"Since first launch, though, Canadians haven’t been unanimously proud of the Canadarm. In 1995, Royal Canadian Air Farce poked fun at it with a sketch about one breaking."<p>The author, although Canadian, is missing Canadian culture here. Air Farce (a satarical Canadian news show) poking fun at something Canadian does mean we are proud of it. That's Canadian, self deprecating humour, poking fun at ourselves.<p>Growing up in Canada, anytime space was mentioned, the Canadarm was front and centre. We are very proud of our contributions.
When we compare the opportunity that space tech provides to that of both Avro and Blackberry, the question to me is how have the incentives changed? Culturally, we have an attachment to K-selection over r-selection of companies, meaning that instead of creating the conditions for an ecosystem of competitors to thrive, the CDN governments pick winners and turn them into state codependents who are surprised to lose to more agile companies who came up through competition. We're the talent, but not the money.<p>It's a mix of a cultural naivety about economics and a business establishment who do just fine with a few banks and the natural resource sector - as why risk investing in early stage anything when that money is safer in bank stocks and extractive industries? Canada doesn't really benefit from space tech either, as the economics of space exploration are about mineral exploitation, which is Canada's stock in trade, and asteroid mining is a direct competition to our strip mining the north.<p>Our R&D tax breaks skew the incentives to achieve the opposite of their intent, where some of the work on the research does get done here, but the resulting IP, revenue, and market cap gets owned by US parent entities. They use Canada as an engineering maquiladora for cheap and directly subsidized labour. An actual competitive policy would reward investment and growth of an ecosystem and not merely subsidize the piecework toil that investment pays for. We could collect from a greater number of M&A windfalls instead of just skimming income tax revenue off software developers as well.<p>However our politics are too hobbit-like to create a serious venture ecosystem, so sure, some people will use the relative comfort of the country to produce some space tech, but I don't see the case for investing in space tech here when you can invest in more favourable markets and just use our cheap engineering talent to get you to your exit. Canada is mainly services firms that don't produce any IP or durable or acquirable value. A lot of people say it's broken, but the other thing about this place is that it's almost never broken, it just works for someone you can't see.
Lots of comments about Avro Arrow here lool. As a Canadian, I'm both proud and saddened by the fact that although we have elite engineering talent, that talent tends to be drained to the US.<p>Side note, just a couple decades after the Arrow, Canadian researchers once again lead the world, but this time in the field of AI, specifically deep learning. However, what happened after that? Google hired Geoffrey Hinton, and the industrial might of the US took over.<p>Perhaps this is inevitable given that we are much weaker economically compared to the US.<p>However, one last thought is that, aerospace vs software is not the same. For aerospace, yea I think you need a giant super power of a nation to keep it alive. However, software can be built by one guy in a garage. I'm not sure why Canada just let its dominance in AI "slip away".<p>Also side side note about Avro Arrow, is it just a weird naming coincidence that the two Apache projects exists: Avro and Arrow? I think Avro is named after the original British Avro company. However, I don't think Arrow has anything to do with aviation.
> Many Canadian aerospace engineers have never forgiven the government for dismantling Avro Canada’s CF-105 Arrow, a billion-dollar project that, on October 4, 1957—the same day that Russia sent the world’s first satellite into orbit—rolled out the fastest supersonic jet the world had ever seen.<p>Not just aerospace engineers, but if you ask just about any Canadian and we're all still super sour about this.
> <i>Whereas the first arm looked and functioned quite literally like an arm mounted at the shoulder, the Canadarm2 was like two arms connected to one elbow. This configuration would eventually allow it to move along rails running the length of the ISS, making it a 1,500-kilogram multi tool for the space station—a crane, grabber, and camera, all in one.</i><p>I think the author may have missed or misunderstood one of my favorite features of Canadarm2: it's symmetrical!<p>The same mechanical/power/data connection (PDGF) on the end of the arm that grabs payloads is used to connect the base to ISS. The ISS has multiple PDGF points around the station, so it can bend over, grab onto the station with the end-of-arm-tool gripper, <i>release the base of the arm</i>, and walk itself end-over-end like an inchworm.<p>The Mobile Transporter/Base System/Servicing System do allow the arm to move along the main truss, but I think the end-over-end mode is way cooler.
“looked like he belonged in a Heritage Minute”<p>Context for those wondering wtf a heritage minute is <a href="https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://www.historicacanada.ca/productions/minutes</a>
>Even though Canada conceived of the arms, branded them with its national flag, and named them after itself<p>Yet more proof of how Canadians are far more flag-obsessed than Americans. Similarly, the maple leaf appears in the logo/signage of every single company in Canada, including Canadian subsidiaries of US companies.<p>If Canada had a full space program of its own, we'd see red-and-white Canashuttles (named <i>Anne Murray</i>, <i>Rush</i>, <i>Gordon Lightfoot</i>, and <i>Margaret Atwood</i>) launching from Cape Canadaveral in Labrador.