I’d be the last person to complain about international collaborations.
But the critical attitude goes beyond what you noted. Yes, if a countries can’t afford big space projects on their own, there’s nothing wrong with contributing to another richer country’s missions. But the other side of the coin is that the rich countries (or the ones willing to spend those billions of dollars) can really benefit from contributions from other countries. There’s no shame in saying you need something and someone else is really good at building one.
“after all the years I spent working on Cassini”
What do you miss about an active Cassini project, Dr. C? New data rolling in? Or instrument design/ coordination? Operations? Or simply being part of the single most important planetary research effort at the time ( a huge descriptive overreach and only partly true, but Cassini rightly grabbed many headlines)?
That’s a tough question. I’ve been on the beach for a couple of years now, and I can see why naval officers don’t like it. From a purely practical standpoint, it was nice to be able to pay the bills without writing a grant proposal every few months. I also liked the way I ended up working on all sorts of things, or at least hearing about them. Some people like to specialize, but I did actually like ending up dealing with twitchy attitude control systems or hearing talks on ring dynamics. And there was something dynamic about making a measurement, knowing you’d have a chance to make a similar one in a few months, and redesigning the observing plan based on what you’d just learned. None of that’s really unique to Cassini, but the project did bring together all those elements.
But, actually, I think one thing I miss is the accidental conversations. We all complained about meetings and teleconferences which were a waste of time. I even did things like text or email other people at the same meeting and joke about it. But when you go to a pointless meeting, you do end up have lunch and dinner with your colleagues. And on a teleconference, you do end up chatting with them while you’re waiting for everyone else to dial in. You might be surprised at how much really good science and really good ideas involve hanging out at restaurants and hotel bars. That doesn’t happen as much without the really annoying meetings forcing people to get together.
A Lunar Gateway makes sense sometime in the future as a docking / fueling / transfer station for a Moon to Earth orbit or Moon to Mars ferry. It could built with materials mined and processed on the Moon and water processed from the Moon deposits. It should be a large rotating station that allows for a permanent presence and healthy environment.
The Lunar Gateway as envisioned is putting the horse before the cart. It will be a logistic nightmare and black hole for funds. Like the SLS it will not be economically sustainable. It will take funds away from everything else and delay development of a Moon base by years.
NASA should optimize its behavior by promoting the lowering the costs to orbit and the development and a permanent economically viable base on the Moon.
We need to do this before the Chinese claim sovereignty over the the Moon. As it is said: possession is 9/10s the law.
Going directly to the Moon or Mars without intermediary “way-stations” like the Lunar Gateway or an orbiting “Mars Base Camp” doesn’t make sense. Sorry!