Written by Dr. Doug Milburn, Chairman of Protocase and ProtoSpace, and Rahul Goel, Co-founder of NordSpace
For too long, Canada has remained the only G7 and Five Eyes nation without its own domestic space launch capabilities. This is not just a missed opportunity; it is a growing vulnerability. As the global space economy surges toward $1 trillion by 2040, Canada stands at a crossroads: We can either shape the future or continue to rent space in it.
This isn’t a futuristic scenario. It’s unfolding right now. Space is no longer just about science and satellites. It’s about sovereignty, security, climate monitoring, telecommunications, and economic leadership. Without a sovereign launch capability, Canada is forced to rely on other nations to access the very infrastructure that underpins our national resilience and innovation.
To help address this urgent gap, NordSpace recently convened the Canadian Space Launch Conference (CSLC), an unprecedented gathering of leaders from government, military, industry, academia, and the nonprofit sector. This wasn’t a conference for posturing. It was a working summit designed to align Canada’s best minds around one unifying mission: to chart a clear, actionable path to sovereign launch.
The event resoundingly resolved that a sovereign, globally competitive, spacefaring Canada doesn’t have to be a dream anymore if we take the right actions now. We either build the capabilities to access it ourselves, or we become dependent forever. It affirmed that sovereign launch is our opportunity to lead, to inspire a new generation of innovators, and to safeguard Canada’s place in the world. Most importantly, it coalesced around the urgency of the moment, with the braintrust in the room, top brass from just about every constituency involved in the North American aerospace ecosystem, that this window won’t be open forever.
The True Barrier: Time
From the perspective of manufacturing and engineering, the real constraint isn’t money, talent, or even hardware. It’s time.
In aerospace, velocity equals viability. The faster a team can move from concept to prototype to launch, the more they can learn, and the more competitive they become. At ProtoSpace, we’ve spent nearly two decades enabling high-velocity mass customization (HVMC) for the most ambitious teams in aerospace and academia. The result? Teams that can design, iterate, test, and refine in days, not weeks or months, without sacrificing quality or certification compliance.
Contrast this with Canada’s traditional aerospace supply chain, where critical components can take weeks or months to manufacture through compliance-driven job shops. These delays kill iteration. They inflate costs. They sap morale. And most damaging of all, they stunt our national potential.
As we’ve learned from the University Rover Challenge, where ProtoSpace Mfg has supported student teams since 2015, the best outcomes come from those who iterate fast, fail smart, and get to an end-to-end solution quickly. You don’t discover the “unknown unknowns” of complex systems by theorizing. You expose them by building.
What Canada Needs Now
Sovereign launch is not just a technical goal. It’s a cultural one. Canada must shed its inertia and start acting like a spacefaring nation. That requires a radical shift in how we think about timelines, procurement, and project risk. We must:
- Embrace High-Velocity Iteration: Classic waterfall approaches, characterized by rigid Gantt charts and long planning cycles, can lead to paralysis, while pure agile methods may encourage chaos through unchecked experimentation. What’s ideal is a hybrid model combining the best aspects of each. Striking a balance between structured planning and rapid iteration enables fast learning without sacrificing strategic direction.
- Establish National Launch Capabilities: Accelerate investment in infrastructure and policy to support domestic launch providers with both orbital and suborbital goals.
- Empower Builders, Not Bureaucracy: Cut red tape and foster a regulatory environment that rewards progress without compromising safety.
- Make Sovereignty a Priority: Recognize that space capability is now as essential to national resilience as energy or cybersecurity.
Making Canadian History
At NordSpace, we are committed to advancing this mission. As a launch services and orbital logistics company, our goal is to make space more accessible, more responsive, and more Canadian. But we can’t do it alone. We need a whole-of-nation approach, one that connects innovative manufacturers like ProtoSpace Mfg, forward-leaning policymakers, agile launch companies, and ambitious researchers with a shared sense of urgency.
And there’s a major, historic milestone just ahead for our company and all Canadians coming this August. Owned and operated by NordSpace in Newfoundland and Labrador, our Spaceport Canada is aiming to be the first operational Canadian spaceport and make Canadian history as the nation’s first gateway to space, with our first launch event taking place this summer. The spaceport is being designed and built for NordSpace’s workhorse orbital launch vehicle, Tundra, for year-round launches.
Canada has the tools. Canada has the talent. What we need now is sustained momentum and unwavering commitment to the mission.
We must not let a non-helpful excess of caution steal our chance to lead. The world is moving, and launch windows, literal and metaphorical, don’t wait. With clear direction, coordinated effort, and a belief in our ability to build boldly, Canada can become a global leader in space. But only if we act now.
Dr. Doug Milburn is a Grit Daily Group Leadership Network member and a long-time serial entrepreneur and innovator with over 35 years of experience. In 1995, Dr. Milburn and his wife Michelle co-founded Advanced Glazings. He is also the founder of Protocase and 45Drives. Milburn’s companies are global, and proudly headquartered in Sydney, Nova Scotia.
