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ISS News

ISS: Users Wanted

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
February 15, 2012
Filed under , , , , ,

Keith’s note: Interesting commentary by HEOMD AA Bill Gerstenmaier at the FAA Space Transportation Conference this morning. Refreshingly, he openly admitted that NASA built the ISS – at great cost – but did not put much real thought into how to use it. Now, there is a 900,000 pound research facility in orbit and it is the size of a 5 bedroom house. Yet according to Gerstenmaier, NASA cannot use all of this capability and the agency is looking for new ways to use it. Ideas are welcome. NASA is offering free rides up, free downlinks, and other services to potential users. Gerstenmaier challenged the attendees to think about new ways to use the ISS.

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

70 responses to “ISS: Users Wanted”

  1. James Lundblad says:
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    I think they should have a national science/engineering competion for students to visit ISS along with a reality TV show “American Astronaut”?

  2. Homer Hickam says:
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    Tethers. TSS-1 and TSS-2 offered intriguing results and need follow-ups.  Solar sail technology demonstration might also be interesting. An observatory would also be prodigious.  Is there even a telescope on ISS?  Not just visual but IR, etc.

    • Anonymous says:
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      Homer an electrodynamic tether was proposed for ISS reboost in the mid 90’s after the successful TSS-1R mission.  JSC at the time wanted nothing to do with it.

      Later in the 90’s after the successful SEDS-1, SEDS-PMG, and SEDS-2 mission MSFC and SBIR subcontractor Tether Applications (Joe Carroll) designed an ISS deployed tether with a recoverable capsule to return 150kg of experimental results to the ground.  JSC put the kabosh on that one as well.  

      Hopefully Gerst in his current position can be a positive agent for change in the station program.

      • Oscar_Femur says:
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         TSS-1R successful?  They lost the satellite early in the mission.

        • Anonymous says:
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          Yep, successful despite the loss of the tether and end mass.  It proved the equations for power generation from the E-D tether, and in practice the current was 4X what the conservative numbers had indicated. TSS-1R accomplished about 90% of its mission goals.

          • Anonymous says:
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            Dennis, what does JSC have against tethers?

          • Anonymous says:
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            old

            That was in the 1990’s.  As I said, I think that with Gerst in the captain’s chair that new possibilities arise and that a lot of interesting stuff can be done.  

            The problem was that JSC was so focused on building the station that as soon as it was operational they simply never thought about the consequences of what that meant.  I saw this in action when we had our space act agreement and were working with them in 2000.  

            I think that Gerst’s admission is great and his words positive and for those who think that it will compete with Bigelow, ISS is probably Bigelow’s best friend as it will do all of the pathfinding for future business there.

          • Steve Pemberton says:
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            “in practice the current was 4X what the conservative numbers had indicated”

            From what I remember they think that was the reason why the tether failed, it was basically doing too good of a job!

            I remember following the deployment live on the CompuServe Space forum, it was an exciting night.

          • Anonymous says:
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            Steve

            The failure investigation found that when the tether snapped, at 19.2 km, that was at the point where the last ground deployment test terminated.  The TFTE teflon insulation on the tether “crept” due to being in compression for well over 10 years on the reel.  That reduced the margin for shorting to the point where the large overcurrent zapped the tether and it separated.

            I was pretty closely clued into that mission at the time and watched the deployment live.  It was an amazing thing.  We were working with Jeff Hoffman and Franklin Chang Diaz who had volunteered to be our crew for the deployment of our smallsat via the SEDS tether for STS-85 that unfortunately did not fly.  We flew our smallsat on a Delta II in 1998 along with the Deep Space 1 mission.

      • LennyCoan says:
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         “Hopefully Gerst in his current position can be a positive agent for change in the station program.”

        This has been the big disappointment that is Gerstenmeyer. He’s been in a position of authority over Shuttle, ISS, the Vision and Constellation for a long time and really has not had a positive influence. His main effect was to place his cronies in the leadership positions and they proved poor performers because they had so little qualifications, and yet despite their performance he has never replaced most of them.

        It is scary to think who they might replace Gerstemeyer with because there is no one in manned space today who has been groomed and would be properly prepared, but Gerstenmeyer has not done the job we needed him to do, which is a significant part of why the program is in the terrible shape it is in.

