Nova Scotia will be the home of Canada’s first commercial spaceport

Nova Scotia will soon see the most novel application of Canadian commercial land so far, as the nation’s first commercial spaceport is slated to arise in the province.

Earlier this year, Maritime Launch Services received conditional environmental approval from the provincial government to build an expansive launch facility near Canso, in the north-eastern part of NS.

The spaceport is expected to see active use of the Ukrainian Cyclone-4M carrier rocket, which is rated for general-purpose commercial launches, including those of satellites. MLS stated that it is targeting a launch schedule of around eight rockets annually by 2022.

This week, MLS also announced its collaboration with Houston-based Nanoracks, which is currently the largest commercial user of the International Space Station. The company is actively looking at the effective reuse of launch vehicles.

“The hardest part of our business is launching something into space,” Nanoracks CEO Jeffrey Manber told The Canadian Press. “The second hardest part of our business is overcoming the high cost of everything. So if you have a structure in space, can you cost-effectively use it? That’s the question.”

MLS is emblematic of a significant trend in Canadian real estate: High-technology industries are shaping up to be the new lifeblood of the country’s commercial assets – an especially crucial development considering the waning of the energy sector’s influence in recent years.

For instance, many firms operating in precision-engineering sectors have taken roost in Welland, Ontario. The market is poised to become one of the province’s strongest commercial/industrial destinations.

“We have the former GE plant, which just opened up [last year]. We have four new food processing companies that just opened up. We also have a couple of smart manufacturing firms, roughly 20,000 square feet each,” according to Dan Degazio, the city’s Director of Economic Development

“We’re highly attractive to advanced manufacturing companies involved in products as diverse as locomotives, engines, generators, and other specialized components.”