Sax said the Canadian space industry, like Ferrell, is trying to get a party going.<\/p>\n
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\t \t \u201cWe are out there drunk, running into the streets, buck naked, as a private company and the private sector,\u201d he said. \u201cWe are saying, \u2018Come with us, we\u2019re going streaking!\u2019 We need the government to take off their clothes and join us, so we can pull in the capital and everything else.\u201d<\/p>\n The government has at least unbuttoned its collar.<\/p>\n CSMC\u2019s broad strategy is to earn government backing for technologies that could be deployed on the moon and apply them profitably on Earth; the Canadian Space Agency and Department of National Defence take Sax seriously enough to have funded CSMC with million-dollar development deals. Most recently, the space agency announced<\/a> two $500,000 contracts on June 9 for CSMC to conduct studies on generating power and extracting resources on the moon.<\/p>\n The Alberta government is funding an experimental reactor project, a $10-million joint effort<\/a> between CSMC and the University of Alberta in Edmonton to build an unfuelled prototype, which is to be used to train nuclear engineers while validating CSMC\u2019s designs.<\/p>\n The company is working<\/a> with venerable Canadian communications company Telesat, too; at the Cansec show, the companies announced a preliminary agreement to use Telesat\u2019s satellite network to oversee CSMC nuclear generators in remote areas.<\/p>\n CSMC\u2019s nuclear power effort grew out of its moon-mining plans, which were a product of what Sax calls a personal crisis.\u00a0<\/p>\n That struck in early 2020, very shortly after the COVID-19 pandemic did, and consisted of \u201cme reflecting on my career working in real estate, that none of it had ever meant anything for the world,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Amid everything else afoot at the time, the U.S. began publicizing<\/a> proposed rules for moon mining and other commercial activities in space. Sax was enthralled.<\/p>\n Whereas Will Ferrell\u2019s character and his buddies dealt with their ennui by becoming over-age frat bros, Sax started making calls to whoever might be able to connect him to anyone who knew anything about the prospect of extracting resources from the moon.<\/p>\n He was startled by the difference between the space sector and what he\u2019d come to expect in commercial real estate, where \u201ceveryone is a complete fucking savage,\u201d he said. \u201cLike, no one is going to help you out at any point in that game. Strangely, with the space thing, everyone I called wanted to help.\u201d<\/p>\n The first hire at what Sax initially called the Canadian Space Mining Company was Marc Donato, a former executive at MDA Space, who immediately lent CSMC some credibility. Donato was, Sax said, \u201csome great grey hair who had a ton of experience.\u201d<\/p>\n Building a team from there was easier than Sax had expected. \u201cTo be honest, I was shocked that people were wanting to join, you know? I was just some schmuck who didn\u2019t know what I was doing,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \t\t \tSax reckons Canada\u2019s military and industrial ambitions for the Arctic call for an energy solution such as nuclear microreactors. Photo: Laura Proctor for The Logic\t<\/p>\n Sax had worked on projects like housing developments in Alberta and cannabis production sites, not moon bases. But his real estate experience was surprisingly transferrable. In that world, you start with a piece of dirt and a vision. You bring people with technical skills together and find financing and sell your vision to others, and at the end you have a building people can use.<\/p>\n CSMC realized early that mining on the moon would take energy\u2014to run mining equipment, obviously, but also to provide oxygen for anybody working there.<\/p>\n The options are few for generating the kind of power a moon mine will need. Nobody\u2019s delivering diesel for the generators, and anyway, you need to make oxygen, not burn it. There\u2019s no wind to turn a turbine. The moon gets a lot of sunlight but its nights last about two Earth-weeks, and its extreme temperature ranges are hard on solar panels.<\/p>\n \u201cFor a couple years I didn\u2019t really know who to tell about developing a nuclear reactor for the moon,\u201d Sax said. \u201cI felt kind of strange about it, communicating it in any way.\u201d<\/p>\n Now, he\u2019s yelling about it as he runs down Main Street. Besides making the Telesat announcement, Sax was at the Cansec show to make the case for powering Canada\u2019s planned expansion of its military presence in the Arctic with CSMC microreactors.<\/p>\n Developing them for the moon is one thing; deploying them in the North is where the real market could be.<\/p>\n There, governments and the military bring in diesel by air and sea, at huge expense, to run dirty generators. \u201cIt is an environmental nightmare. It is a health-care nightmare. It is a logistical nightmare,\u201d Sax said.<\/p>\n If Canada wants to multiply its military and industrial activities in the Far North, it\u2019s going to need another way to power it all, he added.<\/p>\n Micro-scale nuclear reactors aren\u2019t brand-new technology, though they aren\u2019t widespread. Submarines have run on them for decades, and they power a handful of aircraft carriers. Canadian-controlled Westinghouse is working<\/a> on a civilian model with the same general intention as Sax\u2019s\u2014powering remote communities and industrial sites such as mines. So are other nuclear companies.<\/p>\n Success seems within reach, but nobody has quite grabbed it yet. A plan to build a microreactor at Canada\u2019s marquee nuclear research site in Chalk River, Ont., is officially paused<\/a> because the developer went bankrupt. Its assets were sold<\/a> to a U.S.-based microreactor company, Nano Nuclear Energy, which branded<\/a> its Canadian operations as True North Nuclear. At this point, CSMC is Canada\u2019s most mature microreactor company, Sax said.<\/p>\n A U.S. maker has turned<\/a> a microreactor on for testing, though. President Donald Trump instigated<\/a> a program in May 2025 aiming to activate three of them by July 4 this year.<\/p>\n In Canada, Sax said with irritation, \u201cwe\u2019re talking about doing feasibility studies.\u201d Having the federal government designate a site for a microreactor\u2014a Canadian Forces base, maybe\u2014would help get the location-centric licensing process moving, he said.<\/p>\n Russia\u2019s invasion of Ukraine kicked Europe into motion in key sectors, but Canada is still lagging\u2014watching the streakers, not joining in. Said Sax: \u201cWe have clear ways to accelerate for Canada, and we want to be unchained.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OTTAWA \u2014 Six years ago, Daniel Sax decided to stuff his career as a real estate investor and…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":732784,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[49,48,46,295,139,47,303,66,306],"class_list":["post-732783","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-economy","tag-environment","tag-leadership","tag-national","tag-nuclear-energy","tag-science","tag-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732783","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=732783"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/732783\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/732784"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=732783"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=732783"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=732783"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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\t<\/a><\/p>\n![\"A](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/Daniel_Sax_vertical-Toronto-June_2026_Laura-Proctor.jpeg\")
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