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Commercialization

CASIS Is Putting ISS Behind a Paywall for Taxpayer Access (Update)

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 18, 2012
Filed under , ,

Keith’s note: NASA is giving CASIS $15 million a year and the keys to a large portion of a $100 billion space station – one funded by taxpayers. But in order for a taxpayer or company to get everything that CASIS is offering they have to pay. Check out the CASIS membership site. This is fundamentally absurd – and I cannot fathom how NASA would agree to this. Everything that this taxpayer-funded organization does with NASA funding on the ISS should be available to all of those people who are already paying for it – and have been paying for it for decades. Whatever happened to the “transparency” and “openness” that NASA was supposed to be demonstrating? And what about the DIY ethos that the White House has been promoting? Putting a government-funded asset like the iSS behind a paywall is the antithesis of this.

You get more with Space Science Circle benefits (for $1,000) than the benefits for being a Founder (for $50,000). The Space Science Circle Benefits say you get the following:
– Enrollment in the Science in Space Network
– CASIS Annual Report
– 2012 Commemorative Inaugural Pin
– Special scientific updates from CASIS
– Donor recognition in CASIS’ annual report
– Advance copy of CASIS’ “State of the Science in Space” annual report
– Donor recognition at CASIS’ headquarters
The Founder benefits say you get “recognition and complimentary access to CASIS Science Symposia, access to research material, science updates and implementation partners, and premiere corporate logo recognition on CASIS’ website.”
Keith’s update: According to an email from CASIS: “membership model is spelled out exactly as NASA demanded in our Cooperative Agreement” (full comment below). The operative statement is: “The membership structure and fee schedule shall ensure that no interested individual or organization shall be required to pay a fee in order to submit a grant proposal to CASIS or to use the ISS NL.” If you look at the benefits you get for paying big bucks they include “Special scientific updates from CASIS”, “Enrollment in the Science in Space Network”, and “Advance copy of CASIS’ “State of the Science in Space” annual report”. If you do not pay the fees you either do not get this level of access or have to wait to get things that paying members get early. There are no “benefits” listed after “Member” – they are only listed after the categories where money is charged. This is denying full access to anyone who does not pay and is in contradiction to what the Cooperative Agreement requires.
Also if you look at the membership page, CASIS can’t even get its web designer to proof read the page. “Associate” costs either $100 or $250; “Contributor” costs either $250 or $500. Which is it?
Keith’s update: They have fixed this page so that the numbers match up – this is what it originally looked like.
According to an email from CASIS: “membership model is spelled out exactly as NASA demanded in our Cooperative Agreement: “The CASIS Board of Directors will ensure that the membership structure and fee schedule support the services and programs provided by CASIS and are fair and reasonable in light of the benefits provided to members. The membership structure shall include separate fee structures for corporate, non-profit, and individual members, as appropriate. CASIS will develop membership programs that interest and engage each category of membership. The programs will provide for sliding scales of fees for different categories of members, depending on the exchange of benefits and receipt of in- kind services. Additionally, CASIS will define the membership agreement rules for the different categories of membership. The membership structure, fee schedule, and membership benefits, programs, and rules shall be defined in the Annual Program Plan (APP) and posted on the CASIS website for transparency. The membership structure and fee schedule shall ensure that no interested individual or organization shall be required to pay a fee in order to submit a grant proposal to CASIS or to use the ISS NL. CASIS will solicit individuals and entities to become members, including investigators, funding sources, implementation partners, research institutions, universities, K-12 schools, and other parties with an interest in the ISS NL.”

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

13 responses to “CASIS Is Putting ISS Behind a Paywall for Taxpayer Access (Update)”

  1. Kraig Butrum says:
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    Keith:

    Thanks for looking at and
    promoting our website.  One correction, membership to
    CASIS is free.  (Please note the lead paragraph on the
    Membership page of our website.)  Joining the CASIS community is open to
    all.  But some people are charitable and donations are happily
    accepted. After all, we are a nonprofit and hope to one day not be a burden on
    public funds but rather on the generous donations of our users and supporters.

    Kraig Butrum
    Director, External Relations

    • kcowing says:
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      You need to hire a professional web designer – not only can you not be consistent as to what the categories cost, the clear impression when you visit this page is that you get special things but if you pay but only if you pay.  There are no “benefits” listed after “Member” only after the categories where money is charged.

      • Littrow says:
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        They need more than a web designer. They actually need to think through what they are trying to do and what they are trying to promote. The whole concept as they have laid it out is hardly logical or sensible.

