This is not a NASA Website. You might learn something. It's YOUR space agency. Get involved. Take it back. Make it work - for YOU.
Commercialization

CASIS is Still Inept

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
June 17, 2014
Filed under , ,

Keith’s note: The Second ISS Research and Development Conference is underway in Chicago run by the good folks at the AAS with official co-sponsorship by CASIS and NASA. NASA/CASIS funding and meeting requirements drive the show. Indeed, NASA and CASIS use this activity as an official annual showcase to put forward the value of the ISS as a research platform. Given that human spaceflight budgets are getting tighter – and will get even tighter as SLS budget pressures continue to mount – you’d think that NASA – and the non-profit who is supposed to advocate ISS research, CASIS, would be using every tool at their disposal to make this event available to all stakeholders. That includes taxpayers, by the way (they pay for this).
Alas, all we are going to get is Twitter coverage via #issrdc. That’s it. No NASA papers and presentations posted online at NASA.gov – and no webcast or streaming audio on NASA TV or elsewhere. Apparently CASIS is incapable of implementing a live webcast of this event. This is a remarkably simple thing to do – all you need is an internet connection and a laptop or cellphone. That’s all. Webcasting is free otherwise. Indeed, I have done live webcasts on a laptop from Everest Base Camp, a research base near the north pole, and the middle of the Arizona desert with commercial off the shelf capabilities. Yet CASIS can’t figure out how to do a simple webcast from a large hotel? REALLY? As the kids say EPIC FAIL. How NASA expects a wider dissemination – and appreciation of the research capabilities of the ISS is hard to fathom when their official partner for ISS research and utilization CASIS is this chronically inept.
NASA is not exactly helping promote these things either. Go to the NASA ISS National Laboratory website. There is no mention whatsoever of this meeting there.

Keith’s update: I stand corrected. This conference is mentioned – but you have to scroll all the way down – further than any website visitor looking fo current information is inclined to scroll. Whomever maintains this website is clueless as to how to maintain web content. You put important timely information where people will see it – easily. This is like putting today’s headlines on the last page of a newspaper. Unless this conference is not important, that is. Or (more likely) NASA ISS National Laboratory and CASIS are just cluless and inept when it comes to communicating with the public.

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

11 responses to “CASIS is Still Inept”

  1. NewSpacePaleontologist says:
    0
    0

    As much as we would like total access to everything said or presented, that just can not be. Technologically it is becoming simpler and even a Neanderthal such as myself can do the streaming and posting.
    If you could get the contents of the conference near real time and free, why attend?

    These conferences cost money to organize and execute. The sponsorships do not pay all these costs. Charging attendees is necessary. If you could get the contents of the conference near real time and free, why attend?
    If I wanted enough attendance to pay the bills next year, I would put out free just enough to let folks know what they are missing. This is not being inept. This is basic economics.

    • kcowing says:
      0
      0

      I am just baffled at the inept way that CASIS and the ISS National Laboratory Offices manage their education and public outreach.

      • Lowell James says:
        0
        0

        From what I can tell, and I have spoken to some of these folks in CASIS and in NASA, they really think that ISS is doing radical new things and harvesting beaucoup data that is of tremendous “benefit to all mankind”; I think its a play on the words of the Apollo plaque.

        Fact is that if there is any one overriding research area, its human research associated with long duration space flight, and actually if they would go to partial G through use of a centrifuge, then about half or 3/4 of their research in this area goes away.

        I am familiar with some of the ongoing ISS research but to me little of it seems to be of of great benefit to all humans. When they start making these claims it naturally leads to questions of what they are referring to..

        For a century people have thought about the need for a space station. We finally have one. Its not a bad idea. As a national lab it ought to be useful for gathering some data.

        The public affairs communications effort seems disjointed. There seems to be little or no information for younger kids. The information for adults is difficult to decipher. There appear to be dozens of news alerts every day about things that don’t seem too news worthy, and half of the alerts tell me to search for the latest about ISS without even giving me any information of the reason for the alert. There might be some useful research going on, but if there is, it would be great if you could find the information someplace.

    • Michael Spencer says:
      0
      0

      Doesn’t make sense. I go to my own professional conferences, or to space-related conferences,to learn and to meet people- some with whom I’ve had email relationships, or sometimes vendors, or sometimes I run into a famous person (like our host, for example, in Orlando a few years ago).

