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Commercialization

CASIS Science Advisors Are Hyping Old Science

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 10, 2012
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CASIS Expects To Send First Payloads to ISS by Early 2013, Space News
“What we’re looking for are some of those very specific examples of things that can be done better in space than on Earth,” Timothy Yeatman, CASIS’s interim chief scientist, said. Protein crystallization best fits the bill, Yeatman said, citing the decision of a blue-ribbon panel of science experts CASIS convened to evaluate which scientific fields were likeliest to be advanced through in-space experiments.”
Keith’s note: Growing perfect crystals in space (on the Space Shuttle and Space Station) has been one of NASA’s favorite promotional items in its mantra of promoting the use of the ISS as a “world class laboratory”. The need for large crystals grown at great expense in space is quickly vanishing due to advances made on Earth. As mentioned in the earlier posts below, NASA dragged its feet on this and missed the bus.

Yet if you go to any of the agency’s ISS websites – or read the promotional materials about research opportunities – not a word is offered about new and cheaper ground-based alternatives to growing large crystals in space. That’s because the agency is incapable of staying current on the very science it is trying to promote – or being intellectually honest with people as they continue to use outdated reasons to hype the ISS. Now CASIS has fallen into the same trap.
There is an important difference between research that you can do in space – and research that you should do in space.
I’ll be willing to bet that pharmaceutical and biotech companies are a bit more up to date on this stuff than CASIS’ blue-ribbon panel of advisors – advisors they have yet to name publicly – or are they the “CASIS Biological Sciences Review Panel” listed in this release?. CASIS is not clear on this since most (if not all) of the review panel members have no obvious connection to space research.
Why wait years and spend a lot of money to do this in space using old technology when the field has already outpaced NASA on Earth? Unless,of course, that “3-5 year” time frame that Mark Uhran complained about the other day can be cut to 3-5 months.
While NASA Flies In Circles Technology Advances Back on Earth, earlier post
Using the ISS: Once Again NASA Has Been Left in the Dust, earlier post
Selling a Space Station That Takes Too Long To Use, earlier post

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

5 responses to “CASIS Science Advisors Are Hyping Old Science”

  1. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Time to drag out my soap box and harp on the same old theme: By far the most important (in my opinion) research and experiment tasks that can be (and need to be) done on the ISS are those that will teach and enable people to live and work in space without dragging all of their food, wear-once clothing, air, fuel, etc., up from Earth every time. After all these years, we still haven’t begun to learn how to actually “live” in space.

    Steve

    • npng says:
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      I agree, developing those abilities is very important.  I assume you dragged out your soap box to highlight the ‘live’ in space aspect and to perhaps contrast or juxtapose it to the above protein crystal growth (PCG) CASIS commercial activity.  It winds up revealing the diversity of nice-to-have and need-to-have missions pursued in space. 

      It may be interesting, as a reference point, to look at the ratios of pursuits here on Earth, say using our total U.S. GDP, where:  government is around 30% of the GDP non-profits are about 5 or 10% of the GDP and the private sector / commercial is the remaining 60% or so.  Those ratios have been around plus or minus for a long time.

      If you look at space activities – exploration, science, R&D, launches, ISS, etc. it is very heavily ‘government’ with some ‘academia’ (largely non-profit and largely gov’t grant driven) that represent the bulk of space exploration activity, specifically and importantly the mission and use activities.

      Now if you throw in space launch and operational costs, etc, a heap of commercial comes in to the equation and swings the ratios quite dramatically.  But I’m not talking about the support aspect, but about the mission and use aspect.  The point is, while the bulk of space exploration can be driven by government and academia, to have a sliver of the activity result in economic outcomes, value-creation, products or things of use and worth on Earth, would be relevant and impactual. And maybe even more than a sliver eventually. Do you agree?

      If one moves to the tail end of the curve (to an extreme case):  If we spent $3 Trillion dollars on space exploration and never created a single dollar’s worth of anything (commercial aspect), would being in space still be a worthy activity?  So, I’m good with things like PCG.  I’m good with a new drug made on the ISS. I’m good with some stem cells that save some humans here on Earth.  And think a lot of others would be pleased with that too.

