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Michael Foale Wants To Save The ISS. He's Not Alone.

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
January 9, 2018
Filed under ,
Michael Foale Wants To Save The ISS. He's Not Alone.

The astronaut fighting to save our home in space, BBC
“Draw up a list of the world’s most accomplished and experienced astronauts, and astrophysicist Dr Michael Foale’s name is going to come pretty near the top. … Now more than 20 years after saving one space station, Foale wants to save another: the ISS. … Foale is formulating his campaign to save the ISS and says he plans to launch websites to gather support to help save the space station. He says he intends to keep pressure on the space agencies to continue to fund the programme. “Every engineer, manager, astronaut or cosmonaut who’s worked on the ISS, we all think the space station is such an achievement on behalf of humanity that it should continue,” he says. “I’m still giving Nasa a chance to tell me how they’re going to do it.”
The International Space Station Is The Undiscovered Country, earlier post

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

36 responses to “Michael Foale Wants To Save The ISS. He's Not Alone.”

  1. Matthew Black says:
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    I think Dr Foale is absolutely right. The ISS is funded till 2024, but could probably go to 2028 without major problems. This was told to me in 2016 by an actual ISS engineer I met in Houston. It could even go longer than 2028 if the ammonia coolant systems could be continued to be serviced and some augmentation could be found for the ageing solar array sets. But then, spare control movement gyros may have to be launched, then a multitude of small components etc…

    How long would it be till it might actually be more cost effective to pay Bigelow to augment a couple of aluminum modules with a couple of their inflatables? On that basis, perhaps getting to 2028 might be a good compromise for ISS. Nearly 30 years for a space station isn’t so bad, eh?

  2. ThomasLMatula says:
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    Given the money invested in the ISS I fully expect the ISS will be in orbit until some failure occurs and it will no longer be possible to use it. Then folks will scramble to deorbit it safely, unlike the Chinese Space station now falling to the surface.

  3. Eric Lopaty says:
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    Maybe off topic, but why do British news organizations spell NASA as Nasa? Do they also write Fbi and Cia? And yes, the Iss is worth saving.

    • Sam S says:
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      I can’t find an official reference, but I’ve definitely noticed that this is the style in British publications such as the FT and BBC – specifically, initialisms that are pronounceable as a word, e.g. you say “Nasa” instead of pronouncing each lettter “En Ay Es Ay” only have the first letter capitalized; but initialisms that require each letter to be pronounced separately, e.g. “Eff Be I” have all the letters capitalized, so they spell “FBI” just like Americans do.

      • Paul451 says:
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        It’s a Times thing, and leaks into other organisations from there. But the BBC is inconsistent. For example, NATO is always capitalised… even as an example in the BBC in-house style guide.

    • Jack says:
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      I don’t know but I would add why maths instead of math?

  4. Daniel Woodard says:
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    The ISS is so modular in design that it is hard to see any failure other than a major collision actually rendering it unusable, paricularly now that we have several LVs capable of delivering complete new modules. However I will be happier when it has electrical thrusters that can maintain its orbit for a year or two even if fuel shipments are held up.

    The real challange for Foale and other ISS supporters is to find important science that can be done there. As always, I feel the ISS has enormous promise for Earth and Space observation, even though this will require collaboration between the science and human flight wings of NASA. The other promising application is tourism; maybe Bigelow could simply contact with NASA and the ISS program to use some of the ISS facilities for accomodations. It’s time to move beyond the national prestige model.

    And did I mention inviting China to join the program?

    LEO is the real gateway to anywhere in space. If we lose the ISS we won’t be stuck in LEO. We will be stuck on the ground.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      The key problem for the ISS in regards to science, tourism and commercial activities is that it take 5 astronauts working full time to keep it running. This only leaves one to do any science work. When the Shuttle was flying you had another 6-8 astronauts to do science on it supported by the Shuttle when it was docked, but its gone now. There is little evidence the taxi service provided by SpaceX or Boeing will improve the economics of it.

