Space: What is it good for?

Cirque du Soleil: In space. Tickets starting at $35 million.

That’s about how much Guy Laliberté, a Canadian billionaire and founder of Cirque du Soleil, paid to become the first Canadian space tourist and the world’s first clown in orbit.

The Canadarm2, controlled by Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk, does work outside the International Space Station.

As the seventh private citizen to travel to the International Space Station, Laliberté plans to distribute red clown noses to the crew and broadcast a multimedia event on Oct. 9 to raise awareness of the world’s drinking-water problems.

But big feet and balloon animals aside, what are Canadians actually doing up there? And are the results worth the costs of space exploration?

Canada in orbit

Currently, Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk is just over halfway through his six-month mission aboard the ISS. This mission marked two firsts: a Canadian long-duration assignment in space and the successful capture of an incoming cargo ship by the Canadarm2.

The Canadarm and Canadarm2, which are on board the ISS and are responsible for everything from removing ice from the space shuttle to fixing the Hubble Space Telescope, are the nation’s pride and joy. These robotic arms are one of the most significant advances in space engineering and have triggered research on robotics well beyond the space industry.

“We’re starting to see the application of robotics [research] that we’ve done in the past 30 years,” says Hugues Gilbert, Director of Policy and External Relations at the Canadian Space Agency. “For example in assisted surgery.”

This is known as telesurgery and allows doctors to perform operations from a remote location with pinpoint accuracy.  The Centre for Minimal Access Surgery at McMaster University's St. Joseph's Hospital successfully completed a pilot project where the medical team performed an operation on a patient in North Bay, Ont. using this technology.

“It has a positive spinoff for society ... weather forecasting, GPS that helps tourism and farmers, and remote sensing that monitors climate change.”
— Lucy Stojak, HEC Montreal and the International Space University

Lucy Stojak, of Montreal's École des Hautes Études Commerciales and member of the academic council of the International Space University — an initiative supported by all the space-faring nations — says remote sensing and Earth observation have been a huge benefit to life on Earth.

“It has a positive spinoff for society,” she says. “Weather forecasting, GPS that helps tourism and farmers, and remote sensing that monitors climate change.”

The key is to make the satellite imagery collected from space useful. MacDonald, Dettwiler & Associates, a Canadian aerospace, information services and products company, can do just that, says Stojak.

“It's the top company in the world that can add value [to the satellite imagery] and then sell that to companies who can use it for petroleum or resource finding, for example,” she says.

Cash money

This means the money invested in space programs has the ability to return a profit if the information gained from it is used properly. But how much money are we investing?

As a department of the government, the CSA is completely federally funded and receives a base level of $300 million annually. That price tag has been frozen since 1999, although the agency received $111 million in additional funds in 2005, and another $110 million from the 2009 national budget to be used for the development and construction of a series of three Earth observation satellites.

Canadian astronaut Julie Payette sits at a control console in the Space Shuttle Endeavour, while coming in to dock at the International Space Station.

“It is to prepare ourselves for the next wave of space exploration initiatives,” Gilbert says on the 2009 allotment. “It is a clear demonstration that the government wants Canada to be a part of the initiative.”

But should Canadians want to be a part of it?

Steven Renzetti, an economics professor at Brock University, says the best way to answer that is to think about government spending on space programs as an investment, and then ask “does it make sense?”

“The tool we use is cost-benefit analysis,” says Renzetti. “Clearly there are costs, and there are benefits you get out of those costs, but how does the ratio compare?”

The answer is not always clear-cut, as often the benefits are intangible and cannot be measured in dollars.

“For every dollar that has been spent in the space sector, there has been $10 worth of a positive spinoff,” Stojak says. “Let’s say three dollars of that 10 is specific to building sectors in the space field. The other seven come from societal benefits and those benefits are not going to decrease over time.”

No word yet on the Earthbound benefits of clowns in space.

Robert Thirsk: Six months in space

Canadian astronaut Robert Thirsk is at the International Space Station for a six-month mission.