Disruptors

Launching Sovereignty: How The Maritimes are Powering Canada’s Place in Space

John Stackhouse: Hi, it’s John here. I’d like to start with a voice. A lot of Canadians will recognize.

Chris Hadfield: Canada is a huge country, second biggest in the world, and so to imagine it as one thing, but to be able to fly onboard a spaceship and see the entire country from coast to coast to coast in 10 minutes, suddenly the reality of Canada becomes much clearer and the potential of our country is laid right out there in front of you,

John Stackhouse: In case you didn’t guess that’s retired astronaut engineer, fighter pilot, and pretty decent guitar player, Chris Hadfield. And when I think of Canadians who can help us see what the future of our country might look like, Chris Hadfield’s view is pretty hard to beat.

Chris Hadfield: Canada’s next growth engine is waiting above us if we want a bigger. More resilient economy. We need to move from trusted partner to a full stack space nation. Our critical systems that we take for granted every day, from communication to navigation, gosh, to timing, to money, transfer to weather everything, and sovereignty itself as a nation depends on space and the assets that we put up there.  We need to be able to put payloads into orbit from our own soil when our access and timeline depend on others, so do our jobs and our intellectual property. And of course, our ability to scale the universe isn’t going away. The necessity to take advantage of the high ground of space, that’s not going to diminish with time.

John Stackhouse: Chris has flown two space shuttle missions and was the commander of the International Space Station. Since returning to Earth, he’s been a tireless advocate for Canada’s role in the global space economy. Pushing for investments in satellites, robotics, and training the next generation of space leaders.

Chris Hadfield: So the real question for Canada is how do we continue to build the opportunity for young Canadians so that they won’t just be tempted to stay in Canada? They’ll be excited to stay in Canada. They’ll recognize, wow, this is cool. We got the landmass, we got the intellectual property, we got the education.  We got the raw materials, we got the history. We can do it here and sell it to the world. We just need to get at it and support the early nascent launch companies that are working on it right now.

John Stackhouse: The stakes for Canada’s space independence couldn’t be higher. Arctic surveillance, disaster response, communication, sovereignty, they all depend on satellite access, right now we don’t control. And while our competitors are iterating rapidly, launching new capabilities, testing innovations, adapting to threats, Canadian space, technology has to sit in line for foreign launches. Subject to other nation’s priorities and schedules.  I’m John Stackhouse. Welcome to Disruptors the Canada Project. This season we’re taking you on a journey across the country to meet some of the visionaries who are using technology to tackle our most urgent challenges, and in the process, create a blueprint for a stronger, more competitive Canada. Our destination today is Atlantic Canada.  In a minute we’ll hear from Rahul Goel. He’s the CEO of Nord space who’s building a Canadian rocket plus a launchpad in a small community in Newfoundland, but first to Nova Scotia, where we’ll meet Stephen Matier of Maritime Launch Services. Right now, they’re focused on building a launchpad for a near Earth satellite, so stick with us to discover how a region built on ocean exploration is now pioneering space exploration giving Canada some of the independents will need in a very new space age. This could be the perfect location to break Canada’s foreign launch dependency, turning a strategic vulnerability into a competitive advantage.

John Stackhouse: A lot of us grew up watching amazing Canadian innovations, the Canada arm probably being the most celebrated. Launched into space on the vehicles of other nations, and I’d say for the most part we were pretty proud of that, that we got to team up with NASA later, a SpaceX. Now there’s a bit of worry that, uh, we don’t have more sovereignty over our launch.  Why does launch matter, Steve, in terms of which nation controls it?

Stephen Matier: Well, it’s about sovereignty and autonomy and the ability to do the things we wanna do without intervention. Most everything we’re doing today, whether it’s using your cell phone or an ATM or your medical records or banking. All those kinds of things are all tied to satellites these days, and not having the ability to do those on our own can be problematic. And then when you look at our own sovereignty and the safety and security of our country, then it becomes even more important to have that autonomy.

John Stackhouse: So that’s an argument I’m guessing most Canadians would quickly agree with. Help us understand what we’re up against because we are in some respects, decades behind in terms of building large capacity. Is there a leapfrog opportunity here or do we just have to giddy up and try to catch up faster than decades might take?