      As for the food, clothing, air, fuel teaching and enabling, I agree.  If we humans want to get around up there, becoming capable in those areas is essential.  So…

      Help me with your “haven’t begun to learn how to live in space” statement.  Am I missing your point?  A cascade of over 500 men and women have been “living” in space over the past decade.  They have toilets and clothes and huggies and water and toothbrushes and beds and handy snacks and experiment with plants growing under funny colored lights, do eva’s outside, play with legos and robots and water bubbles and chit chat with the president.  We have closed loop water handling systems and hvac and ECLSS and and power and computers and viewing windows.  We, NASA, have come down the “I’ve learned to live in space” learning curve in dramatic ways.  And the real value of that composite capability is high.  Very high. 

      Sure, we don’t have 2 acres biofarming facilities, we don’t have foundries on orbit to melt and cast asteroid metals, and we don’t have giant colonies in mile diameter bubble worlds, yet.  But we have certainly gone far beyond the “haven’t begun” point.  Do you see it differently?

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        npng,

        Sorry for the delay in responding. I seem to be doing things out of order lately (even more so than usual). The points you make in your post all ring true to me.

        It winds up revealing the diversity of nice-to-have and need-to-have missions pursued in space.

        Yes, I think that’s a good way to look at it. We might also think of a task as being either “for profit” or “for survival and growth,” where the first is basically for the benefit of a sponsor and the second is for the benefit of all people who are anywhere off-Earth or in a non-Earth-like environment.

        But I’m not talking about the support aspect, but about the mission and use aspect.

        To avoid confusion, I think that, within the context of this sort of discussion, we should give the word “mission” a fairly broad scope. I see a mission as not just going from A to B, doing a few things, and then returning to A, a typical NASA mission. Instead, let’s consider a mission to be any set of tasks, related in some way, which are planned and then executed as a single set, and collectively identified by a single label. So we could, for example, say mission when talking about training or experimentation on the ISS, in the Arctic, or even in an Earth lab.

        What I’d like to see much more of is some of the “mission and use” elements of one program being for the purpose of developing “the support aspect” elements for later programs. Each “mission” should include learning activities and what is learned gets used on subsequent missions. I would like to see more tools and processes developed this way, too. Bootstrapping, on the job training; live and learn; The concept has many names and has always paid off. And in incorporating this concept it is important to let the learning be iterative, not go for broke where one wrong decision can fry you.

        But we have certainly gone far beyond the “haven’t begun” point. Do you see it differently?

        Yes, I think we see it differently. I suppose it could be argued that it’s just a matter of degree, but I think of “living” in space in terms of self-sufficiency. The closed-loop systems are not totally closed, since they require on-going “topping up” from Earth. The clothing on ISS is still wear-once and there is no sustainable way to wash, dry and rewear it. They have toothbrushes (from Earth), but last I heard they still had nothing proper in the way of toothpaste up there. The daily washing process will never win any personal hygiene awards. And so on…

        “Living” in space, the way I think of it, would be done the same way on a space station or a base (for a day or a year) as residents on a generation ship would live — total recycling and closed loop; and you have only what you either brought with you at the start or made yourself thereafter. Even though the ISS is now “complete,” if the regular cargo supply runs from Earth suddenly stopped for good, the people on board would die before too long. It would be a matter of either get them off the station and back to Earth, or write their eulogies, because we have not yet developed the means to “live” in space.

        As for the food, clothing, air, fuel teaching and enabling, I agree. If we humans want to get around up there, becoming capable in those areas is essential.

        And in this, then, we have a meeting of minds, because your first sentence encompasses the major elements of what we need to be able to do (effectively and efficiently) in order to “live” in space as I think of it. Perhaps I’ve been unclear because I didn’t pick the right word. If there’s a term that’s more appropriate, and more self-explanatory, than “living in space” that someone can suggest, that would be great and would help me to communicate better the next time I drag out my dusty old soap box.

        Steve

  2. RandomFeedback says:
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    Keith – did the CASIS Biological Sciences Review Panel ever publish its results and make them available to the general public?  Can’t find it on their website.

  3. Anonymous says:
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    And now, researchers have found a devastatingly simple and cheap way to eliminate convection during protein crystallization right down here on Earth.  In the words of one of the researchers, microgravity protein crystallization is “a dead end”.

    http://www.rdmag.com/news/2

    http://pubs.acs.org/doi/abs