  3. Homer Hickam says:
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    Tether research is an obvious use.  TSS-1 and TSS-2 returned intriguing results and follow-ups are needed. Solar sail research is another.  Also, an observatory would be interesting.  Is there even a telescope on the ISS?  I think not.  IR observations and other Astro-1 followups would be great.  One thing is fairly clear. We have studied microgravity just about enough. Let’s use the ISS to look out into space and create technologies for going there.  If it’s no good for that, it isn’t good for much of anything.  Disassemble it and make a Lunar cycler out of its components.

    • Pete Harding says:
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       I have to disagree that “we’ve studied microgravity just about enough” – if that’s the case, why did we only discover about astronaut vision problems last year? We’ve studied it for a long time for sure, but never with the capabilities of ISS.

      However, I do agree that at the end of its life, ISS should form the basis for an exploration platform – likely consisting of Node 4 and an inflatable and international module.

      And FYI, NASA are planning a telescope for ISS.

      • Homer Hickam says:
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        Actually, we’ve been aware of astronaut vision changes since Skylab where severe nystagmus was reported. RK surgery to correct near-sightedness has always been banned for astronaut selection because of known pressure changes inside the eyeball due to fluid shift in microgravity. In any case, what we know of microgravity on the human body is that it’s not good and remedies are few and mostly ineffective. Clearly, some gravity is required for long-duration flights so let’s stop playing with our food in orbit and see if centrifugal gravity is practical.  Or, better, let’s study one-sixth G on the moon.

    • cb450sc says:
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      Actually, research was done on the issue of space telescopes on the Shuttle and ISS. At least in the IR, there’s a cloud of local dust and debris that follows them around and basically makes the local environment unsuitable.

      • Homer Hickam says:
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        We had great success with the Astro-1 and Astro-2 missions on the shuttle. These Spacelab missions featured UV and X-ray telescopes. I doubt that the debris field around ISS is enough to hinder such telescopes, properly managed and calibrated.

    • npng says:
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      Homer,

      I agree with Pete Harding.  What led you to declare that “we have studied microgravity just about enough”?   Why is that clear?  Did you assess the science and determine the studies were exhaustive and complete?  Were you just bored?  Do you have other agendas?  Are you prepared to explain your conclusion to the dozens of scientists doing micro-g research today?

      One thing is clear.  We’ve studied tethers and solar sails just about enough.  

      Isn’t that an ignorant thing to say?

  4. CadetOne says:
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    > “NASA is offering free rides up, free downlinks, and other services to potential users.”

    So if Bigelow does launch his orbital platform, where customers will have to pay for all these services, will NASA continue to provide tax-payer subsidies to compete with a commercial organization?

    • npng says:
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      Cadet,

      Even if what you’ve stated above is the case, it may not be a problem.   If you were a researcher with a purpose and a mission which would you choose NASA or Bigelow?   Getting a free-ride to the ISS and waiting 3 to 5 years with NASA?  Or paying Bigelow a few million to get there right away? 

      From Bigelow’s standpoint, it is to Bigelow’s advantage if NASA provides access to the ISS because it grows the overall research community activity in space, which will eventually benefit Bigelow and others.

      Bigelow’s best path to volumes of paying space customers is to have a mature user community, a community that has money and a reason to be in LEO.  NASA’s subsidization actions promote that condition and serve to enable market growth and health. 

  5. no one of consequence says:
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    OK. Last time through this was with a particle physics proposal called DUSEL. About 2/3 of the effort in making a proposal is figuring out how to get a reliable science product out of any research lab. This is something that the University of California has done for more than half a century. And, even with this, … it wasn’t enough.

    So its a really, really hard thing to do … even harder in space.  Policy makers  have always blown this off. Like they did with all HSF science products, including anything associated with SLS – the stupidity seems eternal.

    To begin with, most things that could use the ISS will need weekly/monthly access to experiments by researchers. Medical, biological, and pharmacological experiments – too many don’t work within ISS limits given safety. Semiconductor/materials work needs special eqt and safety as well.

