Comments on: MDA-ATK sale runs into policy obstacles

By: the sky blue waters report » ATK’s WMDs ignite protest over Candian acquisition

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:52:46 +0000

[…] business as one of the nation’s largest munitions manufacturers. But its expansion efforts aren’t appreciated in Canada, where objections to ATK’s production of land mines, cluster bombs, and depleted uranium […]

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 19:31:07 +0000

Charles, while I don’t disagree with your analysis, a couple of thoughts. Concepts for automated satellite repair are slowly making progress and these may utilize Canadian arms. You’re also assuming that the LEO infrastructure game ends with the ISS. While I think their will be a gap before the next station, commercial, European, or Russian interests are all likely to persue some kind of orbital infrastructure in the future, and some of those may use these kinds of technologies. (All the above, of course, assumes that I am wrong about it being easier, cheaper, and more reliable just to send an astronaut out of the airlock to do these types of tasks.)

— Donald

By: Charles in Houston

Charles in Houston — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:55:15 +0000

One thing to remember –

MDA and the Canadian Robotics community have been working for years on, first, the Space Shuttle arm (the S RMS) and then the Space Station arm (the SS RMS) and lately the DEXTRE (previously called the SPDM). All of those systems have been delivered, and the people who built all of that are faced with a future when they will only be doing testing and then just sustaining engineering.

All of the manufacturing is over, since robotics normally means rovers and the MDA folks do arms. The Orion (and Ares) do not have an arm or any capability to add one.

So the future of that corporate knowledge is dim at best, as the Shuttle RMS retires and the SS RMS with DEXTRE is supposed to be “done” by about 2015 or so. Of course that will be modified, but “the plan” is for one of the major users of the Station (and the one that largely motivated the RMS and SS RMS) to concentrate on Lunar and Mars exploration.

So what sort of Canadian space policy could maintain that knowledge base? Are they going to provide a future path for subsequent RMS purchases?

Charles

By: Donald F. Robertson

Donald F. Robertson — Fri, 18 Jan 2008 16:53:39 +0000

it violates an anti-landmine treaty

I was not wild about the sale because “consolidation” has done little positive for the aerospace industry, in my opinion, and a lot that is negative. However, again in my opinion, this alone would be a good reason to oppose this treaty.

— Donald