Canada In Space

My guest this week is Lucy Stojak who is the Director of the School on Management of Creativity and Innovation at HEC Montréal. Lucy is also the Chair of the Space Advisory Board.It was just about a year ago that ISED Minister Bains announced the then 10 member Space Advisory Board. Last summer an additional member was added, Kate Howells, to represent the advocacy segment. I will note that that Board members are not employees of the government, serve on a voluntary basis and are not paid. All members work either in academia, industry, research, not-for-profit or in the case of Kate Howells, public outreach and advocacy. It’s been a very busy year for the Board so let me quickly recap it. According to the government when it announced in October 2016 that it was forming a new Space Advisory Board, the board would "advise the Government of Canada on long-term objectives for space and to engage with Canadians.”As soon as the Board was announced last April it began a cross-Canada in-person stakeholder consultation by invitation, though if you asked to participate, as I did, you could participate. This was followed by two virtual events titled Canada’s Youth and Next Generation Space Leaders and the North and Canada’s Future in Space. All these events were wrapped up by May 19. Over 180 people participated in person or online. Afterwards the Board wrote a report titled Consultations on Canada’s Future in Space: What We Heard which summarized what they had heard from stakeholders during the consultations. While the report was written quickly according to sources who spoke to SpaceQ, it was not released until mid-August.The report had two recommendations from issues they categorized in six themes. The two top level recommendations were to Designate space as a national strategic asset and what the Future role of the Space Advisory Board would be. The detail though was in the six themes. Those themes were;1. Designating space as a National Strategic Asset 2. Strengthen world-class Canadian capabilities3. Adopting new policies and regulations to capitalize on technological advances4. Continuity of policies and sustainable funding5. Outreach and educational activities to inspire and prepare Canadians6. An urgent call to actionToday Lucy and I will discuss the results of the consultation, budget 2018 and where the space advisory board goes from here.

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My guests this week are two members of the AlbertSat team, Callie Lissinna and Logan Fairgrieve-Park.AlbertaSat is a student group started in 2010 made up of about 50 undergraduate and graduate students. The group was started as a result of the creation of the Canadian Satellite Design Challenge. The Canada wide competition encourages university students from different study areas to form a team to develop and build a nanosatellite, or CubeSat. It’s not just for science and technology students though, marketing, communication, financial and project management skillsets are also needed.Callie is the Deputy Project Manager and Logan is the Science Team Lead and the Attitude Determination and Control System Team Lead. Both are undergrad students at the university of Alberta.Callie, Logan and I discussed AlbertSat, its projects and their view of their future prospects of working in Canada in the space sector.

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This week our guest is Dale Boucher, CEO of Deltion Innovations. Deltion is one of the leading proponents for space mining and has worked with the Canadian Space Agency, NASA and others.Some of the questions Dale answers include:How is Deltion involved in space mining?Will Canada participate on a mission to test mining equipment on the moon or elsewhere?How mature or immature is the technology? Is anyone working on heavy mining machinery needed for the moon?Do we know where to begin mining operations on the moon?Are nations like Canada, a leader in mining, working on policy frameworks for mining on the moon or elsewhere?

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My guest this week is Grant Bonin, Chief Technology Officer of Deep Space Industries.Deep Space Industries is a five year old privately held company spacecraft technology with a long term plan of mining asteroids that has adapted its business for the long game.At the time the company launched, some people wondered if the idea was crazy. It’s not, but it is hard, and It’s a long game. Deep Space industries (DSI) is still here and apparently has adapted its business plan to meet the challenge and has been working on developing technologies needed for its long term goals but which have commercial appeal now allowing them to generate revenue streams now.Since the company was formed they've sparsely released information. Last year when Daniel Faber, the CEO at the time, left the company, he said not too long afterwards that he was proud of having led the company to sales in the area of $10 million in 2016. That was really the first public acknowledgement of any sales volume.With DSI's products, most notably Comet, its water-based SmallSat propulsion system set to fly on four customer satellites this year, the company is slowly emerging from the shadows. As well, the company will be shortly announcing its first Series A funding meant to accelerate their Mission 1, a technology demonstration spacecraft which they hope to launch to a near-earth asteroid in 2020.This week they also announced that they've sold another Comet propulsion system to Astro Digital. According to Grant, that's the 34th propulsion unit they've sold.Listen to the podcast for a complete update on DSI's activities.

