More Whining From CASIS: Its Not Our Fault (Update)
CASIS Must Succeed: And It Can if We Make it So, CASIS
“CASIS is now the manager of the ISS U.S. National Laboratory. Owing to a slow and unfocused start, tumultuous changes in management after barely six months, and pressure from those who lost the ISS National Lab management contract competition, some have called for CASIS to be removed from the job barely nine months after it was selected. Any move to retire CASIS — still in its infancy — and replace it with a still greener successor would be ill advised, I believe. … I rather doubt that the detractors and would-be successors to CASIS have thought these implications through. But they should. And if they are ISS supporters, they should not only cease their calls to end CASIS and instead support it as it reboots with new leadership and a newfound effectiveness.”
Keith’s note: (sigh) It’s never the fault of CASIS when things go wrong. Oh no. CASIS is the only answer – period. We’re stuck with them – no matter what. So get used to it. And if you don’t fall in step with whatever CASIS says and does (no matter how much they screw things up) you are a detractor and not a true believer. Yawn.
It is quite clear that CASIS thinks that the choice is to stick with them and their substandard ISS utilization – and not to even think of trying another approach so as to achieve far better utilization of the International Space Station. I vote for “better”.
Keith’s update: There are some interesting and lengthy comments (below) from someone inside the ISS utilization world that shed some light on issues confronting CASIS.
I read Alan’s missive and while I sympathize, the problem is that CASIS was never set up to succeed. There is at least 1.5 zero’s missing from the ISS utilization budget that flows through CASIS. From what I understand, the overhead for CASIS is over 75% of their yearly budget, reducing a minuscule amount of funding to start with to an almost non existent amount.
$3-$5M dollars per year in research funding is fine for laudable projects like nano-racks but is piffle for doing anything of substance on the station that justifies its $3 billion per year ops costs.
Since the old ESMD is now integrated with SOMD, and since the original design of the station was to support exploration, there is a marriage made in heaven for those applications. I would trust Gerst’s shop running these things far more than an organization that has no one with any experience or aptitude in these areas.
There is so much that can be done on station that is not being done, and CASIS, as a step child remnant (not even that as none of the old critical players in microgravity have any say in CASIS) of the microgravity community, is simply not structured or funded to support or succeed in any such efforts.
“There is so much that can be done on station that is not being done”, Gerst’s shop has been running these things for many years. Why do you think that it will now turnaround because CASIS has failed? I agree that CASIS was not the right kind of organization, created out of nothing, with personnel who appeared to have little or no experience, set in a location which is not a bastion of American industry for high tech, health care, manufacturing, materials research, or any of the likely potential interests (Houston, San Francisco, Birmingham, or the northeast would have likely been better choices). So the selection of CASIS missed all of the obvious attributes. But something needs to be done differently from how ISS has been operating under Gerst’s shop.
It would be interesting to see all of the staff, consultants, and advisors at CASIS list (for public review) the actual ISS payloads that they designed, contributed science to, integrated, tested, or in a direct way, helped to develop and operate. Not Shuttle or sounding rocket payloads – real ISS payloads that have flown or are manifested to fly to the ISS. As best as I can tell, Justin Kugler is the only person I can identify at CASIS with any hands-on ISS payload experience.
Based on this and other recent discussions, I think consensus is (1) you’d like to put some successfully experienced people in charge of the process for getting users on-board, (2) so far the ISS record on utilization is not good; I am not sure why Dennis thinks that the existing ESMD/SOMD organization or the ISS program should be trusted, when they have been running ISS utilization since the beginning and have not yet been too successful, (4) there are significant hurdles in utilizing ISS, most significantly for the near future, the lack of assured round trip logistics. Space-X’s achievement last week is positive news, but they still need to demonstrate the ability to fly regularly and frequently, up and down, and (3) CASIS has to date proven a detriment. The time it takes to procure the service should be a minimal concern. The real question is what kind of an organization is needed to manage the capabilities now and in the long term? The proper organization should have been able to move quickly in the right direction. That did not happen.
CRS and CASIS seem to be examples of both the right and wrong way to outsource. Outsourcing seems to go well if the following are true going in:
A. The outsourcing company/agency already has a strategic plan in place.
B. The thing that they are outsourcing is already pretty well organized.
C. They hire a vendor that at a minimum can handle the task as efficiently as the outsourcing company/agency can do themselves, but which preferably brings additional expertise based on experience and/or specialization.
D. After outsourcing begins, the company/agency gives ongoing direction to the vendor.
Outsourcing does not go well if the company/agency is having a problem, can’t figure out how to solve the problem, attempts to use outsourcing as a solution to the problem and then hires a vendor which does not provide the needed experience or expertise.
An example of optimal outsourcing is how CRS seems to be going, based on how well it meets the above criteria:
– A strategic plan for cargo resupply is already in place. Requirements, constraints and frequency have already been defined.
– The government partners are already coordinating and organizing effective resupply missions.
– Their first hire (SpaceX) is demonstrating the capability to not only meet the minimum efficiency but is showing signs of being able to provide even more efficient resupply runs than the government partners have been able to do on their own.
– The ISS program will provide ongoing direction to SpaceX and the other resupply companies especially in terms of capacity needs and schedule.
An example of less than optimal outsourcing seems to be the CASIS situation which seems to be an example of trying to use outsourcing to solve a strategic problem:
– A strategic plan for utilization was not in place.
– Utilization was not very organized when outsourcing began.