Stephen Matier: There is certainly a leapfrog. The idea behind Maritime Launch Services and Spaceport Nova Scotia is exactly that, and whether it’s geopolitical as we’re seeing and worrying about on a daily basis or whether it’s that launch Cadence has picked up so much that there isn’t enough space ports in the right locations to put all these satellites into orbit. That’s the real issue for us to be able to have that capability to meet our own launch needs. Then the way to do that is. To collaborate with our allied partners that have some capabilities that can use our launch facility for deploying our own satellites from Canadian soil while we’re working to develop our own launch vehicle capabilities in Canada because that you’re right. That is years behind. So having a spaceport up and running gives us that window of opportunity while our own launch vehicles mature to be placing our own material into orbit.

John Stackhouse: A lot of people may be wondering, while this is going on in Nova Scotia, may have images of launch pads being better situated towards the equator. Which many of us probably learned in high school, why would there be an advantage in building more launchpads in Nova Scotia or on other parts of Canada’s coastlines?

Stephen Matier: When you look at any coastal area in the United States, it’s got a lot of stuff, a lot of people. And at the end of the day, overlying large numbers of, of people with rockets, uh, will never reach that level of safety. So being near the ocean is really key. Being on the right side of the pond is really key. So our European partners, they have places in saxophone and, and in the uk. And Norway and Sweden that can launch due North. But what we have in Nova Scotia and off the tip of this peninsula is a range of orbits that go all the way north south, all the way down to South America, over to the coast of Africa and over Europe. So 45 to 98 degree inclinations is, is a huge range. You can get to Sun synchronous Polar orbit from the West coast by launching due South from Vandenberg, and you can get to some of these other orbits on the East coast at Kennedy Space Center. But you can’t get to both from one place where we, because we hang out over the top of the North Atlantic, are perfect to achieve both. We’ve signed an agreement with reaction dynamics. They’re developing their own launch capability in Montreal. They want to try to start orbital launches in 2028. So we’re on a way right now of, of just executing on our plan to deliver for launch as early as next year.

John Stackhouse: What does Canada need to do to, uh, get fully behind, not just you, but all your peers who are trying to get Canada back into the top tier of Space Nations?

Stephen Matier: We’re a member of Space Canada, and that organization has really been an important piece of communicating to the government about some of their priorities. We already build a whole. A lot of satellites in Canada, whether it’s, you know, Kepler, MDA, TELESAT, to even here in Nova Scotia with Galaxy Mission Systems, GHG Sat, there’s a lot of satellites already made here and just having the ability to launch them ourselves is gonna be really monumental I think. So that’s a change that’s coming. We’ve signed an agreement with Reaction Dynamics. They’re developing their own launch capability in Montreal. They want to try to start orbital launches in 2028. That’s something we’ll be able to deliver. I think the current government really gets it. There is a real keen interest in dual use infrastructure that is gonna provide economic development in rural parts of Nova Scotia. We’re checking all those boxes and I think there’s a lot of support and a lot of interest from our government, uh, because of the geopolitics is part of it, but also because of the launch cadence and the requirements to serve our own needs in putting material into orbit.

John Stackhouse: That’s a great rallying cry. Steve, thanks for being on Disruptors.

Stephen Matier: Oh gosh, very much. My pleasure. Thank you.

John Stackhouse: Now of course, others have heard that rallying cry too. While Stephen Metier is building Canada a runway in Nova Scotia across the Gulf in Newfoundland. Rahul Goel of North Space is trying to build the pad and rocket an end-to-end bet.

John Stackhouse: On Canadian launch, different path, same goal, sovereign access to orbit. But what does it actually take to pour concrete on the Atlantic Coast? Wire a range and stand up a launch system in one of the windiest foggiest corners of the country. Rahul Goel joins us now. Maybe we can start by talking about how and maybe why you first got involved in the Canadian Space Race.

