Chuck Black

Website: acuriousguy.blogspot.com/
Bio:I'm 2009 Secretary of the Canadian Space Commerce Association, a member of the Canadian Space Society, active in the International Association of Space Entrepeneurs and looking for the next big opportunity to make a little money off the high frontier. I live in Toronto, Ontario and can be reached at chuck_black@sympatico.ca.

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Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Our Prime Minister again endorses RadarSat Constellation, then reminds us that he increased Canadian Space Agency (CSA) funding in March 2010 so funding delays are now "a thing of the past," just so long as nobody needs any cash until...
Commented on This Week in Space for Canada

Thanks, Anthony for your response to my query. It's good to know that China and India are so respectful of your work and of international copyright laws (although I expected as much from the Swiss). It's also good that you've...
Commented on This Week in Space for Canada

Thanks to everyone for responding to these posts and my apologies for the spelling mistakes and grammar errors that have been slowly creeping into my responses. Sometimes, when I'm overtired or stressed I make mistakes. Sometimes I even swear in...
Commented on This Week in Space for Canada

Alan, why can't we "know exactly what facebook did?" I think we should be able to independently confirm and validate a corporations actions and compliance with the appropriate national laws. Last summer, the Office of the Privacy Commissioner of Canada...
Commented on This Week in Space for Canada

Thanks Marc, I appreciate the responses from both Mr. Ayiomamitis and Ms. Laplace-Builhe for their statements. There seems a general consensus that Ms. Laplace-Builhe violated copy write with her actions and that Mr. Ayiomamitis then reported her. But Mr. Ayiomamitis...
Commented on This Week in Space for Canada

Hello, Thank you for all the comments. I’m sort of hoping that everyone picked up on the "political minefield" imagery that I was trying to convey the week, especially given the multiple responses, comments and “gotcha’s” that seem to be...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

The Winnipeg Free Press reminds us that the Canadian aerospace industry has always straddled a dense political minefield while European based independent advocate Catherine Laplace-Builhe promotes the Canadian Space Agency (or at least she did until US based Facebook shut...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

With the Wall Street Journal reporting that shrinking budgets and national rivalries are slowly undermining European space programs and the Asia Times noting that the cash strapped National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is still able to find US$30 million...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Canadian Space Agency President Steve MacLean tells the Winnipeg Free Press that his cash poor agency is developing a space policy which lines up behind the Obama administration, the Washington Post tells it's readers that the cash poor U.S. space...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

It's the summer silly season and signs of life in Ottawa and at the John H. Chapman Space Centre in the sleepy Montreal south shore suburb of Longueuil are noticeably absent. So thank goodness for the joint European Space Agency...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Thank goodness we're not the American's because US space competitiveness has eroded in each of the past three years according to the Futron Space Competitiveness Index, which considers Russia the big winner in space because of its recently doubled space...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

India launches a Norwegian micro-satellite built by a Canadian university without any help from the American space program, which insists that it's "not dead yet" as the U.S. Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee "unanimously" approves legislation adding an extra...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Julie Payette ponders her possible future as an ex-astronaut while pundits and commentators speculate on whether current astronaut Chris Hadfield will return to space anytime soon and everyone else seems to want the Russians to launch more rockets. All that...
Commented on Old News Revisited - SpaceX to Launch CASSIOPE

Works for me. Both Peter Rakobowchuk (the author of the CP article) and myself need to start reading your other stuff more....
Commented on This Week in Space for Canada

Hello spaceguy99 If you could give me a context for the statement you’ve made about CSA not being the formal customer for Space-X or some publicly available documentation to reference the presumed MDA role I’d be more than happy to...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Engineering job fairs proliferate all along the Florida "space" coast as the US shuttle program winds down, while in Canada alternative space propulsion gains momentum and I personally have to "apologize profusely" as the Canadian Space Agency becomes a paying...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

The worldwide commercial space market heats up as Iridium Satellite Communications caps a two billion dollar turnaround with a $492 million USD launch contract to Elon Musk and his Space-X cowboys. Meanwhile, back in Canada our federal government finally ponies...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Elon Musk has his fully functioning Falcon 9 rocket. South Korea has their Space Launch Vehicle-1 (NARO-1) on the pad at the Naro Space Center, the Indians are busy perfecting their cryogenic liquid fueled rocket and even the English are...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Raising money for mining ventures is something that Canadians do very, very well indeed and since the huge media event this week is about the big BP oil spill off the gulf coast, this week in space for Canada will...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

This week in space for Canada is all about getting re-acquainted with old friends both in-person at the Canadian Astronautics and Space Institute (CASI) 15th Annual Astro 2010 conference held in Toronto from May 4th - 6th and on the...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