– The non-profit agency that they hired seems to not be providing the experience and expertise which would have at least partially mitigated the lack of strategy and organization.
– The ISS program almost seem to be looking to CASIS to provide direction. How is that going to happen while CASIS is busy rebooting?
I vote for “better”?
Sorry Keith, but what does that actually mean? Better meaning what, exactly? How would you do things better?
I’ve asked you this before, and you didn’t give me an answer – because I honestly don’t think you have one.
This post should be called “More Whining From Keith: CASIS should do things a different (but as yet undetermined) way”.
“Better” means better, Pete. If you cannot grasp that concept then there’s not much I can do to help. As for your confusion as to my opinion on this matter, you might try re-reading what I have posted previously. As always, if you don’t like what you see on NASAWatch you are certainly welcome to not read it – and to find another website to visit.
The concept of better is very different to the specifics of what better actually is.
For instance, making a statement like “they should do X and Y better” is very different to (and easier than) saying “they should do X and Y better by doing Z instead”. The former is a destructive argument, the latter is constructive argument.
I personally have a rule – I never complain about something unless I’m willing to offer up a viable alternative. Maybe you don’t do things that way – that’s fine. But then you can’t complain when people challenge you to provide specifics.
As for what you have posted previously, all I have read is what you wouldn’t do, not what you would do.
You have experience in managing ISS payloads. So, if you were put in charge of CASIS today, what would you do differently Keith? I am genuinely interested to know.
Maybe you do have a better way – in which case I would happily concede that you are right to complain about CASIS. If you don’t have a better way however, then I’m afraid you are just making noise.
Pete I am not going to repeat everything – just for you. If you do not like NASAWatch then do not read it.
Pete, if you had a 5 pound tumor in your head and were having major seizures minute by minute and you complained about it, would it be appropriate for us to tell you to stop whining? Would it be appropriate for us to say to you “What do you actually mean by a tumor? How would you live “better” with your tumor, specifically?” Or… “You dummy, why don’t you know how to operate on your own head and get rid of that tumor?”
If your house was burning down and Keith was your neighbor and he noticed the fire, should he keep quiet and not tell you unless he knows how to put the fire out?
Put differently: ““Criticism may not be agreeable, but it is necessary. It fulfills the same function as pain in the human body. It calls attention to an unhealthy state of things.” Winston Churchill.
Perhaps a course in BETTER 101 might help you Pete.
CASIS should do things a different way. Novel thought: how about the Proposed way? Do you need examples?
1. CASIS proposed one set of actions, they were awarded ISS Nat Lab management as a function of that submitted proposal, and then they changed their plans post-award. There is a term for that behavior. It would have been “BETTER” if they had acted in accordance with the specific actions they proposed.
2. The White House, OSTP, Congress, OMB, NASA, and all entities fully understood and agreed with the original, proposed CASIS utilization tenets, structure purpose rules and functions. That was the “BETTER” path and CASIS chose to suddenly and dramatically alter that path after July 13th 2011. What you’ve seen over the last year is the result of their alterations.
If you buy a house, then go to settlement, they give you the front door keys and then you go to your house only to find they sold you a trailer, is that fair or is it deceptive and misrepresentative? Are you good with that? “BETTER” would be that you get the house you specified and that was agreed to.
3. Many have observed that CASIS has been highly “anti-social” or simply absent and AWOL through most of the year since award. CASIS is THE manager of the U.S. National Lab, by law. There is a clear requirement that CASIS interact with users and entities in the United States. Yet CASIS has “no-showed” at space conferences where it agreed to be on the agenda.
CASIS’s opening conference was one of the worst sessions ever conducted, the only saving grace being the leadership present from NASA. CASIS has alienated and catalyzed adversarial conditions with numerous legacy ISS researchers.
CASIS abandon its primary space teammates based on the conclusion that “anybody can do and provide that”. CASIS maintained a non-interactive website that claimed membership offerings to the space community, but failed to activate those features for 9 months. When they finally did activate the site, it was viewed by the community as a bad joke, it offers pins and ‘recognition’, a jelly-of-the-month club subscription would be more useful – an hour of professional consultation of how to access the ISS or to acquire external investment funds would be even “BETTER”, yet no such thing is offered, not even for a $50,000 dollar donation.
Over the last year, ISS users called CASIS directly, there was no answer. Congressmen called CASIS directly, there was no answer. Numerous NASA SAA to MOU actions between CASIS and PIs have been protracted,and unsuccessful over the last year. Adding a more effective, less onerous, and user-friendly MOU agreements would have been “BETTER”.
4. It would have been “BETTER” if CASIS had simply followed their own highly detailed, rigorous, meticulous and accepted plans for putting a permanent Board in place. Instead, CASIS Board selection has been a free-for-all with lawyers, executives, administrators and managers from every corner jumping in to gain control, influence, power-play, distort, tailor their own power structures, and delay what otherwise would have been a “BETTER” straight forward process.
5. It would have been smarter and “BETTER” if CASIS had drawn upon the wisdom and seasoned experience of NASA-HQ, NASA-JSC, and NASA Centers to understand and embrace the long-standing efforts to utilize the ISS for research. It would have been smarter and “BETTER” if CASIS had taken the time to realize that NASA ISS Pathfinder missions have been going on for years and that those Pathfinders have had the greatest maturity and possessed the greatest likelihood of paying off and showing real benefit, some programs of which have been highly successful and have produced major value, operating for over the last 10 years on the ISS.