      Really, the ISS in relation to a Bigelow Aerospace habitat is no different than the SLS/Orion is to the FH/Dragon. A very expensive and overly complex piece of hardware. And as with any complex piece of hardware (i.e. Shuttle) it has the potential of single point failures, many of which NASA might not even consider a risk until they strike.

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        The ISS was kept in operation for an extended period by only two crewmembers. Some of the work the others are doing is related to upgrades and modifications. More importantly, for observational research the crew is needed primarily for deploying, installing, maintaining and ultimately removing observational payloads, while the actual data collection is automated. as opposed to human performance and materials science experiments which require humans to perform each step of the actual research. A small crew can thus collect an enormous amount of data.

        • Nick K says:
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          It was a lot smaller when there were only 2 crewmembers. And as it ages, systems will break and require fixing.

    • numbers_guy101 says:
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      The ISS challenge of relevance is also about funding. Inertia and pork barrel politics will keep the ISS around for a good while, with extensions and a lack of planning being the norm. Just as well there are people inside and outside of NASA who see the ISS as a barrier, since they await the poor uncle’s passing and an inheritance (of funding) as part of their long term planning (really a lack thereof). Yet as history has shown, all that may do is move funding over to some other new station or gateway with just as many costs and no real opening for funding new projects. Hope springs eternal though, and the folk seeing the grass is greener on the other side will cling to the notion that hope and PowerPoint and arm waving is a plan for the future presence of NASA in near space.

      This is not that complicated financially as far as basic facts in budget planning and situational awareness. The 4 budgets for ISS operations, ISS R&D, and commercial cargo and crew services are all known dollar quantities per year. Start by cutting the ISS operations budget in half for any future costs of having a NASA presence in near space, even if further than LEO. Continue by trying to get cargo and crew transport costs down even further, again, even though going further away. Avoid the temptation to go after the actual R&D activities as far as funding, instead focusing on making these more productive and successful. Flow down from these numbers into exploring future partnerships with industry. Some existing ISS contractor screams impossible? LEAVE THEM BEHIND.

      But no one in NASA will do this – as it brings out the wolves, mostly in the ISS operations, in certain districts. The screaming starts, then the lobbying, then all real planning stops. We have a hint about how this story ends, much like the end of the Shuttle program, where studies were tolerated until the end became real, and then we found out where interests really lie.

      • Brian_M2525 says:
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        The real question, I think, is why does ISS continue to cost $3billion annually? $3 billion is what it cost when there was R&D, and manufacturing, and they were developing operations methods and plans and procedures, and Shuttle launches to put the big pieces in orbit, along with the day-to-day operations. All there is today is day to day operations. NASA no longer sponsors the science and scientists, like they once did. There are only 2 US astronauts in orbit, and only 50 astronauts total, not 150. Yet it is still costing $3 billion. Why is the cost still so high? Bureaucratic inertia? If they are trying to do other programs, NASA needs to figure out how to get their people off the ISS dole and share all that experience on other programs and budgets. No one is going to give NASA a lot more money. That is only so much wishful thinking on the part of some really naive NASA managers. Maybe getting costs down is where Mike Goals needs to focus.

  5. Bob Mahoney says:
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    Skylab? Mir? The Apollo program? Shuttle?

    Sadly, I can see ISS going away on a political/programmatic whim all too easily. ‘Reasons” can always be found.

  6. Donald Barker says:
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    Unfortunately my pessimism abounds. I don’t believe that anyone with true authority (e.g., holding the purse-stringe) in our government really cares, or that even the average American really cares. Proof of caring is in action, not words. Oh, and this does not even address the subject of selling, advertising or tangible results from the scientific research conducted there to date and in the future. This will make it very difficult for any move to really save ISS correctly. Plus, NASA has a long history of having to kill one program before starting another. All very unfortunate.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      You forget, the $3 billion which is required to run it is a lot of pork flowing to various Congressional Districts, not to mention the money going to SpaceX, ATK/Orbital and Boeing for support. That pork flow will continue as long it remains usable.

