“First Man” movie opens to large aerospace crowd

On Oct. 12 approximately 250 suppliers to Montreal’s aerospace community gathered at the Colossus de Laval theatre and entertainment complex for a premier showing of “First Man,” the movie that traces the history of the first moon landing in 1969. The film focuses on the life of American astronaut Neil Armstrong.

The event was sponsored jointly by Maya HTT and Siemens PLM, partners in service to the aerospace industry in Montreal. Hosting the event was Rita Azrak, marketing director for Maya, who began the technical presentation portion of the day by musing that the actual “first foot” on the moon was Canadian, because the landing leg cones on the lunar excursion module Eagle were fabricated in Canada.

Three main speakers gave insights on their companies’ involvement in the industry and were quite optimistic for the future, because funding for renewed space exploration by both Canada and the U.S. is in the works with the respective countries’ governments.

Mike Greenley, group president of MDA Corp.; George Rendell, senior director at Siemens; and Marc Lafontaine, vice president of Maya all spoke of the long-term benefits derived from the space program over the decades, as well as the next major project now underway, the Lunar Orbital Platform-Gateway, a lunar orbit space station which, according to NASA documents, will serve as a solar-powered communications hub, science lab, short-term habitation module, and holding area for space rovers and other robots.

The program also included a variety of successes achieved with Siemens PLM products, especially NX CAD and NX CAM through the Teamcenter of product lifecycle management. Maya is the Siemens partner in Montreal.