It would have been “BETTER” if CASIS recognized and realized that while many research and science payload efforts have taken years to move from concept to manifest to on-orbit execution, that NASA has learned how to expedite and speed critical and valuable science to the ISS – in as little as 12 weeks from concept-on-napkin to launch. Stunningly fast. Yet CASIS over the last year elected to disconnect from key NASA personnel who possess that know-how. Whether from arrogance or naivety or ignorance or politics, none of those disconnected, avoidance behaviors yielded “BETTER” for CASIS.
6. It would be “BETTER” for the space community, top-researchers and the Nation if CASIS would understand that their mission is not simply to “replace the functions that NASA was already performing well with the research community”. This is exemplified, even recently, in Part 1 of Alan Stern’s recent essays where he recommends that CASIS actions be:
“What are the most important steps for CASIS and the International Space Station U.S. National Lab to succeed? Accomplishing this objective means first lowering the barriers…”
1 By creating quick cycle times and low-paperwork paths to conduct experiments onboard the station
2 By funding more teams to experiment onboard the station
3 By putting researchers (not just NASA astronauts) onboard the station
4 By dramatically increasing the crew time available for research
5 By funding the development and launch of new experiments and facilities to the station
6 By rewarding successful research teams with more station resources—crew time, experiment run time, and – funding to leverage even bigger discoveries
–
Notice that CASIS actions 1, 3, and 4 are primarily in the control and the responsibility of NASA-JSC. Actions 2 and 5, to fund teams, where 2 and 5 are largely duplicative anyway, are a CASIS responsibility, but to date these CASIS funding capabilities only exist through the good graces of NASA’s $15M/year funding. Action 6 simply says that if a researcher does extremely well, CASIS will reward them with more ISS lab time. What it really means is, if a research is highly successful, CASIS will immediately jump on their success bandwagon to share the win-accolades, which is perhaps a CASIS self-aggrandizing “BETTER”.
And when CASIS bluntly advised its teammates prior to abandoning them during the last year: “We don’t need you, your skills are nothing special, anybody can do what you do”, it was the antithesis of “BETTER”.
The message in Stern’s essay points are that CASIS needs to remove the “barriers” that NASA has erected and that NASA has all of the actions, CASIS has nearly none that Stern lists. NASA needs CASIS to push on them for improvement of items 1, 3, and 4 like they need a hole-in-the-head. CASIS would do “BETTER” to stick to their own tasks like raising major institutional funding. How many tens of millions has CASIS raised to date to be “BETTER”? $ 0.00?
“BETTER” for CASIS would be for CASIS to do what it proposed in the beginning: To Raise External Funding, To Couple PIs and Researchers with Industry, To Develop A Demand Market and Engage Academia Effectively, To Have Sophisticated Capable Tools to Assess, Rank, Value and Prioritize R&D and Science on the ISS, To Have a High Level, Nationally Extensive (not just Florida Locals, friends and cronies) Board Capable Of Managing a $100B U.S. National Asset, and to have a strong, deep networked connectivity to the U.S. Financial and Institutional Investment Marketplace to ensure that ISS science and utilization would be sustained and grow from the use of non-NASA funds. “BETTER” would be if CASIS even knew to do one of these, let alone did one of them. “BETTER” would be if CASIS had the skills sets resident to execute and succeed at even one of these.
“BETTER” would be when the senior members and executives in CASIS keep their word. “BETTER” would be that if they promise “A”, they do “A”. “BETTER” would be that when they say they will do “A” next week, that they don’t make 4 months or 8 months of excuses and then STILL fail to do “A”. [Documented fact not aspersion, substantiated by volumes of material evidence.]
What remains to be seen is, are those who have oversight responsibility and that are in charge at NASA, in the White House and in Congress content with “WORSE” or the current status quo? Or will they demand “BETTER”?
Want more?
BETTER 102 is a “flunk out” course, if you dare to ask for it.
Well, now we’re getting somewhere! Thanks for your insight npng.
Since you do not like NASA Watch Pete you need to find another website to complain about.
Not sure why you are so angry about this but you clearly are. How would you propose to raise so much money so quickly for an operation that is under government control. Not to mention the limitations on the transpostation problem that have been with us for many many years. I would be interested in your positive ideas on the fund raising approach?
bh, given your position, somehow I thought you’d be able to answer your question yourself. It’s disconcerting you cannot, but explains some things too.
CASIS is a 501(c)3. That’s a .org You know that. What’s to stop CASIS from raising millions or trillions? NASA? Try: NADA. CASIS can raise whatever it wants. That said, CASIS is so secretive, if they did raise a dollar or a billion, it’s doubtful anyone would know.
You say that CASIS is under-government-control. I suspect some would think it’s more out-of-control or simply has exempted-itself-from-control.
CASIS has to file some reports, but other than claiming they’ve tried, there’s little more to do. They can get “F” grades and nobody in the Federal government will do a thing. Not NASA, not the IG, GAO, nor the Congress. Why? Some say it’s because they are wimps. Others say it’s because they secretly want CASIS to fail so they can pursue other agendas, but
Most likely because they either don’t care or have been told to not care, to let it run it’s course, to let it be free-roaming. You know, like the stress-free chickens that roam the range and make organic eggs? You know, happy chickens. So CASIS people should be happy and stress free too. Aren’t you?
Why you suggest “angry” is puzzling. Granted, for much of the last year watching CASIS has been similar to watching paint dry, a bit like viewing rigor mortis.