      • Donald Barker says:
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        No I didn’t forget. And pork is only relevant as long as enough keeps getting to those districts. What happens when that tapers off because of changing goals/programs. And what happens when Russia pulls out of ISS because they cant afford it or geopolitical concerns take center stage? And the “commercial” folks will only hang around until it becomes unprofitable to go there. And lastly, limited funding as the drain of money towards an already unmanageable debt, which will only increase as climate change and the increasing population (heading to add another 100 million in the US alone by 2045) require more and more resources. Me thinks you wear rose colored glasses a little too much.

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          First, I believed that the ISS was a mistake, a geopolitical pork barrel project to give a reason to keep the Shuttle flying after the Challenger accident. And that is why it will keep going and going until it fails. The $19 billion is a rounding error in terms of the National Debt. It also won’t help feed the poor, that is a political issue, not a technical or ecological one.

          I have been hearing that gloom and doom for decades but doomsday never comes. Indeed, many of problems we have today with climate change are because the environmental doomsday crowd scared folks away from Nuclear Power which was the only viable solution to reducing CO2 emissions. It still is if you want a world with birds in it.

          As for Russia pulling out, forget it. Russia’s space program is a basket case kept alive because of NASA funding. They will stay in because they have no other options for human space flight other then sending an ocassional Soyuz up to orbit Earth with a tourist. Why do you think they are pushing so hard for NASA to do the Deep Space Gateway? They are only making a noise about leaving so they will get more money from NASA to stay.

          The won’t join China because China will expect them to pay to be a partner, that is just part of the rhetoric they are using to get NASA to make them an offer to stay in the ISS.

          • Donald Barker says:
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            “The $19 billion is a rounding error in terms of the National Debt.” – mathematically maybe. But psychologically if this were true, then they would never need to change NASAs budget, leaving it at a flat 20 or 30 or 50 billion per year. And we see, year after year for 50 years that it is changed and fought over.
            And Russia is going to lose most of its US funding once SpaceX can fly people. So a problem still exists.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            Which is why Russia is threatening to leave. They want the money to continue and that will be the price NASA will need to pay to keep it flying.

          • Donald Barker says:
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            They also are threatening to leave over Crimea, and sanctions (which is backward as they did the invading). Then there is the world-wide social and election meddling. Then there is the loss of arctic ice which is opening new conquerable territory for oil and shipping. All these add up to one big mess. There is never usually a singe cause for anything.

          • ThomasLMatula says:
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            I don’t see how supposed meddling in elections or how climate change is opening up parts of Russia to development have anything to do with ISS. Russia is just doing with ISS what Russia has always done in international and that is to get more money for Russia. It’s what Russia did under the Czars, what they did under communism and what they are doing today.

            Russia is easy to understand if you remember three things. First, because of the numerous times they have been invaded they are paranoid about having buffer zones so they are able to trade land for time. Second, the West has meddled in Russia since its founding by the Vikings. Recall that Lenin was sent to Russia as a special “gift” from Germany which was meddling in Russia’s very first election, so they see such meddling as part of their foreign policy. Third, they have a strong inferiority complex about the West and so went they get the West over a barrel, like with the ISS, they are going to make them pay to boost their ego. Dealing with Russia mean taking the time to learn their history. Then using that as a starting point to work with them.

          • William says:
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            Seer of doom says
            “ISS will be scuttled and the Falcon heavy and other large boosters will turn out to be structurally unstable. Spacex etal will be reduced to LEO sat launchers with no use for any LEO manned vehicles. The SLS will be the only functional manned launcher for crews to Gateway station”

            P.S. at HUGE cost per launch

          • Nick K says:
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            “ISS was a mistake, a geopolitical pork barrel project”

            I completely disagree with this statement.

            ISS or a similar sort of a space station has been part of the space literature and planning for a hundred and fifty years. Especially for the first 15 years of the space age, many people thought Apollo was THE mistake that would lead nowhere and that a space station was required to develop the systems and capabilities required for future missions.