      These experiences are the central part of conferences. Oh sure the talks matter. A lot. And as Keith says, they oughta be available. But they aren’t the entirety of a conference; having them available hardly endangers the bottom line.

  2. lopan says:
    0
    0

    The First Rule of Bureaucracy: Hide.

    Doesn’t matter if what you’re doing is researching ways to cure childhood leukemia – in a bureaucracy, to be seen is to be targeted.

  3. Casey Stedman says:
    0
    0

    Shouldn’t the blame be laid at the feet of NASA PAO, rather than CASIS? The agency is responsible for their own public image and outreach.

    • kcowing says:
      0
      0

      No. I already asked PAO. They are as baffled by this as I am. ISS National Lab and CASIS seem to not care about outreach. And if CASIS and ISS National Lab refuse to work with NASA PAO (as they regularly do) then this is what you get.

  4. Lowell James says:
    0
    0

    From what I have seen both CASIS and NASA ISS Utilization seem to fail at getting the prospective investigator what they would like to see and need to assess the possibility of an investigation.

    What the prospective uninitiated experimenter needs to see is: what does the ISS provide: environment, power, data, launch and return capabilities, cooling, etc. What does the ISS (or CASIS) organization provide: integration services, analyses, safety review, etc. What is it going to cost the experimenter in terms of time, money and manpower. How quick is the payload going to fly and what can be returned, how it will be returned, the schedule for return.

    Instead what I have repetitively seen at these sessions is a bunch of NASA and CASIS people delighting in telling what kinds of radical new scientific investigations are being done on ISS. Few are radical, few are new, and few have led to any discoveries of significance for most people on the outside.

    I don’t know why these people, almost all of whom are engaged in space utilization 24/7/365, have no understanding of what the prospective PI needs. It is not like this is something new that has never been done before. We have been doing these kinds of things since the 1970s on SpaceLab, SpaceHab, Shuttle, Mir, Skylab, ASTP. Before ISS came on the scene, NASA had gotten it down pretty good. Apparently there was no continuity.

    • NewSpacePaleontologist says:
      0
      0

      Excellent Points.
      Some of what researchers need is access, schedule, and cost management. Access is being provided by National Lab/CASIS through its allocation on SpaceX and Orbital CRS missions. What is not being provided is schedule control and cost control. They really do not know when they will launch and when things will be returned. The schedule predictability is not there. Since they do not know their flight times they do not know when they need accompanying ground resources to support preflight, flight, and post flight. Cost control is not possible because schedules are not predictable. Even if we had real companies wanting to do product development they could not predict time to market.
      As “bad and expensive” as shuttle was, it flew 4-6 times a year. Neither of the CRS folks can claim anything close. Yes I know some will say this is bashing but until you have predictable access real product driven research will not blossom. Basic research is in the same predicament because the researchers typically do not have funding supporting variable scheduling.
      I am concerned that we have already passed the point where the perceived end of ISS is severely impacting the willingness of main line corporations and researchers to place much value (as reflected in funding and missions) or confidence in trying to do something with it before termination. They just do not have the time for the situation to make that radical a change. It cannot support the bottom line.

      • Littrow says:
        0
        0

        I think it has little to do with CRS. It has to do with poor planning and lack of forethought on NASA’s part. The NASA leadership thought that Shuttle was all about ISS assembly. Once ISS assembly was completed, why bother with it any more-was a comment I saw on a blog a few days ago. Fact was ISS and Shuttle were totally reliant on one another. So shutting down Shuttle prematurely may have wrecked ISS’s utility.

        CRS folks are coming along just as fast as they can especially given the poor and unreliable support provided by the government.

        If you want to point fingers, better to point them towards Constellation, Orion and Dr. Griffin. Orion was the replacement vehicle for Shuttle that we were told would be flying in 2010 or 2011, operational by 2014, sized to haul people and cargo….it is over weight and so cannot carry much and its a decade behind on its flight schedule and far too expensive for ISS use.

  5. Thomas dave says:
    0
    0

    NASA brings remarkable internet connections 10 gigabits per second and it’s about 100 times faster than today’s internet networks.
    It is very advanced in Ethernet world.

    http://1000ftcables.com/blog/