But for a few moments it has been a fascinating study of people, their character, integrity, ethics, and honor. Or lack thereof. But law and 9th floor lawyers and government don’t care about those traits in America today, so we can skip the case-study stuff.
Say, bh, do you realize you may have just coined a new cool term, above? “transpostation” Sort of like transport-to-the-space-station? I like that. If ISS is used as a way-station or hub for BEO transport the crew could say “Hey man, let’s take a rocket and go to the transpo-station.”
Back on your question, you asked for positive ideas on the fund raising approach. Great “ask”, give yourself a Gold Star. Let’s see, the Feds will give CASIS $15 million a year for 5 years, right? And then CASIS gets to give – whatever it doesn’t spend on itself – to other people like PIs and researchers they like. Cool deal.
Back last Fall, there was in the neighborhood of $10 million to $20 million dollars of U.S. private institutional funding positioned and prepped for CASIS, yes! for CASIS, checks ready and pens in-hand. That’s more money than the Feds were handing over.
Too bad the .org was too FUBAR’d – which the investors saw and then ran away from. You see, investment money runs away from businesses that fail their executive integrity minimums and that have scorching issue headlines. The money vanishes, poof.
Those private funds would have satisfied the great hope of NASA – for the private sector to take over the investment and development efforts of the ISS and space. Tsk tsk.
As for positive ideas now? CASIS would need to de-toxify. CASIS would need to show powerful and lasting integrity, from the Board on down. Not with cronies. Not with locals, but with a true, U.S., national, diverse and highly vetted Board. And the Board would have to actually understand what the ISS does. If they were high level but expert in knitting yarn, that wouldn’t do. Would big money move to anything less? No.
CASIS would also need to draw in leading edge ISS science and research. Starting with the amorphous, intangible, gushy stuff is probably a bad idea. If you can find a wacked out loon billinaire, hey, have at it. Or if CASIS can get written into some rich dude’s Will, whatever works.
But if CASIS intends to take a classic fund raising approach, they will need to have something to offer to an investor, investment group, or institution. CASIS would need to know what “IT” has of value to offer if it expects to raise funds from most any classic source.
Highly skilled and experienced business expertise coupled with strong financial network connectivity, and a deep understanding of the assets possessed (by CASIS) would be required to raise the funds you’ve mentioned. Look through the resumes of all in CASIS and find those competencies. No problem, right?
It’s puzzling why you ask for positive ideas on fund raising bh. Space Florida boldly declared long ago they would raise tens and hundreds of millions for CASIS, so why would you even be asking?
The meaning of ‘better’
I don’t think ‘better’ is the answer. I’d like to see specific criteria for success. Some examples:
-Is there an individual, a desk, a place I can go to get the answer?
-Can a payload or experiment be launched/run/operated/data retrieved/samples retrieved, etc within a reasonable timeframe, like 15 months? Maybe its a sliding scale depending on complexity?
-Is there a specific, clear, unambiguous, technically accurate, sufficiently detailed set of requirements and processes defined?
-Is there a clear set of documentation and data that must be provided to ensure certification for safety?
-Do I have assurance that the information I provide to NASA or NASA’s surrogates will not be compromised?
There is also a marketing element of successful implementation. Once these criteria are met, is NASA and its surrogates briefing X researchers in Y industries?
The lack of experience and the lack of criteria for the measurement of goals makes the entire effort of ISS utilization, whether by CASIS or NASA, look strictly amateurish. You’d think that after an investment of tens of billions of dollars and multiple decades, we could expect professional handling. Its not happening.
If you take in to account the multiplicity of inaccuracies in Alan Stern’s two part CASIS National Lab essay, Alan should be put called to explain these inaccuracies. To name a few:
(1) “CASIS is now the manager of the ISS U.S. National Laboratory.”
While CASIS is responsible for the management of the ISS National Laboratory, it should be recognized by readers the utilization portion CASIS manages is 50% of the overall laboratory capacity of the ISS, the other 50% is and continues to be used by NASA.
(2) “Owing to a slow and unfocused start, …”
CASIS did NOT have a slow and unfocused start. CASIS was surgically and meticulously architected long before the award date and was fully prepared to execute immediately upon award – why in the world would NASA run a whole competition to give such a critical asset to a “start-up”?
As a CASIS Board Advisor you might want to actually take the time to learn the entire history of CASIS before you make performance statements about the organization’s beginning, especially given that you were not even remotely involved in the beginning.
CASIS had a very high-velocity prior to award and there are reams of hard evidence to prove that. You should also learn that the reason CASIS became slow and unfocused is because they abandon their original plans, those plans formally submitted and proposed, and chose to spend its days justifying a new course of action post-award, which has frankly been an embarrassment to all of us in the space community . If your fellow Board members didn’t bother to tell you that, then you need to have some cold-light-of-day discussions with them.
(3) “… tumultuous changes in management after barely six months, …”
Your so-called ‘tumultuous changes’ occurred at eight months and now CASIS is at eleven months. Today CASIS is exactly five weeks away from its one year anniversary date, July 13th. Get the salient facts right Alan: it wasn’t the departure of Jeanne Becker that was tumultuous, it was Becker’s searing resignation letter that was erroneously accusatory, caustic and damning and the 1st six months of executive actions that created ‘tumultuousness’. When an organization’s leadership pulls a bait and switch, and it doesn’t work out, and they blame the rest of the world, well – in the real world they just call that “accountability”. The body count is just the residue from those arrogant in ill-fated decisions.
