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Comment by pjkundert | Hacker News Reader

What haunts Canadians is that we developed world-leading aerospace capability, which was discarded in an instant.

These engineers and technicians scattered to the wind, becoming leaders in dozens of successful aerospace projects, worldwide.

Canada returned to being hewers of wood an drawers of water. The specific details and capabilities/problems of the Avro Arrow are secondary.

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It’s like saying the US lost when it canceled the Space Shuttle. Both projects were massively expensive failures that never met operational requirements.

at least Canada canceled theirs before it drove the cost of space access through the roof and killed 17 people.

The difference is, US is replacing the shuttle with (privately made) US rockets. The transition is not complete yet, but ultimately both the manufacturing capability and profits are staying in the US. Can't say the same for Canada.

I can capture all the wild stallions I want, but as soon as I open the pasture gate they will be gone.

The idea isn’t to temporarily feed them with some completely uneconomic project. You want to give them reasons to stay long term. So why is Canada such a poor place to build technology companies?

Canada purchased questionable Bomarc missiles and used Vulcan fighters with a fraction of the capability from the US — which ultimately cost more money than completing the Avro program — while simultaneously losing their aerospace capabilities.

To say this was a “win” for Canada is pretty far-fetched. It certainly was a win for the US military-industrial complex and their lobbyists!

This is Canadian culture in a nutshell, especially politically: it's better to aim small or not to try at all than it is to really go for it and fail.

I recall seeing some documentary (probably on YouTube) that noted the number of Canadian aerospace engineers who ended up working in the US space program after the cancellation of the Avro Arrow. Sorry I can't provide a link.

Perhaps this Vintage Space episode is video you were thinking about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=r5g9AglBmSI

I think a small (in terms of GDP) country developing major weapons systems is an impossibly difficult position to be in. The R&D costs are stupendous, so you need to sell a lot of units to make the per-unit costs bearable. Since you're a small country, domestic demand isn't enough. Superpowers buy lots of gear, but they also very strongly prefer their own domestic technology. So you basically have to sell to a lot of other small countries, in competition with the superpowers who are also eager to get export income and political influence.

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