"And there you have it, the Great Canadian Handshake," then astronaut Steve MacLean said over a scratchy radio from space back in 2006 after using the Canadarm2 on the International Space Station (ISS) to grasp 16 tonnes of machinery handed...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

There's no news this week in space for Canada, at least until we absorb and assess the comments and whispered gossip coming out of last weeks Canadian Space Agency Workshop on Suborbital Platforms and Nanosatellites, but there's lots of stuff...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

This week in space for Canada is all about the contrast between the generally positive business and industry reaction to the changes underway within the American space program, the silence these very same changes seem to be eliciting from within...
Posted This Week in Space For Canada to SpaceRef Canada

This week in space for Canada is focused on a rather interesting article by Peter Rakobowchuk of the Canadian Press that initially showed up Sunday in partial form under the title "Space Agency eyes Cape Breton for satellite launch" on...
Posted This Week in Space For Canada to SpaceRef Canada

This week in space for Canada is all about developing an inventory of the commercial space focused activities occurring last week and comparing them to what's happening, or maybe not happening, at the Canadian Space Agency (CSA)....
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Last week in space for Canada was all about our federal government, it's changing policies and newly allocated funding as outlined in both the Wednesday throne speech and the Thursday budget. This week for space in Canada is about whether...
Posted This Week in Space For Canada to SpaceRef Canada

This week in space for Canada is all about an American, Michael Swartwout, an Assistant Professor of Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering at Parks College, St. Louis University who recently wrote a fascinating article on "The promise of innovation from university...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Back in September 2008, when Steve MacLean became head of the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), industry and science experts expected a long-term space strategy document would be developed and released almost immediately in order to provide a long delayed "way...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada - February 2, 2010 Edition to SpaceRef Canada

Last week in space for Canada was all about watching the Americans figure out what they're going to do with their broken, bleeding and bankrupt national space program. US President Obama has spoken and now we know his intentions so...
Posted This Week in Space for Canada to SpaceRef Canada

Pierre Trudeau, addressing the Washington, D.C., Press Club in 1969 said "Living next to you [the U.S.] is in some ways like sleeping with an elephant. No matter how friendly and even-tempered is the beast, one is affected by every...

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Anthony Ayiomamitis commented on This Week in Space for Canada
Raj, Very interesting reading! If we can equate the two set of actions as being the same (your boy's desire to share a few photos with his friends and a Facebook user's ability to do the same), where does one draw the line? In fact, are you not implicitly suggesting a free for all where anything and everything is now "open-source" and each user can do as he or she wishes? In fact, by extension, you are suggesting that anything and everything on the internet is free. If this were the case, I can assure you the internet would be...
Raj Jain commented on This Week in Space for Canada
Hi Antony; I tried to get my 16 years old to respond but he would not. He felt this discussion was silly and we adults were quarrelling like kids. However, he says “this guy has got a passion and the “bling” to pursue it. What is the big deal about it? I assure y’all I don’t share his assessment about us, but this is the generation we will be dealing with. He made an interesting point though. Why won’t Anthony put the authorship and copyright statement in the margin of the picture? His analogy – if the author did not...
Anthony Ayiomamitis commented on This Week in Space for Canada
Raj, A couple of comments in relation to the above text: (1) Your boy feels it is all much ado about nothing. Please ask him how he would feel if he created a computer game which was popular and he discovered that a copy was circulating without his knowledge or permission on some public board and how he would feel about it? To add insult to injury, also if that board was perhaps a source for others to also acquire copies. (2) With respect to adding qualifying information on the margins of a photo, this is something which I personally...
Raj Jain commented on This Week in Space for Canada
Hi Anthony; Your Question -I can give you a very good example which is right up your ally (mine too): is freeware the same quality as commercial software? Lets start with Linux - totally free and it is a very popular operating system extensively used in research, educational, corporate and governmental world. Apache HTTP server - totally free and it is a very popular Web Server including secure web server. http://news.netcraft.com/archives/2006/04/26/apache_now_the_leader_in_ssl_servers.html PHP Programming Language - Totally free and a very popular WEB 2.0 applications. MySQL database system - Totally free and a database of choice for WEB 2.0 applications. Now...
Anthony Ayiomamitis commented on This Week in Space for Canada
Raj, Your software examples above are very good. However, it is certainly NOT representative of the software field itself or, otherwise, companies which produce commercial software would be out of business. Linux may be a great alternative to UNIX but the latter is far from dead and certainly is holding its own (just an example). In relation to your last statement above, one of us has perhaps misinterpreted something. When someone/something such as a magazine uses predominantly third-party material, one will indeed see the material being used either cited immediately below the work being used or at the back of...

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