(4) “… and pressure from those who lost the ISS National Lab management contract competition, some have called for CASIS to be removed from the job barely nine months after it was selected.”
You’re pegging the BS meter now. None of the other proposers, the so-called competition, said a word for the entire last half of 2011 and very clearly remained silent until around the time of the Becker resignation event. Even when CASIS blatantly abandon its founding and original partners and teammates, none of the competitors pressured or voiced objections regarding CASIS’s actions. One of the most insightful things that put into perspective the wasted time for the lost opportunity on ISS is the notion that if it only has a 10 year life, it is actually “depreciating”. Yeah – and at rate well over $500M every month that it is not properly used. That’s $ 3 Billion U.S. taxpayer opportunity lost in the 6 months that Dr. Becker was the Executive Director. Only in America can you steal a loaf of bread and get thrown in jail, but when you waste $3 Billion in 6 months there is no penalty.
Yes, in time, the Spring of 2012, the Ohio delegation did become vocal regarding ISS National Lab management. Given the potency and speed of what Ohio proposed, for them to NOT at least question the ISS National Lab activity and management progress problems and issues would be viewed by most as their being civically irresponsible. You deem the competition’s vocalness as “pressure”, but when you consider that the issue here is the effective utilization of a $100 Billion dollar U.S asset, most would probably see it as their standing up to question CASIS an issue that is a very legitimate National concern.
(5) “Any move to retire CASIS — still in its infancy — and replace it with a still greener successor would be ill advised, I believe. … I rather doubt that the detractors and would-be successors to CASIS have thought these implications through. But they should.”
Alan, CASIS matured beyond infancy in mid 2011. You weren’t there. Clearly you don’t know that and nobody told you that, although Frank and Jim could have told you. It only retrograded back in to infancy after the July 13th award date. In your statement above you attempt to convince readers to fend-off thoughts of retiring CASIS by claiming that successors would be ‘still greener’ than CASIS. Clearly you have not read the proposals offered by the competitors and you have not seen the sophistication and maturity of those proposals or you would not dare to make your ‘greener’ declaration. USRA, Battelle and MIT are light-years away from green. You’ve been around for years and you know that.
If you think the so-called CASIS detractors and would-be successors to CASIS have not thought through these implications and 100 more you haven’t thought of, you’re very wrong. Dead wrong. You know who these people are and you know their professional skills and competencies, you know damn-well they’ve thought through a myriad of angles, upsides, downsides, risks, how it affect their business, the ISS, NASA, the Nation and all involved in space. So cut the crap with the “I rather doubt” comments.
(6) “Why is this a bad idea? There are three reasons.”
Your three reasons are exceedingly poor Alan.
1st Reason: “CASIS is performing far better…”
In your essay, here, you claim that CASIS is “still in its infancy”. Then you reverse yourself and state “The first is that CASIS is now performing far better than it did in its infancy,…” Which is it Alan? Is CASIS still an infant to you or not? How can you declare that “CASIS is now performing far better”? Have you read the written scored formal reviews of your own CASIS performance? Do you consider “F” grades to be “better”? As a Board Member are you being denied access to and review of formal performance assessments? You need to come clean on this 1st reason Alan especially of you are declaring performance” to be your strongest and first reason.
In addition, to declare that CASIS “is on the verge” of its first series of calls for proposals, after nearly a year without any, is positively stunning. Factual headlines would be embarrassing: “The ISS depreciates $6 Billion dollars during year it takes CASIS to put out its first call for proposals” or “9 months and 90 meetings spent putting the first functional website together.”
You ask the community to “…cease their calls to end CASIS and instead support it as it reboots with new leadership and a newfound effectiveness.” Nice idea. Is your expectation that the community patiently wait a few more years while you figure things out, but cheer you on daily? Or perhaps that they donate time and help you write some proposal calls to speed up your process?
2nd Reason: “…terminating CASIS would be a bad idea.”
It is common knowledge to most all seasoned professionals in the space community that a termination of CASIS would create a costly delay and gap in ISS utilization pursuits and that is part of the reason why CASIS’s performance and speed of execution is a truly serious issue. But if it will require 2 or 3 or 4 more years for CASIS to move beyond infancy, that is not sufficient. CASIS has toxified and alienated part of the user community already and some believe that, from that, a replacement would be a good thing.
It is incorrect to categorically conclude it would take over a year to re-compete, albeit any re-compete given a $500 million per month burn rate, would be costly and even a month lost harmful. CASIS’s performance to-date shows a low velocity and a poor learning curve. Hell after a year the CASIS permanent board isn’t even in place. What evidence is there to support that CASIS will ever mature? ever have velocity? ever be a strong performer? Recalling the definition of insanity, “doing the same thing over and over again . . . . “
3rd Reason: ” … the agency [NASA] is just too fickle to trust.”
Your third reason is positively shameful Alan. You have the gall to accuse NASA of fickleness? “But perhaps the most serious consequence of terminating CASIS would be that …. the agency [NASA] is just too fickle to trust.”
Amazingly, you are redirecting CASIS’s infancy, dysfunctions, issues, and slow and unfocused start on NASA??? Take a look in the mirror Alan. Numerous institutions, universities and businesses eagerly entered in to Space Act Agreements with NASA. But many of those same entities found CASIS’s insistence of those entities to abandon their NASA SAAs and accept CASIS’s MOU terms and conditions as onerous and unacceptable. NASA didn’t drive users away. CASIS did. And some of the most seasoned PIs and researchers, those with 5 and 10 years of ISS legacy research, were the groups that found CASIS’s MOU most aggravating.
