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NASA's Zero-Gravity Robotic-Arm Partnership With Canada
AndreV writes "We've entered into an extraterrestrial quid pro quo with our Northern neighbors: After celebrating 25 years of the Canadarm's first venture into space, NASA has reached out (so to speak) to the Canadian Space Agency and begun research and development on a new generation of robotic arms, which would ultimately be used for the US agency's Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle that will provide transportation for Moon missions and jaunts to the international space station. In exchange, Canada will trade the robotic-limb technology's use on Orion and other future US-manned spacecraft for flight time for Canadian astronauts. And seeing solid results shouldn't be far off — the engineering company designing the bionic branch, responsible for the previous Canadarms, has already begun investigating the effects of zero gravity on their components. (Another forward-looking project being bartered for astronaut time is a rover for the Moon and Mars.) Fair trade?"
My sister in law worked on the Canadarm 2. She said they used the good old Intel 386 to control its functions for reliability reasons.
A Canadian scientist once tried to make it possible for Canadian satellites to be launched without the use of southern rockets.
He had his budget cut on request from the Overlords, so en went to work on his giant canon project with funding from Saddam Hussein. He ended up dead in front of his door with his keys in the lock and the very clean gun next his body.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gerald_Bull
You can't take the sky from me...
The Canadarm was in use before 1990 ..... and that's the device with the 25th anniversary
The Canadarm 2 was developed for the IISS, oh and I believe "your project" was done with work from both sides of the border, in fact with "your" company
"SPAR Aerospace Ltd., a Canadian company, designed, developed, tested and built the SRMS. (SPAR was later indirectly acquired by Richmond, B.C. based MacDonald Dettwiler and Associates (MDA), after going through the hands of American company Orbital Sciences Corp. and becoming a part of MD Robotics in Ontario, Canada.)"
Not so "nuts" to them
Actually, he didn't imply anything. Just that his budget for launching Canadian Satellites was cut by the "Overlords", prompting him to go work for Saddam, anyone who knows the story suspects Mossad, but who knows for sure?