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Canadarm2 – Surviving the Political and Financial Wars

Bringing Canadarm2 to where it is today involved political and financial challenges that were no less difficult than the technical ones. It was a 20-year saga that involved complex negotiations and international tensions, as well as repeated redesigns and downsizing in face of budget cuts.

For Karl Doetsch, then with the National Research Council of Canada, which ran the original Canadarm project, it began in 1981, the year Canadarm first flew on the Shuttle. “I considered it essential that this new capability in both government and industry not be allowed to evaporate through a lack of follow-on activity.” As early as 1982, he was involved in discussions with NASA on Canadian participation in building an orbiting space station.

At the time, the success and visibility of Canadarm had given human spaceflight an unprecedented profile in Canada. Doetsch participated in events with touring U.S.astronauts from two early Shuttle flights on which the arm was used and said he “witnessed time and again the interest and pride of Canadians in this achievement.”

This interest increased dramatically in mid-1983 when Canada accepted NASA’s invitation to select its own astronauts to fly on the Shuttle. Less than 18 months later, after a whirlwind selection process, Marc Garneau became the first Canadian to fly in space in October 1984.
That same year, U.S. President Ronald Reagan formally invited Canada and other countries to participate in building the International Space Station. However, other space projects—the RADARSAT Earth observation satellite, the MSAT communications satellite and the Space Science program—were already in intense competition for funding. “There was a critical debate going on in Canada as to whether we should be doing this,” Evans said of the Space Station project.

Doetsch noted that human spaceflight was ranked fourth in the pecking order at the time, but in the end, he received $2.4-million in seed money to develop concepts for Canada’s involvement both as a potential supplier to and a user of the Space Station.

In 1985, Canada formally began negotiations with the U.S. Since there was no national space agency, Mac Evans, then with the Ministry of State for Science and Technology, took the lead in negotiating Canada’s role. It was a long and difficult process, fraught with financial and political difficulties that had serious repercussions on the technical side. “Getting Canada’s space station robotics project was not just a question of getting approval but winning continual battles to keep it and the Space Station program alive from about 1982 until today,” says Doetsch.

Given the continuing success of Canadarm, space robotics was the obvious choice as Canada’s technological contribution to the Station, which in turn would buy this country access to the Stations’ research facilities. However, this was a tough sell in the U.S. “The negotiations with NASA were anything but trivial, as some Committees of Congress, supported by several U.S. government and industry groups, wanted to establish a U.S. space automation and robotics capability, particularly at the sophisticated end of the spectrum,” said Doetsch. Their efforts to diminish the extent of and dependence on Canadian robotics technology “was to remain a preoccupation for several years and could have wrecked cooperation at any time.”

It is doubtful Canada would have won the right to build the Station’s arm were it not for the flawless performance of the Shuttle’s arm during this period. “The success of the Canadarm was essential because it gave us the credibility to take on Canadarm2,” said Evans. At the time, Canada was the only one of the international partners that was proposing to build a component essential to the assembly and maintenance of the Station. “We’d carved out a critical role that the whole Space Station depended on. NASA was only prepared to do that because the Canadarm was working so well—because we had demonstrated we could do it.”

The fact that such a key technology would be in the hands of another country did not go unnoticed in U.S. political and industrial circles. Canada’s development of the Shuttle arm had previously drawn fire and this time, the objections were stronger and more sustained, according to Doetsch and Evans, who both became embroiled in negotiations to sort out the matter. “They were very concerned about Canada getting this critical role and developing these critical robotic technologies,” said Evans. Doetsch said it took considerable ingenuity to come up with a compromise that both countries could live with.

The result was an agreement that Canada would have the “predominant” but not exclusive role in developing the Space Station robotics. NASA then embarked on it’s own project, the Flight Telerobotic Servicer (FTS), which was in some ways similar to an advanced robotic component Canada was building called the Special Purpose Dexterous Manipulator (SPDM). The U.S. planned to fly the FTS before the SPDM, but ultimately, it fell prey to budget-cutting that led to a massive redesign of the Station in 1993. “It fell off the radar screen,” Evans said.
Canada was also caught up in budget-cutting and its robotic program was also in danger of falling off the radar screen. As both Canada and the United States fell into recession in the early 1990s, the Space Station programs in both countries faced real threats of outright cancellation. The support of the international partners was widely credited with saving the U.S. program from the chopping block.

Meanwhile, the Canadian team had to find ways to downsize without destroying their program. Tense negotiations with NASA resulted in changes in Canada’s responsibilities on the Station, which reduced the budget sufficiently to keep the Canadian program alive, though under funded, Doetsch said.

Of particular concern was the SPDM, a robotic “hand” capable of doing delicate maintenance and repair tasks, which incorporated many advanced features that were particularly attractive in terms of building Canada’s industrial robotics expertise. Threatened with cancellation, it was kept on “life support” in the revamped program until circumstances improved enough to allow a restart of the project. Doetsch noted that his last responsibility as head of the Canadian Space Station Program was to negotiate the reintroduction of the SPDM in 1997. The device is currently being integrated and tested at MDRobotics and will be ready for its upcoming launch in 2004.

Although it is still the early days for Canadarm2, Evans and Doetsch believe it has already created a legacy by demonstrating that Canada remains at the forefront in developing advanced space robotic technologies. “It has provided recognition of Canada as a country with a technically sophisticated and innovative capability,” says Doetsch. It also demonstrated Canada’s ability to work as part of an international team “to achieve this great feat when the going was mostly tough,” he said. “We succeeded. For all the trials and tribulations along the way, thinking big but having patience made great things happen.”

Evans predicts Canadians will be as proud of the new Canadarm as they were of the first one. He said it has cemented Canada’s role as a full partner in the Space Station program, giving it a place with other spacefaring nations as humanity moves beyond Earth orbit. “Whatever future exploration takes place, we can say Canada was there.”

A 20-year Odyssey