      • npng says:
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        If I donated $50,000 or more at the Founder level, I would not be interested in any of the so-called benefits they offer.  What I would hope they would offer would be aligned with the skills they are supposed to possess.  So for $50,000 dollars, maybe they would provide an hour of expert consultant (in-kind) input on how as a researcher I could get my science on to the ISS.   Isn’t that what one of the fundamental purposes of CASIS is, to provide management of ISS use and to enable researchers to access the National Lab?

        On the CASIS website it states: “CASIS can also connect researchers with third-party investors and financiers.”  For $50,000 dollars would they consider offering an hour to “connect” a researcher with an investor?  The CASIS website does not make it clear who the investors are or what they will require.  Do they donate their investments?  Do they invest only if they acquire all of the IP from the science?  Where are those explanations?

  2. Anonymous says:
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    If this is not illegal, or considered unethical, it should be. At the very least it is self-defeating.

  3. npng says:
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    It looks like Kraig put together a rather amusing membership model.  At least we can get $15M/year in comedic entertainment.  It appears this is sort of a socialistic robin-hood membership model, where the the poorer you are the more you get.  If you’re richer and donate, they take more and give less to nothing. 

    Theoretically, if they extend the membership terms then a $1M donater should have absolutely no benefits and have all his assets taken away.  On the other end if a donater bills CASIS for a dollar, then CASIS should give not only a pin, but the entire ISS to the donater.

    Next time Kraig should consider looking at how a site like Kickstarter functions and what they provide for donations.  It works.

    If this membership model was in the original proposal and Gerst and Congress approved it, they need to be rushed in for psycho exams, pronto.

    It would be easy to complain about transparency and openness Keith, but we’re way past that into political comedy now.   No serious new Executive Director would get near this.  They’ll need to sneak a comedian to head things up while NASA’s not looking and go for broke on Comedy Central.

  4. Ray Hudson says:
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    This is clearly unethical.  And it is not going to win CA$I$ (love that, Keith!), nor NASA many adherents for “open source space” efforts. In the immortal words of Indiana Jones’s nemesis in Raiders Of The Lost Ark: “Shoot zem….shoot zem both!”

  5. Littrow says:
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    LOL

  6. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Putting a government-funded asset like the ISS behind a paywall is the antithesis of this.

    Keith,

    I certainly agree with your point — in principle. But I find it hard to be objective because there’s so much relevant information that I’ve never seen. I can’t say whether this information is not available to the public or if it’s simply buried, too hard to find (for me, at least), or some of each. Some of the unanswered questions that I have could potentially completely reverse one’s view of things.

    For example, as near as I can tell, when the US federal government made commitments to fund Alpha/Freedom/ISS, at each step there wasn’t any consideration given to the idea of a US National Lab concept; it’s an idea that came much later, and a decision that would, I think, significantly revise the purposes/requirements of certain portions of the facility. If this is in fact the case (that the US National Lab was an add-on function which came later), then I think it could reasonably be argued that taxpayers did not pay for it — they most definitely paid (dearly) for major portions of the ISS, but not the US National Lab, which is more of a repurposing of existing parts of the ISS. Looked at this way, the National Lab could be seen as a facility now readily available for public use, which wasn’t available to the public before, one for which there was no additional construction or revisions required. In that case, it takes on more of a subsidized pay-for-use facility, and that $15M paid to CASIS could be seen as a source of subsidy, since in theory CASIS is supposed to be providing a service to public users for a cost that is (supposedly) much less than if each public user were to try doing the CASIS-assigned functions for themselves.

    Were the NanoRacks a planned part of ISS (the government facility) or were they installed specifically for the National Lab functionality? If they were installed specifically for the Lab and not previously installed (or not as many) then that swings the argument back toward the idea of being double-billed for National Lab use. There are a lot of questions like this which, unanswered, can make major shifts in an outsider’s perception of the situation.

    Whatever happened to the “transparency” and “openness” that NASA was supposed to be demonstrating?

    I very much agree that this remains an unsolved problem within NASA, and it provides a free source of artillery for its enemies, but not necessarily in the context that you’ve inferred here. Without more and better information about what CASIS and NASA are specifically doing, it’s almost impossible to make judgments that can be supported and qualified, and even under ideal conditions I think we can, at best, only try to measure “transparency” and “openness” in a relative fashion (relative to other government agencies/departments/services), not absolute. I think that even a relative assessment would have little meaning without including budget/spending trends in any processes used for weighting transparency, openness and performance (to find out what’s really happening, follow the money).

