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CASIS Wastes Crew Time And Delays NASA's Human Spaceflight Research

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
July 30, 2018
Filed under ,
CASIS Wastes Crew Time And Delays NASA's Human Spaceflight Research

NASA’s Management and Utilization of the International Space Station
“NASA uses 76.6 percent of the Station’s research resources, so it pays 76.6 percent of the U.S. Segment’s operating costs. Although a significant portion of total Station research time, the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 requires at least 50 percent of these resources, including upmass and crew time, be allocated to the CASIS-managed National Laboratory, limiting the time and capabilities available to NASA for mitigating risks associated with future space exploration goals. While our prior work found that CASIS has used on average only 52.7 percent of the crew time allocated from September 2013 to April 2017, its use of crew time has increased since 2016 to 72.8 percent between March 2016 and September 2016 and 68.1 percent between September 2016 and April 2017.39 Any allocation unused by CASIS can be used by NASA for its own research.”
OIG: NASA’s Management of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS) (2018) earlier post
“CASIS will be allocated additional research hours when NASA adds an additional crew member to the Station in late 2018. However, given its performance to date, CASIS utilization rates for the National Lab will likely further diminish.”

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7 responses to “CASIS Wastes Crew Time And Delays NASA's Human Spaceflight Research”

  1. Daniel Woodard says:
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    “Any allocation unused by CASIS can be used by NASA for its own research.”
    Interesting statement. What is the difference between CASIS and NASA research?

    • Mike Dexter says:
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      I assume NASA sponsored research such as tech demos, research opportunities advertised in NSPIRES, exploration stuff?? Maybe some educational related things too? Good question.

    • fcrary says:
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      As I understand it, CASIS isn’t supposed to be a primary source of funding. They do provide seed money, but most of the cost is supposed to come from the experiment providers. NASA research would be funded by a NASA center or by one of NASA’s various research grants. (Mr. Dexter mentioned NSPIRES in another comment; that’s the web site for these programs; most of them fall under ROSES, Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Science.)

      • Daniel Woodard says:
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        As an occasional researcher I am more than happy for any funding, but that is the heart of the question. Outside of NASA it isn’t obvious (to me at least) where researchers would get those funds. I’ve tried to solicit funds for what I think is a fairly practical project in Alzheimer’s biochemistry, and it has not been easy. Mention “basic research” and venture capitalists quickly lose interest. I agree ROSES seems stable and reasonably well funded, but it seldom seems to utilize the ISS or other forms of human spaceflight.

        • fcrary says:
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          The some of the ROSES program elements which used to be about balloon and sounding rocket flights now cover CubeSats and experiments on ISS.

          For funding outside NASA (and presumably involving CASIS), I’ve never heard of it happening, but what about NSF or NIH? Outside government funding, I believe some universities or companies have invested internal money in flight tests of new hardware. I’m not sure if they went through CASIS or NanoRacks (or, for that matter, if NanoRacks would go through CASIS for them…) Also, that’s technology development with an eye to future flight opportunities, which is pretty far from the basic research you’re thinking of.

          • Daniel Woodard says:
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            I worked pretty hard on an NIH proposal, but we were not successful. Given the stagnation in NIH funding and the almost infinite demands for ground-based research, it is a tough nut to crack. I’m not sure NSF would want to compete with ROSES. NANORacks has been remarkably effective, but as a private company they provide payload services rather than research funding. CASIS could obviously accomplish a lot more research if they had the resources to pay for it, but the current paradigm is that they get “seed funding” which is supposed to get projects started that can then attract sustaining funding from other sources. Unfortunately it isn’t clear what those other sources are. I’m not being a nihilist; if a government department has the support in Congress to fund a program in space-based basic research, they can obviously do it. I just don’t see any other obvious customers. Any venture capitalist who is going to spend money in space will want a pretty quick return on investment.

  2. Richard Brezinski says:
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    I thought it was interesting that the IG found that despite the thousands of scientific investigations on ISS by researchers in more than a hundred countries around the world, the only research the IG felt was deserving at present is NASA’s own human research program.