    Lets try to make this work in a comment – what might you do?
     a. fly a capsule weekly that brings up researchers, they work with apparatus and depart, having secured a better research product
    b. fly apparatus built in a capsule to ISS as a temporary module of the ISS, return to earth for revision and refly.
    c. fly biomedical et al experiment (plus subjects) in capsule to lab. During ISS “unsafe” periods of operation, depart as “free flyer”, eventually returning or aborting when unsafe to recovery to earth.

    Turn that into a business to support ISS research.

    There – you now have a way to 10x increase ISS research products as a whole. Its also an approach that multinational corporations could believe in as a means to do serious work. All you’d need more is something that they’d feel they could get as a “take away” from doing so. And they’d do so.

    Note – this model scales to an EML station. And then to Moon/elsewhere.

  6. Catalyst23 says:
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    Cadetone,

    Well, I would hope NASA would realize when the crutch becomes unnecessary. For now, getting people up to the only place to go up to is important. But once there are, in place and running, other options, then trying to make NASA the cheapest option only constrains the market. However, I think the time frame from now until then will help in transitioning from one state to another.

    Bigelow, and for now anyone else who’s trying anything similar, have to wait until there is a full-fledged, FAA approved rocket that can be bought (rented?) for commercial, crewed use. Now, this isn’t entirely limiting, but it does put constraints on when certain milestones can be made by companies like Bigelow.

    Until a company can build, launch, and control it’s own station modules using purely commercial entities, the market for doing so is in some measure dependent on NASA or other governmental agencies. The goal, of course, is to make the market self sustaining. Now, we’ve made some good progress towards that goal, but for now private space stations, like Bigelow’s, are grounded. That doesn’t mean they can’t do some work. That is, unmanned launches of modules, ground testing, software design, a bunch of stuff. And, taking off from No One of Consequence’s thoughts, one could imagine a Bigelow inflatable module attached to the ISS. 

    Maybe Bigelow could sell it to NASA, or maybe they rent it out to different universities and organizations. There is also a level of utility to be found in inflatable modules. Everything that get’s put in them can be completely modular. That is, you can completely retrofit the module from physics to chemistry to biology and back again just by swapping out parts. This would provide a good stepping stone both for those interested in in utilizing space (universities, corporations, et al) and those who provide the tools to make utilizing space possible (SpaceX, Bigelow, et al) towards the goal of a self sustaining commercial space market.

    I think sending independent researchers to the ISS is good, but not feasible just yet. I suppose, at the moment, one could find slots in the launch and return schedule where a researcher could launch, and a month or two later, descend. But it would be hard to make that a regular thing right now, and the possibility of getting stuck up there has very few good consequences. 

    However, once we get some rated, private rockets on the market, that situation drastically changes. Now, launching independent researchers can be done whenever there’s an open hatch. With the addition of a commercial module you can split the duties – Official missions dock at the ‘normal’ hatches, private flights at the commercial hatch. That makes scheduling easier, and the trip less daunting.

    Finally (Sorry, didn’t mean for this to take up so much space, but these two comments really got me thinking) Once the rockets are up and running, deals worked out to get private researchers onto the ISS, and the first module is attached, it is an easy walk to the ultimate goal. Add a few more modules to the current one, and detach. There now exists a wholly independent space station, that can be accessed through wholly independent means.

    Which would be pretty sweet, and would work well in setting up NASA to tackle bigger goals. Like Red ones and maybe permanent ones involving beautiful desolation. Of course, with only a few modifications to the federal budget all of this would get done a lot quicker, or at least we’d have more cool robots out in space to tide us over until we get ourselves back into (deep) space.

    Oh yeah, why I started. I think that the progression of events leading to the point where NASA doesn’t have to support private enterprise will be such as to make transitioning off subsidies relatively easy. It would be just one small step among a host of other small steps, all adding together to create one giant leap. If all goes well (that mantra of the space age) then by the time Bigelow or similar builds a functioning space station we will already have left the need for such drastic subsidies behind.

    Sorry again for the length, I just really liked the ideas you two were working with!

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      Daniel,

      Good post.  You’ve obviously thought the situation through fully.  I’m convinced that there’s a big hole yet to be filled in the transition from NASA to commercial for ISS, because the people who control what NASA is doing (by virtue of budget allocations) clearly have no interest in facilitating travel to/from the ISS.  They’ve, in fact, made it harder for commercial, not just by failing to provide NASA with money to do it, but also by cutting back the money that NASA could make available for commercial progress towards doing it.  COTS may have eventually made the crucial difference, but its continuation doesn’t look like a good bet.

