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grossed $150M. The overall effect is larger when it is realized that the firm is now a knowledge-based one with annual contracts above $10M/yr. AGRA-Coast has subcontracted many parts of its telescope enclosure work to smaller firms in the Vancouver area, stimulating the technology businesses there.

8.2 Spin-offs: Astronomy as a Stimulus to Economic Growth

The stimulation of economic activity generated from the construction and operation of major astronomical facilities is not restricted to only dome and telescope construction. The spin-offs reach very far into the structure of the economy:

. Smaller Gemini contracts have been let to a variety of other BC companies including Ramsay Engineering, Stevested Engineering, and ASA. About 80 Canadian firms expressed written interest in the Gemini work at preliminary stages, indicating the range of possible economic opportunities. The HIA itself was awarded contracts worth approximately $8M for sophisticated instrumentation.

. An earlier concrete example of industrial spinoff came from the Toronto-based firm DSMA Atcon Ltd., who in the mid-1960's invested $0.25M in a design for a 4 metre class optical telescope. The design work enabled them later to bid successfully for numerous components of telescope projects in Italy, Germany, and Australia, as well as nuclear research and space robotics projects. The leverage factor of its initial astronomy involvement was estimated by the company President to be 40 to 1.

The Gemini North dome at an early stage of construction.

Courtesy AURA / NOAO / NSF

. Canada's enormously successful RADARSAT employed cleverly implemented, aperture synthesis for coherent signals, a technique developed by radio astronomers for imaging the sky.

.The Centre for Research in Earth and Space Technology (CRESTech, one of the Ontario Centers of Excellence), in collaboration with HIA, CSA, and NRCan, developed a version of a data acquisition and recording system in the so-called S2 format for the purpose of correlating Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) data from radio telescopes. CRESTech has made sales of approximately five dozen S2 recorder, formatter, and playback systems to about a dozen countries including the USA, Japan, Australia, India, and France with revenues of about $6M to date, equal to the S2 development costs. Sales are continuing, and its association with the DRAO data correlator facility, which is the most advanced in the world, is an added strength. A former CRESTech employee