Rahul Goel: Well, you know, I’ve been involved in this for basically my whole life. I started off as a kid, just like any other, who wanted to be an astronaut, wanted to be a fighter pilot, but I never grew up. I’ve always wanted to do that. And as the years went by, I was not only fond of the amazing accomplishments that Canada’s had in space, especially our astronaut program and robotics, but also started realizing that we are falling behind and I decided that it’s incredibly important to help our country catch up. We have a massive exodus of talent, of capital, of sovereignty, of national pride. So all of those factors led to the founding of North Space and kind of trumped just this cool factor about building in space.

John Stackhouse: So now you’re building this uniquely Canadian rocket to launch from the small Newfoundland community of St. Lawrence. What are some of the key factors you must consider right outta the gate?

Rahul Goel: Choosing the architecture for rocket is incredibly important at this stage, and the reason is scalability. So we chose a liquid rocket architecture. We use kerosene and liquid oxygen, you know, very standard propellants.  A challenge with liquid oxygen is it’s a cryogenic propellant, so it’s a major challenge to sort it, keep it cool, and keep it in the exact right conditions. Forcing these propellants at exactly the right moment, at exactly the right temperatures and exactly the right pressures with almost no margin is the in incredible challenge.  We’re using a lot of innovative technologies from our software simulations all the way to additive manufacturing. To the logistics and operations, we’re starting with a small launch vehicle that’ll be capable of taking about 500 kilograms to lower earth orbit so that vehicle’s called tundra, and then we’ll scale up the exact same architecture because these types of rockets like to be big to a five ton, 5,000 kilogram metric, tons to lower earth orbit vehicle called Titan, and that’ll be able to really supply the necessary capability for the most valuable and most important missions.

John Stackhouse: From where you’re sitting, how would you describe the current state of space transportation and where do you think it’s headed?

Rahul Goel: There’s been kind of this growth in the small satellite sector over the last 10, 15 years, led largely by Rocket Labs Electron, SpaceX’s, ride share, transporter emissions. That kind of market will still exist. It’ll be a niche market, but we’re seeing satellite buses get larger. We’re seeing the most valuable missions go to larger payloads. We’re seeing our d and d and others looking for multi ton capabilities to orbit, and we’re looking at all rockets being reusable. And the only way to have a reusable rocket architecture like the one that you see, you know, Falcon nine, SpaceX launching and then landing back at the launch site is if you have enough propellant and a large enough vehicle. So, all that kind of is laddering up to our, uh, Titan vehicle in the early 2030s.

John Stackhouse: As Rahul points out, Canada’s department of defense or d and d is showing more interest in launch technology and orbital security, but national security alone won’t sustain a space economy. The tundra and his bigger sibling, the Titan will also have to make economic sense.  So, we asked Rahul beyond defense, what’s the real commercial opportunity here?

Rahul Goel: So on the satellite side, it’s a good question. Like, why are we building satellites? Again, the historical precedent, if you look at something like SpaceX, 70% of their launches nearly are starlink satellites. If you look at Rocket Lab, a great New Zealand company that’s now American, that’s scaled up, second most successful launch company in the world.  Their top line and bottom line are space systems satellites. Despite being a launch company, a launch is very important ’cause it gives you the flexibility and it builds this moat around your company. But without a robust demand pipeline, it becomes very difficult to scale a launch business. Our goal is to internalize 50% of our launch supply with, with our own demand, uh, by building our own satellites and constellations.  And this is very important for us to be a commercial success, not just a technological success.

John Stackhouse: As Raul’s team works towards that future, we asked him what his neighbors in St. Lawrence, Newfoundland can expect to see taking shape on the North Space site over the next few years?

Rahul Goel: What you can expect over the next couple years is fairly simple.You know, we’re building two launch pads for small to medium lift vehicles, so really a fraction still of what the SpaceX vehicles are like. We’ll have our own propellant generation stations. We’ll have a humble mission control to fit maybe 20 to 30 people. We’ll have a bunch of roads. It’ll span about 50 acres in total, and, uh, it’ll look a lot more like, you know, a regional airport than like Pearson Airport, for example. Then we scale up from there. But that should be very sufficient for us to get off the ground and do what we need to do. A lot of this is also enabled by the fact that modern technology means that we can remotely manage a lot of operations. So our, our main mission control very likely will be in St. John’s and not St. Lawrence, three and a half hours away. So it’s going to look futuristic, it’s going to look cool, but it, it doesn’t need to and won’t look necessarily like a massive Cape Canaveral like Complex.