      Steve

  7. CuriousCliff says:
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    A singular problem is the time it takes to design and build any hardware to fly to ISS; there have been many proposals in the past that were turned away.  Now, when there is only 8 years left to get there and conduct the work, it is a rush.  Where is CASIS in all of this.

    • npng says:
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      What is CASIS?  It looks like one more layer of bureaucracy put in between researchers, the space station, and results.  Has anyone ever met anyone from CASIS?  Was CASIS created so NASA could offload ISS and move on to other missions?

      The aims of the Administration and Congress are observable.  From testimony, Rockefeller is a skeptic of human spaceflight.  He would prefer to see NASA’s budget be zero’d and the money spent by the bio-research community.  Observers can see that Mikulski’s aims are at unmanned systems to pull in Goddard money, consequently the Space Station is a nuisance. It’s evident that Nelson’s aims in Florida are to own the launch world, have CASIS since it is run by Space Florida and win re-election favor using them both.  The Administration, Obama, aligns with Nelson’s aims. 

      If the above aims succeed, in three or four years the NASA budget could be decremented to some fraction of today’s budget, say $12B, human spaceflight minimized, unmanned spaceflight maximized, and the savings thrown to Earth-based research away from space, with election wins and maintaining of power for all above. 

  8. Pete Harding says:
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    Here’s what I’d do: Instead of Bigelow launching their own free-flying module for research, why don’t NASA sign an SAA with Bigelow to put it on ISS? It’d be entirelly commercially owned, and used for entirely commercial research. Maybe NanoRacks could lease the module from Bigelow, and in turn sell experiment space to researchers?

    The advantage of this is that the module could use ISS resources, and use ISS resupply flights, thus lowering costs to Bigelow and in turn the end user.

    NASA is already looking at a Bigelow module on ISS, but only as a tech demo.

    • Paul451 says:
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      Supposedly Boeing offered to build a spare lab module for the ISS for free, for NASA to use for rack storage. Boeing would get to resell any unused capacity as commercial experiment space. NASA said no.

    • npng says:
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      Pete,

      When you say things like “… in turn sell experiment space to researchers” it sounds like you are trying to be a stand-up comedian.

      Since when do researchers have money?   Researchers either had money and spent it on their ground experiments, lab glass, or post-grad slave labor or they are broke and don’t have a dime to pay millions for upmass to LEO.

      Call the top 40 researchers that have experiments to put in LEO.  Ask them how many millions of dollars they have to pay for the science, payload and integration costs.  Come back here and post the results for us. If you find they are all wealthy, don’t bother posting, just call the ISS office pronto.

  9. Citizen Ken says:
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    It’s the same problem it has always been – access.  It’s tough to make much progress when you can only spend two days a year in the lab, and if your experiment screws up it could be years (that the employer is subsidizing) before the experiment goes again into orbit.  NASA was working out the kinks in microgravity science payloads on Shuttle back in the early to mid-80s, but Challenger set things back significantly.  Once the Shuttle did come back online, it had other priorities to focus on, and it wasn’t until the late 90s that you saw another push for microgravity science associated with the ‘imminent’ ISS.  I’ve got various ‘commercialization’ brochures and price sheets filed away in the Lunar Library.  Not that micro-g science went away, but operationally the program was dominated by Shuttle-Mir and ISS build-out prep.

    Just as here on Earth, we need scientists at their lab benches, in this case strapped to them on orbit.  It’s not just about known hard $ costs (price sheets), but also the soft $ costs of administration and paperwork and time taken from expensive professionals to fix issues.  NASA might make ISS access half the cost of getting to a BA330, but if the NASA paperwork and bureaucracy is unwieldy the business choice may be to spend more on hard $ costs to avoid the unknown amount of soft costs associated with administrivia.

    My question has always been with regards to the standards.  Will future BA330s follow the ISPR standard that would allow recycling of previously flown equipment, or adopt a new standard, a la Apple, that ties users to their facilities?

