Remote sensing then and now
The Prince Albert Satellite Station
Murray Strome
| The satellite and ground station engineering working group had the most urgent job to get ready. Ron Barrington from John Chapman's Communications/CRC group supervised the re-furbishing and conversion of the Prince Albert Radar Laboratory (PARL) to an ERTS receiving station (PASS), through a contract to the Department of Physics of the University of Saskatchewan headed by Alex Kavadas.
Ed Shaw
| When it came to designing the ground data handling centre, there was nobody in the Ottawa area who had any relevant experience. NASA had contracted with Bendix for $30 million to design and build their system. We talked to Bendix but considered their costs too high. Murray Strome, the computer expert from the NRC/NAE/MAD group had resigned NRC and was hired as a consultant to the Program Planning Office. He managed to put the necessary technical specifications together and a contract was let to Computing Devices of Ottawa. They assembled a team of six engineers under the leadership of Ed Shaw which worked in house, on contract, as part of the Program Planning Office. They managed to complete and install the system on time, at the new headquarters of the Canada Centre for Remote Sensing in Ottawa on Sheffield Rd., on time and within the budget of $4 million (compared to NASA's cost of $30M.)
During the design of our system, NASA called an open seminar on the design of ground data handling and interpretation centres for resource satellites which was held at the Annapolis Naval Academy. All the big U.S. aerospace companies presented papers as well as several specialized consultants. Al Gregory and I attended because our design team was too busy to attend. As a finale to the meeting, a panel consisting of several senior NASA people and chaired by the senior science officer for the State Department, was convened to answer questions from the audience about ERTS. They obviously must have expected questions from the international members of the audience because of the presence of the State Department official. Towards the end of the session, which had been quite unexciting and after most of the audience had left, someone at the back asked if it would be permitted for a private company to put up its own ground station, read out and market the ERTS data. It was as if someone had thrown a brick through the window. The audience was stunned, as was the chairman. After he regained composure, he asked, "what is the name of your company?" The reply was, "Wright Engineering of Vancouver," which surprised the audience even more, especially Gregory and me. The reply was, "we would have to consider the merits of the case," and the session ended.
John MacDonald
| Gregory and I ran to the back of the room to meet this man and arranged to have dinner with him. His name was David Sloan. At the time, he was a recent Ph.D. from the U.B.C. Physics Department. He had read about ERTS and had ideas as to how to build a low-cost ground station and data handling centre. He had joined Wright Engineering, a large mine and mill design engineering company and was in the process of convincing them to build an ERTS ground station in Vancouver. He was unsuccessful in getting Wright Engineering to finance this venture, so he went to John MacDonald, President of a new start-up firm in Vancouver, named MDA. As John MacDonald had recently come from the staff of the U.B.C Physics Department, he knew David Sloan and hired him immediately. We could not contract with MDA for the ground data handling centre because we had already let the contract to CDC but Ron Barrington who was handling the conversion of the Prince Albert Radar Station, let a small contract to MDA to make and install what was called a QUICK LOOK system at PARL (Prince Albert Radar Laboratory). The QUICK LOOK was to provide a 60 mm photo- transparency of the imagery almost as quickly as it was received from the satellite - admittedly a somewhat decimated version of the image - but fast. This system enabled Canada to see the first image produced by ERTS which covered the twin cities of Dallas and Fort Worth. NASA took four days to produce their first image.
I took the space to mention this story because MDA's success in the QUICKLOOK project was given world-wide publicity. I presented a paper at the U.N. Peaceful Uses of Outer Space Committee showing some of these images. The QUICK LOOK was the prelude to the development of a full, low-cost ground data handling centre. Within two years, MDA submitted an unsolicited proposal to DSS to provide a complete ERTS ground station for our new site at SHOE Cove, Nfld. This facility was to be built in anticipation of NASA's SEASAT, which was to carry the first spaceborne synthetic aperture radar. The unsolicited proposal was for $ 1.4 million and put the whole data handling system in one trailer measuring 12' X 25'--some accomplishment, considering the previous data handling centres occupied major computer rooms with false floors measuring at least 30' X 30'!
The international response to this was astounding and a path was beaten to our door by scientists from all over the world wanting to get more information on this system. This was the start of MDA's growth. They now employ more than 500 people and are the world's leading remote sensing technology supplier.
Remote sensing then and now
The DSS Unsolicited Proposal Fund
Peter Meyboom
| I digress to give credit to Peter Meyboom for initiating the first fully funded unsolicited proposal program for the Science Procurement Division of DSS. Meyboom was a Dutch-trained hydrogeologist at the Geological Survey of Canada where I knew him in the early 60's. He applied for a senior administrative training course in the Federal Government and was assigned a post in the Dept. of Supply and Services in charge of Science Procurement. It was at a time when a new government policy was being implemented throughout the Government Service - the "Make or Buy" policy which meant that all departments had to justify their reasons for conducting their work 'in house' as opposed to contracting it out to industry. This was a good policy except that departments were not allotted the extra operating funds to do this as they were not allowed to lay off employees who would be made redundant by the contracting out policy. Meyboom argued that almost every department underspent their allotted operational funds every year by an almost predictable percentage. Why not create a fund from these monies to be known as the "Unsolicited Proposal Fund". Companies were asked to submit "unsolicited'proposals" to the government for R&D projects which might be in line with certain departments objectives or missions. A copy of each proposal was to be sent to every department and after due time for their consideration, a meeting was held at DSS to which all interested departments were invited. If one or more departments officially registered a genuine interest in the proposal and were prepared to act as sponsors and assign "technical contract monitors" to the project. It would be immediately funded from the Unsolicited Proposal Fund. This policy was 'heaven-sent' to the Remote Sensing Program as most of our work a the beginning was contracted out anyway. This allowed us, in the first few years to nearly double our budget which allowed us to accelerate our productivity at twice the speed we had planned. It is well known that in most "green field" starts, the funding required is always underestimated. The chances of getting more funding for the remote sensing program than was originally asked for would have been very remote indeed. For example, the Shoe Cove Ground Station was completely paid for out of this fund. It would not have happened otherwise. It was this project which allowed MDA to become the world's nearly exclusive supplier of ERTS, and later, most earth observation satellite ground stations.
The U.P. Fund had several advantages over normal funding methods. Firstly, the funds were already in place and did not have to be requested a year in advance, only to be told "find it out of your existing budget" Secondly, the U.P. Fund accomplished government-wide dissemination immediately which was important to avoid duplication of research by different government departments. And thirdly, the decision on acceptance or rejection was fast, which is very important from the proposer's point-of-view.
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