Again, NASA didn’t alienate prime users, CASIS did over the last 4 quarters. Too many ISS users consider CASIS to be utterly “anti-social”, which is not a good attribute for a management entity responsible for the use of a $100B national asset that needs to involve 100’s of users.
NASA, the White House, the Congress and piles of attorneys have been eating up time and money for nearly a solid year trying to deal with CASIS issues and the results of their failure to execute what they promised, only to have you decide to accuse NASA of fickleness as a function of below grade CASIS performance?! That’s bold.
You can chat and speak your mind, but when you twisted facts way beyond tolerability, it’s a different matter and you need to be called on it. Your inaccuracies and “bad idea” reasons are damaging to CASIS, NASA, the ISS and the Congress. No researcher, congressman, administrator or citizen likes to be misled.
Again, you say “they should not only cease their calls to end CASIS and instead support it.” You demand support from the space community, a sort of “We’re it, we’re in charge, so like us damn it, whether you like what we’re doing or not.” Forcing people to like you usually doesn’t work Alan. When your actions, performance, professionalism, and behavior warrant admiration and respect, then you may find that people choose to like and support you. It’s something you earn, not demand.
As a CASIS Advisor it would behoove you to rethink your position, fix these essays, learn the facts and start transmitting the accurate and unabridged truth about matters. Or just stop writing published essays.
re npng’s comments:
$500 million/mon burn rate, and yet ISS did not get into the utilization effort until 2011, 27 years into the program?
That is precisely what the battle is about IMHO.
My issue is to run national labs all alike, without industry/political meddling. ISS is nothing but political meddling.
Force the ISS into the national lab model. Run it that way for a decade, all up. Then decide what to do next based on results.
None of this has yet happened. There is significant resistance.
Littrow,
It is difficult, to an extent, to have 100% lab facility utilization when you’re in the middle of a facility-build which was the situation over the last 10 years. But science was done nonetheless, even as “construction crews” dominated the scene. Now it’s 2012 and ISS utilization shifts to front and center.
It is terrifying to realize that much of the space community looks at the ISS and concludes utilization didn’t get moving until 2011. How is it possible that people don’t know the work, the science and the tech development that’s been actively pursued by science teams? How is it that even the space advocates and geeks aren’t aware of activities that have been ongoing on dozens of Shuttle flights to the ISS?
I urge you and everyone to spend just 15 minutes looking at the NASA website to see the space science pursued on the ISS over the last 10 years.
A poster child of unrecognized ISS use is the MISSE program. It’s been running for over 10 years on the ISS. Yeah, a damn decade, yet virtually no one knows about it. Amazing! Bad PR? It’s engineering stuff so nobody cares? Somehow MISSE is one of a number of best kept secrets of long-term ISS success.
The MISSE program over the entire ’00-’10 decade burned about $20M to $30M dollars. It did space materials testing, on-orbit; thousands of material test samples. So ? ok, you shrug. Big deal, eh? What the hell did that do for ME? (We all know that life is all about “ME”, first.)
Well, the outcomes to-date from MISSE show that the program has put out over $2.3 billion dollars in value, in revenue outcomes from new products, in cost savings, in loss avoidance, in risk reduction, and in extended operational life of space systems and hardware. You know, stuff like satellites, comms systems, GPS constellations. You know, those goofy things up there that… that… Everyone Uses today.
The outcomes from MISSE aren’t notional, they’re real. Real money, real U.S. economic gains and value-added “beef”. Surprising, eh? Who knew? A solid, real return on investment of over 75 to 1. Can you imagine how the U.S. economy would be doing if all of the programs pursued in the U.S. produced a 75 to 1 outcome??? Spend $1 dollar and get $75 dollars back? We’d all be drenched in wealth.
As of 2012, future MISSE is in the works and its design and purpose is even more advanced than the MISSEs of the last ten years – adding cameras, sensor suites, testing of active electronics and more. MISSE is a strong example of how real value and solid economic outcomes have been and will continue to be produced
from the ISS and smartly done space programs. And God knows our Nation needs smart.
Littrow: Study Technology Readiness Levels. Study the lifecycle times of products from discovery and concept to market, from TRL 1 to TRL9. Examples abound.
How many years did it take from the moment a vacuum tube or transistor were discovered, to the time they were in common use and on the market? Typically over a decade. Very hard constant work and time are both needed to move from vision and discovery to market and product. The payoff lifecycle for the ISS, or frankly any laboratory anywhere, requires the same effort and follows the
same timeline.
Currently there are multiple “waves” of science being pursued on the ISS. Waves of science investigation and pursuits in: biotech, biofuels, materials, imaging, bio-pharma, regenerative medicine, chemistry, and physics to name a few.
As with most technology and innovation, these will require years of
constant effort to ‘breed’ and develop and mature, before the result is sitting on a shelf in Best Buy for a consumer to casually grab and buy, probably blissfully ignorant of what it took to bring in to being. It is the process and way that innovation and technology moves through now and has for centuries.
If you have a need for immediate gratification, to see, to own something that was developed from space research efforts, something real (beyond Tang and Velcro – not!), look at LiquidMetal Technologies.