John Stackhouse: The idea of a Canadian spaceport launching a Canadian rocket to carry a Canadian built satellite serving Canadian needs is pretty exciting.  But we’ve still got a ways to go as every astronaut knows how far and how fast we get there. Well depend on the goals we set.

Rahul Goel: Now, you know, it, it really depends on a company’s goal. So, you know, a lot of companies will come out of the gate launch companies or companies that are developing launch as part of their services and say, we’re gonna launch 50 or a hundred times a year. You look at an Isar, for example, they’ve raised north of 600 million euros. That’s a Isar Aerospace, by the way, a German launch company currently developing the Spectrum Rocket. So, they are going to require, uh, extremely successful and extremely frequent launch cadence in order to just break even on their r and d and development costs. By contrast, we’re estimating our program budget for our first orbital launch vehicle Tundra, to be south of a hundred million cad. There’s precedent for this. Falcon One by SpaceX was $95 million USD.  Rocket Labs, uh, electron was under a hundred million. USD survivability is extremely challenging in this business, so that’s why we have our space system side and building our own infrastructure to minimize the marginal cost.

John Stackhouse: When you think about what North Space is developing, what would success look like?

Rahul Goel: So for us, success for launch will mean if we’re launching once a month, roughly, we’re gonna be in a really good position as a company. Our whole business plan is built that way. We’re definitely gonna gun for launching way more and doing way more, but it’s not an existential threat to us if we don’t launch at, you know, at SpaceX levels because it is very hard to do this activity and especially to scale it up, but they’ll pay off in the, in the long term.

John Stackhouse: I like Raul’s distinctly Canadian take on success. Cautious, grounded, but optimistic. He talks about survivability and the long view, and that’s exactly what Canada’s new space companies are trying to do. Build systems that have room to grow, can withstand setbacks and then learn from them. Because in this business, progress often means a few failed launches along the way.

Rahul Goel: Failure is always hard. We try to launch our rocket for the first time, and we failed at that.

John Stackhouse: He’s talking about the launch attempts back in September. When Nord space’s tiger Rocket, which incidentally is powered by the Hadfield engine, fail to launch.

Rahul Goel: Of course we would love to not fail, but it doesn’t work like that in rockets. This is really tricky stuff. We are preconditioned to that and we have a better sense of understanding which failures are actual, like serious systems, programmatic failures, and which are just the right type of failure, the type of failure that you can learn from rapidly, and you don’t have to go back to the drawing road because you realize your business case is wrong or your fundamental technology choices are wrong in rocketry. I think it’s really important to fail to a certain extent. ’cause if you’re not, you don’t know if you’re really pushing all the way to the edge. And because the margins are so slim, you wanna know that you’re not wasting any capacity. So you, you know, you’ll see engines fail, uh, from Nord space for sure. In fact, we’ll, we’re gonna push them to fail. You’ll see some rockets fail, but that’s part of the process, uh, to get their, you know, SpaceX does it exceptionally well. Not every company has a billionaire backing it to allow for so many failures. But it’s just part of the process and par for the course for us.

John Stackhouse: I can’t help thinking about Chris Hadfield watching those early launch attempts. His name literally stamped on the rocket engine.

Chris Hadfield: It’s funny when people ask me about, uh, being an astronaut, all, all they really focus on, even though I was an astronaut for 21 years, is the six months I was in space. There’s almost no awareness and, and very little recognition of the fact that I spent 20 and a half years doing things so that I could succeed in my six months in space. And what you do in preparation essentially is you get stuff wrong, you get into simulators and you. You know, some days everybody dies, and it’s only when you get into a place where you can test it safely so that failures aren’t deadly, that then you could actually improve things and, and have a chance to succeed when it matters the most. You can’t make every event sacred. You have to recognize that failure is a part of success. How did you learn to ride a bicycle? Did you ever fall down? Was there a time in your life when you didn’t know how to ride a bicycle? But hopefully someone helped you enough that you didn’t do permanent damage to yourself while you were learning? As you develop the skill, we need to provide that same environment as we develop rocket technology.