    As a final note, consider yourself in the position of being the one who has to manage CASIS. Behind the extra work and frustration engendered by the misconception-based song and dance of the media and the politicians are more basic problems which need to be tended to first. As an example, CASIS gets $15 million a year to do what they’re expected to do. That’s $1.25 million a month. From that $1.25 million take off costs for facilities, office supplies, professional services, travel and accommodation, insurance, overheads, and all of the other operational costs that must be paid, and then consider the balance as funds available for salaries and wages (a gross simplification, for sure), how many (or rather how few) people does that allow CASIS to employ to do what they’ve been tasked with? (and what kind of manager to worker bee ratio has NASA required of them?). And how many prospective customers do they have to deal with each month? And what kind of sell rate do they have to maintain, month after month, to “succeed”? (They’re non-profit, but they still have to pay the bills). When you take all of this into account, I would not be in the least bit surprised to see a worrisome employee turn-over rate at CASIS during the first few years of operation, if they in fact last that long. Given that there was no “running start” as so many people had assumed, and since the tasks that CASIS is now saddled with have only been accomplished by one previous group as far as I know (a group at NASA), I think that, realistically, the whole CASIS/US National Lab setup has to be treated carefully, in the nature of an experiment, until it proves itself and settles down to routine, if it ever does. I’d like to believe it will, but it will take considerably longer than people expect. We’re going to have to try to be patient for some time yet, but if CASIS/ISS can be made to work, I think it will be a big step in the right direction, assuming that they can manage to keep the micromanaging Congress at arm’s length. To be perfectly honest, something in my gut (and no other justification) tells me that CASIS/NASA is not going to work things out in time and the CASIS deal will be scrapped. If so, it will be an awful shame, but hopefully enough people will have learned enough lessons from the experience that the next contender will get it right, because I really do think this concept is the right way to go. There’s more than one way to commercialize a space program.

    I’m guessing that given your involvement with the earlier incarnations of the station you must find the current situation mighty disappointing.

    Steve

    • Michael Spencer says:
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      Steve,

      Anyone who’s been around these parts knows the sore points of our benign host, and transparency is certainly one of those sore points. 

      I’d like to say that I understand your comments and how they relate to Keith’s story, but I confess that I don’t? Perhaps you could be a little more succinct? Exactly how does one rationalize a closed-door policy when government funds are being used (security issues aside, of course)?

      I know I DO appreciate folks using their own name.

      Michael Spencer

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        Michael,

        I must have written a poorly worded post for you to get that message. I wasn’t trying to rationalize or in any way defend or excuse a closed-door policy. The main point I was trying to make is that there is much information relevant to CASIS and the related allegations that the public does not have access to, as far as I have been able to determine. And without this “hidden” information it is not possible to make informed decisions. Also, I tried to make the point that a single wrong assumption (made in the absence of data) could completely reverse one’s viewpoint or opinion.

        The other point I was trying to make was that US taxpayers paid for portions of the ISS, but the US National Lab I see as a different situation. It wasn’t planned and built in the same manner as the ISS, but rather is mostly a new function (civilian use) that has been added on after the fact, so I question the validity of saying that US taxpayers paid for the US National Lab. With the addition of CASIS, taxpayers are paying the operations costs for the Lab, but the Lab itself (hardware, construction) was without cost, unless the NanoRacks were either added or increased in number specifically for US National Lab use. It is a minor point, but when talking about how money is/was being spent I think it’s important to be accurate.

        Sorry if I didn’t put my ideas across very well.

        Steve

  7. SkyKing_rocketmail says:
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    Also not reviewed for consistency: under the top ‘Become a Member’ section an Associate contributes $100 and down below its $250. On the top a Contributor is one who donates $250 and down below under benefits of membership, a Contributor donates $500. And despite being identified some time ago, the error not fixed. You have to wonder did anyone actually think about this and were the levels of membership reviewed and approved before they created the page? Have they checked into the legalities? I really have to wonder what NASA’s $15 million is for? From their own description, CASIS appears to make money by introducing potential researchers to integrators. It appears to be ill conceived. If NASA’s $15 million goes to CASIS producing an annual report and the annual report is a featured ‘gift’ to those who procure different donation levels, it definitely sounds like the legalities need to be reviewed. CASIS probably needs to pull this down immediately mand review both the concept and its legalities and the specific content which clearly contains errors before they are ready to go ‘live’.

    • kcowing says:
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      They eventually fixed it – but sign up as a member and see what happens. I became a “member” (its free). My confirmation page then said “billing information” but the amount was $0.00. I then was prompted to get a username – so I did. Now when I sign in it simply sends me to the page where I signed up in the first place. Why am I being asked to sign in if there is nothing for me to see other than the contribution page? I then logged out and logged back in and my username/password was not accepted and I got “authorization failed”. When I logged out it sends me back to the contribution page. Again, a professional web deisgner would be useful at this point. If you are going to specifically crow about your brand new website, you really do need to make sure that it actually works – BEFORE you let the public see it.