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The Commercial Space blog will be taking a short break over the next two weeks to rest and reconnect with our families and loved ones. We will return with all new stories beginning January 4th, 2019. Until then, Best Wishes to All and a Happy New Year.

           By  Chuck Black The Commercial Space blog will be taking a short break to enjoy the final two weeks of summer and go to the beach. We'll also be doing some background research on one possible American and one far more probable European Union (EU) legislative initiative directly related to news coverage and freedom of speech issues. Both have the potential to change, disrupt or even shut down almost all online news services, including this blog. The first. a US based initiative, is related to a series of potential amendments to Section 230 of the US Communications Decency Act of 1996 . Section 230 has been traditionally interpreted by US courts as saying that operators of internet services (including social media outlets, such as Menlo Park CA based FaceBook , San Francisco CA based Twitter  and others) are " not to be construed as publishers " and are therefore not legally liable for the words of third parties who use their service...

          By Henry Stewart Want an overview of the Canadian space industry and the public policy and political issues associated with it? Then check out these freely available online publications from the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and the Paris, France based  Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development  (OECD). According to the  Space Economy at a Glance 2014 , a " statistical overview of the global space sector and its contributions to economic activity ," compliled by the OECD: Canada has a well-developed space industry, including about 200 private companies, in addition to research institutions and universities, some of which have some commercial activities. The ten biggest companies accounted for almost 88% of revenues and 64% of employment (Canadian Space Agency, 2013). Space manufacturing is mainly located in Ontario (more than half of the workforce) and in Quebec (19% of workforce). Some 7,993 people were employed in the space...

          By  Chuck Black It's worth noting that, while this blog has tracked Canada's space industry since its inception in 2009, we're not the only useful source in this area. The why the Commercial Space blog tracks RSS news feeds from 50 other online sources related to the space industry and makes those feeds available to our readers. The most interesting stories are aggregated and end up in our Canadian Aerospace News , the More Commercial Space News and the Space Conference News aggregation feeds in the colorful, animated boxes at the top of the right hand column on the main page. But the raw feeds are also individually posted further down the column, for anyone who'd like to check them out.  They include Canadian ( Canada AI , Vanguard Magazine and SpaceQ), American ( Politico Space and Space.com ) and international feeds ( ESA Top News and SpaceWatch.Global ) from recognized news outlets, along with personals blogs ( Jan Woerner's blo...