Canadian companies shooting for the stars
Félix Lajeunesse was, professionally speaking, doing “great” on a weekday morning right before Easter weekend. On a personal level, however, he was feeling pretty knocked about by life.
The source of his angst was a missing wallet, a keeper of credit cards, passwords and personal identification that he had lost, by his best guess, somewhere on the streets of downtown Montreal.
“I was biking and I answered a phone call and that seemed like the turning point,” Lajeunesse said. “I have no idea exactly what happened.”
Losing one’s wallet is a giant headache, to be sure, but he was able to put his earthly troubles into perspective.
“It is much more stressful to work in space,” Lajeunesse said.
By space, he means the heavens above where Canada’s primary claim to fame is the Canadarm, a piece of robotics wizardry, now in its second generation, that more or less put the country’s celestial ambitions in the Us$425billion global space industry on the map. But now there are others doing more than just reaching for the stars, including Lajeunesse and his old film school classmate, Paul Raphael.
Co-founders of the aptly named Felix & Paul Studios, an Emmy-award winning Montreal film company, the creative duo are currently in the midst of their latest and arguably coolest-ever (ongoing) production: documenting life aboard the International Space Station as part of a groundbreaking virtual reality series, Space Explorers: The ISS Experience.
Shot using a space-proof, 3D, 360-degree camera deployed by astronauts, the unscripted multi-year project is two episodes in. The results thus far aren’t a new riff on Star Wars, but an immersive, mind-blowing look at actual life among the stars.
“It is unprecedented how realistic it is,” said Canadian astronaut David Saintjacques, who spent seven months aboard the ISS and prominently figures in the series’ first entry. “I feel like I am there: the atmosphere, the space station — that is what it is like.”
Peer down with a VR headset on, and the viewer sees Earth passing below. Look up, and an astronaut is giving advice to a newly arrived colleague on how best to find one’s footing in zero gravity. The crew snack on crackers, slathered in goo from a tube and topped by olives; they run on treadmills; and they slip soundlessly, weightlessly through cramped passageways.
For the viewer, it as though you are one of the gang, with a floating cracker to eat, which pretty much sums up what Lajeunesse and Raphael were gunning for when they initially pitched the idea to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) a few years back.
But Space Explorers isn’t the only recent coup for Canadians — Saint-jacques and Chris Hadfield among them — in space. According to the federal government, the space industry employs 10,000 workers, drives innovation and annually contributes $2 billion-plus to the economy.
Morgan Stanley in mid2020 estimated the global space industry could generate revenue of more than US$1 trillion in 2040.
Statistics aside, the heavens are certainly enjoying a moment, both in Montreal with Felix and Paul, and in Minnedosa, a small town 50 kilometres north of Brandon, Man., famous for its fishing holes.
What the locals there know is that the tiny place with the fish is also home to Canadian Photonic Labs Inc., as well as company founder Mark Wahoski.
Wahoski, like the Montrealers, is a camera guy. He more or less built a thriving high-speed precision camera business out of his garage, starting some 20 years ago.
Early on, he bumped into some folks at a Las Vegas trade show who were interested and CPL has since gone on to become semi-regulars at NASA’S Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL) in the Mojave Desert, where its cameras aided in the development of the Mars Perseverance Rover that landed on the red planet in February.
“We are pretty modest about what we do,” Wahoski said, affably deflecting more prying questions. “We have had people ask us many times, ‘What are you actually doing in Minnedosa?’”
Short answer: making cameras that help refine the gizmos and whatsits ultimately bound for the stars.
“It is much more stressful to work in space.”
Félix Lajeunesse Felix & Paul Studios