Shuttle/ISS science enabled their technology. Run out and buy a Head Liquidmetal tennis racket or baseball bat, off-the-shelf or on Amazon.com. Who knew? Or if you’re in the military, go look at their Kinetic Energy Penetrators. Handy if you need to defend the Nation. Perhaps a close look at the next iPhone case will intrigue you soon too.
Yep, I know about MiSSE, sponsored by the USAF.
Looking to expand that use a lot in the near future….
Great to hear Dennis. 1 down, <7 billion to go.
One of the unaddressed issues related to CASIS is that no matter how successful CASIS is in the microgravity world (which will be incredibly limited with a $15M per year budget), it is highly unlikely that such activities will ever make a dent in the operating budget of the station.
My breakthrough in the Space Act Agreement that I had with NASA is when I offered to pay the entire operating costs of the station during the hours that the crew was on EVA. At the time, when you broke it down, it was only about $250k per hour. That opens up some very interesting doors for other activities on the station.
The biggest failure of NASA in the last ten years is to not integrate the station into exploration plans. Don’t whine that the station is in the wrong orbit, it is there and the mass penalty is only 6.3%. That is better than all the stations that don’t exist at 28.5 degrees.
Look back to the architectures for exploration of the 1980’s. Hell go all the way back to the 1950’s and Colliers. It is beyond unfathomable that the exploration architects fail to see the advantages of this way station in the sky. Oh I know why, it would make the SLS/Ares heavy lifter obsolete.
With the ability of the Proton, H-II, Falcon, Ariane V, and the EELV’s to service the station, we have an amazing array of capabilities to support exploration but we waste time and billions of dollar placating a democrat turned republican pork barrel senator. The administration is not helping nor is the NASA administrator and with this lack of leadership we continue to lurch into the future spending billions of dollars while not exploring….
From you post below
“The biggest failure of NASA in the last ten years is to not integrate the station into exploration plans.”
Partially true Dennis. Lots of human health science has been worked on the ISS the outputs of which tie directly to crew and exploration purposes. And more. In the end, I think you will see ISS use that incorporates both science-micro-g activity and exploration-use too. A ratio’d blend. So stay tuned, there’s a chance you may get your wish yet.
NASA remains a shining example of engineering and technical excellence for the Nation. It’s heartening. I listen to the technical experts and hell, many are so damn good I could pass out with joy. Truly world class. Good parents that have a bright child prodigy have to work particularly hard to make sure their child’s abilities are not wasted. Similarly, the government would be smart to work hard to protect the geek-squad of space competence and brilliance in the U.S., in the best interests of our Nation and our future.
The challenge NASA has – and its overseers have in Congress and the EOP – is in the business-engineering realm – the realms of business structuring and architecture, intellectual property, innovation mechanisms, finance, efficiency and productivity, accountability, purpose, prioritization, value-creation, catalyzing markets, gap-filling the valley-of-death between TRL3 and TRL9, and in communicating their worth and the value they create.
With NASA and industry’s technical expertise our Nation could do Moon or Mars. Give them more and they’d probably go for Alpha Centauri. But if you look at the business-engineering competencies in gov and the industry, in the same way, applied to an equivalent challenge, I doubt those competencies would be able to make a bottle rocket. We need to get far smarter in how we develop visions, mission concepts and business architectures and we need to understand who and how they benefit and what their end-products provide and why, the value of why, they should be pursued.
Its not that there has been no utilization, or that Iss is not being utilized at all. Many of us are very aware of how space has served to enhance technology. This morning NASAWatch reports that a study shows $800 million of economic value in NASA Earth Science Data. Whats missing from the story is that NASA and the space program developed and established digital imagery that is now in common use and that everyone takes for granted. Iss brings tremendous capability, and has had the capability for many years, but NASA has thrown roadblocks up that dissuade users from coming forward. The lack of assured logistics, the tedious integration process…we know it can be done much more efficiently. ISS has done it efficiently for a few experiments or payloads but the norm is 3-5 years. MISSE BTW has been going for about 20 years, far longer than Iss has been in orbit. Iss is just one more platform.
Haven’t wanted to comment. But there is too much inside talk here that most will find hard to take. Will try one concise attempt to convey what I see, top down, for everyone else. Feel free to pile on afterwards.
What the problem/pain is – ISS historically poorly utilized, yet with an existing history of utilization.
What the bone of contention is – evolving how to utilize it, yet with no unanimity in how to do so.
What is at stake – power/budgets/involvement of certain communities, many of which are willing to block each others efforts to go forward.
Why is it “not transparent” – too many inside issues that dominate the narrative.
Something keeps bringing to mind Sayre’s law:
“Academic politics is the most vicious and bitter form of politics, because the stakes are so low.”
A little background on national laboratory politics – even with strong national lab management structures, they get throttled by special interests. NASA has a horrible history of being dominated by special interests.
A non-NASA example: firing of ORNL’s Alvin Martin Weinberg to favor the nuclear industry. For its significance look into Frank Shu‘s views on it invoked in his follow on work Global Change and the Energy Crisis.
Many from NASA will know Frank from his legendary work on Stellar Atmospheres when at Berkeley.
I think Weinberg was the Elon Musk of nuclear energy (in terms of evolving the way a large scale industry works), at a less forgiving time. Industry wanted to put off Mark I-II reactor shutdowns to not pay the closing costs so they didn’t have to pay for the enormous failure of old tech, thus things like Fukishima happen and the hit occurs anyways.