John Stackhouse: You can’t make every event sacred. Failure is part of success. I love hearing people like Chris Hadfield and Rahul Goel reflect on the role of risk and how embracing it is essential for our future success. And one more thing that will secure that future as a Spacefaring nation building and keeping a skilled workforce.

Rahul Goel: We already do such a great job as Canadians. I think training our workforce. In fact, we train our workforce and it enables other countries to build their space programs and everything else. Our best and brightest leave our country. We train them here. A lot of it is publicly funded and they leave. I think we’re doing an exceptionally good job in Canada training talent and, and creating opportunities. But at the end of the day, the, the retention is really the problem. The amazing thing about building capabilities in space is that it spans the entire spectrum. Highly multidisciplinary, especially in rockets. We need people, you know, in business development, we need people in, you know, we need welders, and we need plumbers and we need people on the ground who are building roads and, and we need civil engineers. And yes, we need the rocket scientists, and we need electrical engineers and software engineers, propulsion engineers, all kinds of highly specialized, but also just key roles that, you know, Canadians are really, really good at.

John Stackhouse: We’ve got the skills and we’ve got the talent. Canadians have been talking about going to space for a long time. Building up to this moment when Canadian school kids get to count down the launch attempt of a Canadian rocket.

Rahul Goel: I like to say that we’re working really hard to give Canada its own Apollo moment, what the Apollo program did for the United States, and demonstrated that they can go to the moon if they decide to, if they choose to. Within a decade completely changed the country to a point. You know, I’m, I have a NASA hat still, like, why do I have that? It’s because it’s, it’s the most inspiring brand in the world still.

John Stackhouse: Here’s Chris Hadfield again on what this moment means for Canada.

Chris Hadfield: Our kids are kind of counting on us as the current crop of adults to do inspiring things. If they aren’t inspired by what’s happening in Canada, then why wouldn’t they leave? When I was a 9-year-old kid, I had a head full of ideas and no way to turn them into reality until I saw the very first astronauts going to, and then eventually walking on the moon. Neil and Buzz, just imagine instead of planting an American flag on the moon, if they had been planting a Canadian flag and if that rocket had been a Canadian rocket. Not only would I have felt great pride, but the path for me would’ve been so much more clear. During the Apollo program, every single one of them was an American. No one has ever left earth orbit in all of human history, except those 24 Americans. But in February, in fact, the plan date is February 5th. This enormous rocket is gonna launch out of Florida and onboard. It will be three Americans going to the moon, but the fourth crew member is a Canadian. It is a hugely historic moment that of all the countries in the world, the first non-American to ever go to the moon is gonna be Colonel Jeremy Hansen from Ailsa Craig Ontario. An amazing moment of Canadian capability, individual perseverance. And of great Canadian pride

John Stackhouse: From the shores of Canso Nova Scotia or Newfoundland’s Bureau Peninsula, you can see clearly what generations before us saw the edge of the known world and an open invitation to go beyond it. For more than two centuries, the Maritimes have been Canada’s launching point into the unknown. From fishing on the grand banks to merchant runs to the Caribbean, to naval convoys crossing the Atlantic, Stephen Mattie and Rahul Goel aren’t just building space technology. They’re confronting Canada’s longstanding dependency on others to get us where we need to go. Instead of waiting months for foreign launch slots or settling for whatever satellite capacity others provide, they’re creating the infrastructure that Canada needs to compete in the space economy. The stakes couldn’t be higher. Climate change is opening Arctic shipping routes that need monitoring our coastlines stretch across three oceans requiring surveillance. Our digital economy depends on satellite communications that we don’t control with 254 launches happening globally in 2024. And Canada dependent on foreign rockets for every single mission. Every day we delay is another day we may fall further behind. The question isn’t whether Canada needs more space sovereignty. It’s whether we can build that capability at home, and maybe that’s the maritime advantage. A region that’s been launching things into the unknown for centuries and now applying that expertise where there are no limits from rocky shores to the edge of space, you can see how much opportunity there is for Canada. You just need to look up. You’ve been listening to Disruptors, the Canada Project, an RBC Podcast. I’m John Stackhouse. Thanks for joining us on this incredible innovation journey across Canada and stay tuned for lots more ahead.