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My guest this week is Hassan Khan, CEO of Quantius and TodaQ.Is the Canadian venture capitalist landscape light years behind in understanding the space ecosystem in comparison with their U.S. counterparts? Will blockchain technology be as transformative as the Internet has been? These questions are answered in this weeks SpaceQ podcast.If you have a new space company or are staring one, then this podcast is one you won't want to miss. The same is true if you want a better understanding of blockchain technology and some of its uses for the space sector.Today Hassan and I will discuss two topics, venture funding and blockchain technology and cryptocurrency. We start talking about blockchain technology and cryptocurrency staring at the 31:34 mark.Quantius is an alternative lender with a unique capability to collateralize intangible assets for innovative enterprises in Canada and the United States. TodaQ Financial is a mobile financial services marketplace responsible for issuing, distribution and adoption of the Toda Note, a USD-backed digital currency for knowledge-based businesses globally requiring transaction efficiency and liquidity for growth.No matter how you describe both companies, it’s clear that Hassan is and has been doing some innovative ventures. Before starting these two ventures Hassan was with McKinsey & Company, a global management consulting firm. And before that he spent 13 years in the Canadian Armed Forces working in various Information technology areas, leaving as a Major.

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My guest this week is Michael Simpson, the Executive Director of the Secure Word Foundation, a U.S. based not-for-profit and former President of the International Space University.Michael was the opening keynote speaker at the recent Canadian SmallSat Symposium. His speech was on the sustainability of space. We explore that topic further.

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My guest this week is Mike Safyan, Senior Director, Launch and Global Ground Station Networks at Planet. Planet, previously known as Planet Labs, is an Earth Observation company which has launched a fleet over 200 satellites to monitor the Earth. This podcast was recorded at the Canadian SmallSat Symposium which was held last week in Toronto.Planet has become the largest operator of satellites in orbit with 148 active imaging satellites. It should be noted though, unlike the large school bus size satellites in geosynchronous orbit, nearly all of Planet’s satellites are microsatellites weighing in at under 100kg and roughly the size of a microwave oven and are in low earth orbit.Mike and I discussed recent news at Planet with an eye to the future, along with a discussion on their ongoing ground station problem in Canada which led them to announce at the Canadian SmallSat Symposium that they were going to pull out their ground stations in Inuvik after June 1 if they’re licensing issues aren’t resolved by Global Affairs Canada.The story and video that accompany this podcast is available at this link: http://www.spaceq.ca/planet-and-ksat-threaten-to-pull-ground-assets-out-of-canada/

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My guest this week is Adam Trumpour. Adam is a concept designer at Pratt & Whitney Canada by day, and a rocket developer by night.He develops liquid propellant rocket engines, occasionally consults on the subject and mentors student rocketry groups. Today we’re going to talk about launch vehicles, with an emphasis on small launch vehicles.

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On February 5, 2018, the day before the first attempt by SpaceX to launch the Falcon Heavy on its maiden flight, Elon Musk held a press conference at the Kennedy Space Center to answer questions from reporters. Here is the unedited Q&A.The launch window opens up at 1:30 p.m. EST and extends to 4:30 p.m. Currently the weather is favourable with a 80% probability of good launch conditions. Our listeners can watch the SpaceX webcast on SpaceRef and SpaceQ.Links:- Webcast http://spaceq.ca/spacex-live/ or http://spaceref.com/live/spacex-webcast.html

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My guest this week is Chris Gebhardt, Assistant Managing Editor of NASASpaceflight.com. Chris and I talked about SpaceX, specifically the upcoming maiden flight of the SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket.The launch is scheduled for Tuesday, February 6 and this podcast was recorded the Sunday before. The launch window opens up at 1:30 p.m. EST and extends to 4:30 p.m. Currently the weather is favourable with a 80% probability of good launch conditions. Our listeners can watch the SpaceX webcast on SpaceRef and SpaceQ.Links:- NASA Spaceflight https://www.nasaspaceflight.com/- Chris Gebhardt on Twitter https://twitter.com/ChrisG_NSF- Webcast http://spaceq.ca/spacex-live/ or http://spaceref.com/live/spacex-webcast.html

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