Before Apollo, there was Arrow
July 21, 2009
Nick Kyonka
STAFF REPORTER
Gazing up at a life-size replica of the Avro Arrow, Jim Floyd recounted the frustration he felt watching an American space team land on the moon 40 years ago.
"It could have been us," lamented Floyd, the chief engineer of the Arrow project.
It was a day for both remembrance and repentance at the Canadian Air and Space Museum yesterday as Floyd and a handful of other Canadian astronauts and aerospace engineers celebrated Canada's role in the first manned lunar landing.
That role, they said, was closely linked to the Arrow.
The story began in the early 1950s when Floyd assembled a team of the world's best aerospace engineers to work on a new project at the Avro plant in Malton.
Many top professionals were still unemployed following the end of World War II, and the Avro project served as "a magnet" for "super-engineers from all over the world," said the now 95-year-old Floyd.
But by 1959, the Arrow was running well over budget, and John Diefenbaker's cost-conscious Conservative government discontinued the project's funding, effectively killing what would have been the fastest plane ever built.
Out of work again for the second time in 15 years, many of those engineers headed south of the border to the still-young National Aeronautics and Space Administration, where they began designing the first lunar module.
Among them were Canadians Owen Maynard, who played a leading role in designing the first lunar module, and John Hodge, a flight director on the Apollo space program.
Both were honoured yesterday for the important roles they played in putting a man on the moon, as was Floyd.
"The contributions by the Canadians were absolutely incalculable," Floyd proudly told reporters following a news conference at the Downsview Park museum yesterday. "(But) the fact that Canadians went and did what they had to do for the U.S. meant they could have done it for Canada."
http://www.thestar.com/news/gta/article/669262