Jeremy Hansen, the Canadian astronaut who took part in the Artemis II mission, spoke at the Global Business Forum in Banff, west of Calgary, on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2026. Photo by Brent Calver /Postmedia

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I’m a space fan. Always have been. I understand it’s a mainly male thing, possibly having to do with the boldly upright profile of a rocket on a launch pad. But as a kid I watched all the U.S. launches in the 1960s, from Mercury through Apollo, in the days when live TV coverage began before the astronauts had suited up and went on for hours through this or that launch delay and then entire Earth orbits. It was a thrilling accompaniment to growing up.

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Along with new generations of viewers, I followed Canadian astronaut Jeremy Hansen and his U.S. colleagues on their retro trip around the moon last April in the Artemis II program, the younger sibling of Apollo. We Earthlings’ breath was even more bated than in the late 1960s as systems that hadn’t been used since then were asked to work perfectly with humans on board.

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General interest in space and particular admiration for people who sit atop 32-storey rockets — basically buildings filled with high explosives — is what led me to read last week’s story about now-retired astronaut Jeremy Hansen mapping “Canada’s future in space” at a business conference in Banff.

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According to Steven Wilhelm’s report, Hansen’s remarks were what you’d expect: there are opportunities in space, critical minerals are, well, critical, and it would be good to see Canada continue to be involved in space exploration and discovery. But then he added, as advocates for individual industries always do, that we should support space because: “It’ll drive our … economy, drive jobs.”

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No shade on Hansen: he’s not an economist. And he reflects a very common perspective. Does any business or industry association ever make a presentation on any subject without mentioning how much GDP and employment it provides? Most people also buy into the argument that “the economy” needs “drivers.” Thus the nodding approval given Ottawa’s major projects push. (Or is it just that a “minor projects” strategy — “minor projects and lots of em” would be insufficiently grandiose for today’s politics? As unsexy, say, as un-manned space exploration?)

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To these arguments, economics responds “meh.” You produce jobs and GDP? Well, good for you and thank you very much. But if you didn’t exist, somebody else would have used the resources you temporarily had control of to do something else with them that would also produce GDP and jobs. You think you’re a driver of the economy? Not really, you’re responding to demand. You’re selling stuff to people who want it, which means they’re the ultimate drivers of “the economy.”

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But since we’re all demanders, we all drive the economy. And when you think about it, an economy everyone drives is an economy no one drives — even if people like Industry Minister Mélanie Joly and Finance Minister François-Philippe Champagne like to give the impression they are at the wheel, though let’s hope they’re not gullible enough to believe their own rhetoric.

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Without “drivers” would the economy end up in the ditch? All those boastful GDP- and job-creators, whether public-sector or private, would certainly have you believe so. But the true driving force is people’s demand for stuff and, despite dogged lobbying by hair-shirt anti-consumptionists, there really doesn’t seem to be any limit to that.