            In many respects we have been learning those things on ISS. The modular approach, the architecture, the environmental control and life support system, the integration of humans with computers and robotics, human physiology and psychology on long duration missions, the international collaboration, are all positive. They may not be entirely successful but they are important in learning what to do or not to do.

            There has been some shortsightedness; NASA’s eagerness to try and put the burden of utilization on some other non-existent organization; the failure to apply knowledge from prior programs; the failure to simplify and expedite hardware development and payload integration processes; the eagerness to cut out critical parts of the system, like the centrifuge module; the eagerness to give internationals the responsibility for system development; the failure to constrain and manage costs; the failure to minimize personnel support. These are issues that hopefully someone is identifying, documenting and recommending improvements. One of the improvements would be to facilitate improvements, like creating a new centrifuge module, even now, well into the program. One of NASA’s big failures as discussed earlier is its eagerness to trash prior systems and expertise in the expectation of creating something new and different. But if NASA authorities are unaware of the issues; if they do not know what they do not know, if they do not know what was already developed and in work of prior programs, then they will never improve.

            So,, while ISS is a tremendous piece of technology with tremendous potential, the jury is still out on whether it will ultimately prove successful.

          • fcrary says:
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            I’m not sure I’m comfortable with your starting premise: “ISS or a similar sort of a space station has been part of the space literature and planning for a hundred and fifty years.”

            Just because an idea has been around for a long time doesn’t make it a good idea. It’s definitely true that building and maintaining ISS has taught us an enormous amount about working in space (especially EVA work.) It’s less obvious that it was a cost-effective way to learn those things.

            As for the hardware and technology development, I’m not sure if that was worthwhile. I guess the real test would be how much that heritage is used the next time someone builds a space station. If someone looks at it and decides to start over from a clean sheet, that would say something. If someone decides to copy almost all of it, that would say something else. (And no, DSG doesn’t count, since that can easily be reuse due to institutional biases, not the inherent merits of the hardware and technology.)

            But all of that is about things accomplished by building ISS. Not things it could have (or should have) done once completed. The same benefits could have been obtained from building a station with a clear, useful, post-assembly purpose. I think that’s missing in ISS.

    • Nick K says:
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      I would phrase it a bit differently. NASA has a long history of killing one program to pursue a new one. I think NASA managers delight in this. Many of the managers feel they are there to design new hardware, not to use what they already have and know. It is exactly the opposite with the Russians and most other countries. They maintain, use, expand upon, upgrade, and do everything they can to develop and maintain expertise. NASA constantly is shuffling people and they never seem to maintain expertise. It might have something to do with NASA’s procurement methods; they feel they have to kill a program and the supporting contractors in order to give a new set of contractors a chance.

      • Donald Barker says:
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        I agree with that also, and that such an approach is the most inefficient/wasteful, expensive and unsustainable if we ever truly want to diversify humans off Earth.

  7. Mark Thompson says:
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    Everything that I have read about NASA’s concerns is the structural integrity of the modules with the concern presumably being a sudden catastrophic failure which would leave no time to isolate modules as was possible in the Mir fire. Perhaps they are too risk averse, and most likely this risk is remote but NASA is NASA and even had to be overruled to save Hubble one last time.
    President Trump and his business savvy administration could provide a path. What if the European, US and Japanese science modules were sold to non-profit research corporations in Europe, the US and Asia funded by corporations in their region to conduct commercial science once NASA decides it is done with its own science needs. NASA could still lease some space, but these modules would be commercial. A commercial entity such as Boeing could take over for Houston to manage the ISS, perhaps even selling naming rights. How about the Pepsi Space Station? Russia could finally launch a science module supported by a BRICs non-profit science corporation including Chinese corporates but not the Chinese military which is where the US government is concerned.
    Another ISS will never be built in our lifetime just as the moonwalking astronauts will never see man walk on the moon again in their lifetime. We will never again have the shuttle fleet that allowed this enormous station to be built, or the international financial commitment to fund its construction over a decade. So it would be a crime to prematurely de-orbit it. Anyway, that’s my two cents.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      Why would they buy a module and be subject to NASA rules when it’s cheaper to rent a Bigelow Aerospace B330. The only thing keeping BIgelow Aerospace grounded is that the Russians had no Soyuz to support his station while SpaceX and Boeing are focused on the CCP. As soon as transport for crew is available a cheaper replacement to ISS will be as well.

