Its Time To Rethink ISS Utilization
Keith’s note: I just read this during the public input portion of today’s NASA Advisory Council Regulatory and Policy Committee Meeting:
“My name is Keith Cowing. I am a former NASA civil servant and space biologist whose job in the 1990s entailed many of the utilization tasks currently assigned to CASIS – except we were planning them before there was an actual space station. CASIS has had nearly a decade to get up to speed with regard to its responsibilities as laid out in their NASA cooperative agreement and as a non-profit entity. CASIS has a guaranteed annual income of $15 million which is provided to CASIS – by NASA – regardless of the quality of performance demonstrated by CASIS. After nearly a decade CASIS still relies upon NASA for 99.9% of its funding.
Despite being given a government sanctioned monopoly on the utilization of the US portion of the ISS – the so-called ISS National Laboratory – CASIS has yet to be able to fully utilize the on-orbit resources given to it by NASA – including the all important crew time. CASIS has been unable to provide adequate metrics to explain what it does. Both the NASA Office of Inspector General and the Government Accountability Office have found significant problems with CASIS’ performance as well as NASA’s management of CASIS which could be characterized as being somewhat of an absentee landlord. When CASIS was given its ISS role NASA only envisioned partial utilization of its overall ISS assets – those covered by the ISS National Lab. Now, a decade later, NASA envisions turning over the totality of its operations on board the ISS to the private sector. To do so NASA needs to totally revisit how it manages ISS including the CASIS Cooperative Agreement.
Given that CASIS is already incapable of meeting its chartered responsibilities on just a portion of the ISS it is unlikely that it can be expected to assume additional responsibilities that would go with managing all U.S. assets on the ISS. As such I would urge NASA to end its agreement with CASIS and re-compete these ISS National Lab responsibilities as part of a larger effort to transfer operations of the ISS to a commercial entity – if that is indeed where NASA intends to go.
The ISS is an unprecedented research facility – one who’s full potential has yet to be fully realized. Despite what they might want you to believe CASIS is not the solution to the under utilization of the ISS. Rather, CASIS is the cause of its under utilization. This under utilization has gone on for far too long. Indeed CASIS often seems to be far more interested in comic book character tie-ins than doing quality science.
NASA needs to get this whole utilization thing fixed before the agency tries to commercialize anything more on the ISS. Not to do so will be to continue to waste an astonishing facility – one constructed at great expense.
Thank you for your time.”
A very sad accounting of what has and has not occurred as well as the ethics and vision or lack there of involved with the use of humanities most profound long-term technological achievement. When will people making lots of money, public money, be held immediately accountable for their actions? Even more depressing is that the odds of ISS being adequately used, before we decide or are forced to discard it due to a lack of foresight and hubris, is vanishingly low and it will remain used well below its full potential. I hope I’m proven wrong.
You always express those concerns as if they were new ones. “When will people making lots of money, public money, be held immediately accountable for their actions….” When hasn’t that been true? Two hundred years ago, in the American southeast, people said things like, “Them who has it gets more.” And, if you read enough history, this sort of thing goes back as far as recorded history goes. People have complained about, this all the time and for centuries. Instead of complaining about it, do you have any practical solution to offer?
Well stated, Keith. A succinct and very accurate assessment of the situation to date.
A “must read” for all those involved in the decision making process.
As much as CASIS is a do-nothing entity, it is not what will keep a private entity form taking over ISS. There are other, larger issues.
1) Commercial crew still isn’t flying. Even when it does, it will still be cost prohibitive and greatly reduce revenue opportunities for launching people to ISS.
2) Commercial Cargo is far too costly. The single largest cost to maintaining ISS is launching cargo to it. And like Commercial Crew, it greatly reduces revenue possibilities, especially went it comes to occupancy (ie, charging individuals, nations, NGOs, private entities to send crew to ISS and keeping them their for any length of time).
3) And definitely not least is that ISS can house too few people and is missing or lacking facilities. SS Freedom was cut back and back until it lost a lot of it’s utility. Even when ISS restructured, a few of the modules it was supposed to have were never launched (CAM, HAB, etc). There is less to utilize, fewer draws to the station and fewer spaces available on ISS. (Think of all the missed opportunities with CAM rotting away in a Japanese parking lot and that’s only one module).
Again, this is in no way excusing CASIS for it’s…incompetence and ineptitude don’t seem to cover it. However it’s not even the greatest barrier to ISS utilization.
Well put, Sir. I do so hope someone listens & takes appropriate action.
You got this right however my real question is where has NASA ISS management been and why has this been allowed to linger for nearly a decade-every one of those years costing the US taxpayers $3+billion, keeping in mind that even the NASA on its half of ISS utilization has done a really poor job. It is long past due time to fix the problem but CASIS hasn’t a clue and I don’t think NASA knows how either.
The problem with turning ISS over to a commercial operator is that it does not have significant external customers. At some point tourists and Earth-sensing and astronomical observation payload operators might pick up a part of the cost but it difficult to see how it (or any other basic research facility) could operate without federal funding, including funding for ground-based development of observational instruments and flight experiments.
Excellent! Couldn’t agree more Keith