In a nutshell, if there’s going to be an ISS National Lab, JSC can’t be involved with it. NASA’s role has to change. But that screws up certain things like the way JSC functioned with ISS utilization, and also becomes involved with agendas that frustrate further ISS utilization.
What I worried about with CASIS – not having a strong enough structure to be able to endure the thrash. Clearly, they tried “strong moves” (notice no one names them but complains about them!) in a weak structure.
You can see how well that works.
add:
Dennis – Ok, if not JSC where would you put it and how would that role change?
Went over this in an ISS post 3 months or so back. In short you transition JSC’s roles to supporting/consultative/research/development within the consortium. So it is a restructuring, much like the restructuring that occurred when SSF became ISS, just a bit more thorough (as was suggested at the time – none of this is a surprise).
This is far easier said than done with JSC responsible for safety, crew, operations, and a huge amount of overhead.
Don’t I know. And every time you restructure, it’s uncomfortable as the responsibilities shift but much of the work remains. However, it will actually reduce overhead, because NASA’s structures are arranged for NASA’s use not from the perspective of running a lab – a significant part of the problem.
It is an interesting statement but how in the world would you untie that gordian knot?
Not easy. The knot shouldn’t have been tied that way to begin with. Elements of which were a mistake with SSF.
NASA needs to get out of certain roles, so it becomes one of the r&d experimenters, as well as retaining a supporting role too.
npng – Did they hire the right skill sets, or F-up?
I’d prefer that they’d used a different model, but nothing I see justifies an undefined “F-up”. I do know that for what they’d need to do, stepping on toes would definitely occur in the process. Sure this isn’t the “F-up?
The problem is, the entities are limited, by law.
Yes. Many different ways to address this, besides what you’re hinting at.
Be grateful, very grateful for each and every person in NASA-HQ and NASA-JSC that is seasoned and skilled in the ISS utilization area.
Yes, but the way they do things currently is a significant issue. Could it be that the conflating of these two separate issues might be the source of the current discord?
Littrow – Several have commented that they looked at the CASIS list and no one had the right kind of experience.
It all boils down to how you want to tell the story of ISS utilization. CASIS staff experience fits the story as awarded, not as I would have chosen.
I would have provided the emphasis more of National Lab experience, as like the University of California does for Los Alamos, or Caltech does (sigh) for JPL(groan). With a specifically funded FFRDC you can do the same thing. The issues here are of having a large enough institution (not NASA!) in the background that doesn’t get pushed around, that has the credibility to rearrange things w/o people getting bent out of shape.
The problem with such is a)people think they can do it w/o the big guy, b) people thing they can compel a smaller institution, so they get upset when even the deck chairs are rearranged.
In a nutshell, if there’s going to be an ISS National Lab, JSC can’t be involved with it. NASA’s role has to change. But that screws up certain things like the way JSC functioned with ISS utilization, and also becomes involved with agendas that frustrate further ISS utilization.
Ok, if not JSC where would you put it and how would that role change? This is far easier said than done with JSC responsible for safety, crew, operations, and a huge amount of overhead. It is an interesting statement but how in the world would you untie that gordian knot?
Be grateful, very grateful for each and every person in NASA-HQ and NASA-JSC that is seasoned and skilled in the ISS utilization area.
What is NASA “blocked” from doing?
“Be grateful, very grateful for each and every person in
NASA-JSC that is seasoned and skilled in the ISS utilization area.”
Who are they ? The utilization process has not been too successful because it is too convoluted, too uncertain an outcome, requiring too much time. Several years ago we saw lab and utilization managers brought in who had never even worked payloads or utilization in their careers. Perhaps now they have begun to understand the issues? Now several ‘new’ people are being brought in to manage the area, and some were the same people who set the cumbersome system up ten years ago.
Several have commented that they looked at the CASIS list and no one had the right kind of experience. So apparently appropriate experience is a necessity? What is NASA’s excuse?
If a Google or Microsoft or .com entity owned the International Space Station, as private sector companies, they would be driving hard to make sure that their $100B capital asset produced a 10x return, which would be a trillion dollars in revenue.
When the government owns a $100B asset, they cannot act like a .com, they cannot pursue profit the way a .com does. They are ‘blocked’. If they did act like a .com, they’d be accused of running a federal business monopoly. So the government is relegated to use-scenarios that produce legally acceptable “social goods and benefits”.
There is a middle ground between a .gov and .com, which is a .org. A .org, like CASIS, has certain social benefit mandates but does have the freedoms to pursue and generate value and revenue, granted it is limited to not-for-profit and is non-stock.
The choice of a middle-ground .org to take charge of aspects of the ISS was a good move, perhaps the best move given we live in a world where our actions are bounded by the structures and rules of .com, .org, .edu and .gov. The structure and degrees-of-freedom possessed by a .org enables it to interact with the .gov, .edu, and .com infrastructures in ways that the other .dots cannot.
The Sayre’s Law statement is so true.
Good on Space-X. NASA voted against Lockheed-Martin, which was well along on manned spacecraft follow-on…now there is none! good going NASA! Amongst all this self satisfaction is fairly bad congressional leadership and executive branch mismanagement of NASA. The word “commercialization” in context of NASA programs is a gross misapropo and a political word the adminstration wants to project. “Commercial”, to me, means non-government income, otherwise it is just another government contract. This contract business of NASA’s never was and never will be “commercial” . Very incorrect use of the word, in my opinion; and it has political purpose behind it.