      ISS will remain what it has been since day one, a geopolitical symbol of the end of the old Space Race.

    • Nick K says:
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      The design of the modules both internally and the way in which they connect to one another enables a high probability that in the case of a collision or puncture by space junk or a meteorite, the module that is hit can be isolated quickly, and, at least on the US side, though not the Russian modules, the equipment on the interior can be pulled away from the wall to enable a fairly quick fix to a puncture.

      As far as a company like a Boeing taking over to manage ISS, NASA needs to be wary of USA, Inc. syndrome in which they would hire a contractor, who is just a contractor trying to earn government money, and the more work they do, the more the company makes-there would be absolutely no reason for them to do a better, more efficient, or less expensive job. If NASA wanted to hire a company to operate and manage ISS they would be better off hiring an air line company, maybe in partnership with a company that operates government research laboratories. A company that knows how to operate high tech systems efficiently or a research institute or academic institution that knows how to find companies that want to invest in hi-tech research are the kinds of companies that are needed.

  8. Nick K says:
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    I thought NASA owed a plan for what it was going to do with the ISS: http://nasawatch.com/archiv… Fact is, I don’t think NASA has a plan for what it is doing with ISS today let alone where it should go in the next decade. It is certainly not being used today to the extent it might be or as was intended. So is the Mike Foale rescue plan a plan to save ISS from NASA?

    This might make some sense. NASA wants money to put into its deep space Gateway station. NASA cannot afford Orion and SLS and the Gateway, let alone a moon lander, if it continues to put billions in ISS. Of course why is ISS continuing to cost billions?

    What should NASA’s role be? I think the NASA management thinks their role is engineering and design and manufacturing and operation of new spaceships traveling to explore distant worlds. Actually maybe not doing the design and manufacture themselves so much-NASA seems to hire those functions out to the internationals. I do not that is NASA’s or government’s proper role. I think NASA’s role should be knowledge creation. NASA is supposed to be developing new state of the art technology and encouraging and sponsoring scientific pursuits in space.

  9. Zen Puck says:
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    There is no ISS De-Orbit plan. When that time comes, if it does, NASA is going to ‘wing it’.

  10. DougSpace says:
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    What’s the opportunity cost of the ISS? What are we losing due to the annual $3 B or so expense? If we support a gapless transition to a commercial station, what will we be missing due to the expense of supporting the transition and perhaps annual support of the commercial station? In particular, will we / are we not getting the development of a lunar lander because of ISS budgetary support? If so, then what is of greater value, the ISS or going BLEO to develop a lunar base? I for one vote for establishing humanity’s first, permanent, off-Earth foothold on the Moon and using the Moon’s resources to continually reducing the costs of extending stay on the Moon.

  11. Michael Spencer says:
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    Over the many years reading Keith’s blog, and interacting with many of the smart people here, one central theme regarding ISS is apparent: nobody really knows why it’s there, or what to do with it.

    Oh, sure, lots of bitching about ‘under utilization’, and of course our host takes shots at CASIS whenever he can. But like space travel in general, if there’s a reason for ISS it sure isn’t obvious.

    We live in a period of human history where proclamation that a ‘business case won’t close’ is a self-evident argument against any sort of enterprise. Coupled with a similarly unfortunate political sensibility that the ‘gubment’ can do no right, and that the private sector — even if forced into partnership with public sector enterprises — is uniformly a preferable choice, space becomes difficult to explain.

    It means that the creation. of human settlements in space won’t happen in this century.