CASIS Wants To Take Over Everything NASA Does On ISS – And More
|
|
|
|
– Former CASIS Employee Indicted For Charging For Prostitutes on Travel Reports, earlier post
– CASIS Announces Its Commercial Business Expansion Plans, earlier post
– CASIS Continues Its Stealth Commercialization Plans (Update), earlier post
Is the objection here to:
1. The notion that the named activities, with some room for adjustments (adding or removing), can’t be better handled by someone/something else? There are plenty of rough spots, particularly in the transition to reliance on commercial providers (I think NASA’s transition has been a lot smoother than many admit, though).
or,
2. That even if the activities might be better placed elsewhere, and even if the proposed administrative organization is useful as a starting point, that the current names are unsuitable (for the reasons Keith has enumerated)?
So? Which is it?
Leaving CASIS out of the picture, would we be better served with some or all fo these activities moved somewhere else, or not?
Keith, besides their publicly accessible track records and history of getting research on ISS, transparency in operations and usage, etc., what do all these tweets really mean? Are there really negative issues here? Does their performance history merit such a position? Does the management merit the high pay they seem to get? There seems to be a lot of mud to wade through.
Every time I see these posts this is exactly what I am wondering–what the heck is going on and is there something that insiders realize that is only being hinted at.
THAT goes without saying. Uncovering, or reading between the lines, is what we have come to expect from Mr. Cowing.
Given the CASIS track record to date, remember they have been operating since 2011, they cannot get their current job accomplished so how could they ever hope to take on a much bigger job like running all aspects of ISS ? They’ve done pretty poorly in getting research on board ISS-remember the IG has said about the only things in which they’ve accomplished modest goals are education and outreach. I think those are things they can accomplish something without even a response by the public. But they were specifically hired to fill 50% of the US side of the ISS with payloads, and so far they are not doing that. There is a lot of unused capacity and every iota of unused capacity is wasted tax dollars. Take over everything?? Maybe NASA ought to hold a new competition to see what others might have to offer?
Or perhaps NASA should have multiple contractors, in competition with each other, instead of sole sourcing such a thing. And pay them for results instead of giving them a yearly budget.