    • Steve Whitfield says:
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      we need scientists at their lab benches, in this case strapped to them on orbit

      Ken,

      I certainly agree with you based on how things are usually done through NASA.  I wonder, though, how many cases there might be where your statement isn’t necessarily the case.  I’ve suggested elsewhere using grad students and post docs, just like the universities do.  If procedures are worked out ahead of time, and given that audio/video communication to the PI on Earth is pretty much as easy a an email or a phone call, does the PI need to be on site?  And how many actual man-hours per day/week/month does each experiment require?  With planning, you might be able to have one on-site person handling multiple experiments.  I’m not saying that this is definitely workable, but I think it’s worth looking into (maybe just a study done by a student) because it would save considerable time and money and increase both productivity and the number of concurrent experiments on the ISS, as well as provide one hell of a job experience for the students.  Just a thought.

      Steve

    • npng says:
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      Ken,

      I agree, access is an issue.   But the main problems researchers face are several:  (1) Payload and integration costs (2) ISS access, but importantly for some, repeated access  (3) not just upmass, but also frequently downmass (4) post flight funding for analysis and use of results. 

      NASA will get a researcher up to the ISS and provide them with a slot in a lab rack, but they are not structured to handle the other problems.

      Sure, it would be great if a scientist could just dwell for months on the ISS doing bench research, but the reality is that is still difficult. Many, although not all, of the science activities on the ISS can be handled using either by remote control from the ground or by using a minimum amount of mission specialist time on the ISS. 

      Problems (1) (3) and (4) are the overarching impediments the research community faces.   They need money for (1) and (4).   If a researcher discovered the holy grail or the fountain of youth or the answer to life itself on the ISS, bringing back to Earth would be a challenge now that the Shuttle is gone and downmass capabilities are limited.

  10. newpapyrus says:
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    Since the US no longer has any domestic access to the ISS, lets end our $3 billion a year commitment to the space station by the end of 2013 and turn it over to Russia, Europe, and Japan– if they still want to keep it going.

    Then NASA could use the $3 billion in savings to purchase larger and cheaper Bigelow space stations and to finance a reusable lunar lander and lunar base habitats to compliment the $4 billion a year SLS/MPCV program.

    A National and International Space lotto system could be used to help provide additional revenue for the Commercial Crew industry instead of the $3 billion a year tax payer supported ISS program.

    Marcel F. Williams 

    • DTARS says:
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      Clem! Wake up! Wake upppp! Looky here! There’s a new lotto in town! No I’m not kiddin! It says right here on my iPod! We need to drive into town! You got any gas to put in old betsy? Noo? Well drain the lawn tractor then. This is important! We need enough gas to get to Mikes garage! Then we can use your credit card. It’s not maxed out is it? Well just get a new one out of the mail box. We just got to go play the new International Space Lotto!!! It say right here, take a chance on your future!!! We could Win a billion bucks!!! Wow just imagine how fine life could be! If we won, We could even have enough money to buy a ride on a Spacex dragon! Yup me and Molly could race into orbit and go to one of them fantasy Bigelow orbiting hotels! Yup we would be one of those one percenters! Life would be so grand!
       Got it drained? Well filler up! Let’s go! I’m feelin lucky!!!

      Ladies and Gentlemen

      We hope you enjoyed our sample presentation of the of the NASA WATCH little theater. 

      In keeping with the public presentation rules and regulations all our performances try to provide educational value as well as be entertaining.

      Credits

      Inspiration Marcel Williams

      Character and  Setting creation Mr. Consequence 

      Screen play Mr. Worthington 

      Blog site provider Keith Cowing

      Please make any and all donations to Spacex or the commercial space company of your choice.

      Thank you

      You’ll come back now ya’hear!

      • newpapyrus says:
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        So you’d rather have the Federal government force you to pay Space X to ferry people and payloads to a hyper expensive big government space station? Or would you rather have billions of  private individuals from around the world risk a dollar or two– of their own money–  for a chance to fly into space– plus $250,000 in compensation (my idea) for time off for astronaut training.

        Government lottos  in the US, by the way, generate over $20 billion dollars annually for all sorts of things, including schools. No joke:-)

        Marcel F. Williams

        • DTARS says:
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          Lottos tax the poor and the stupid. They are not a good thing. However as I have I said before on here my kids college was half paid for by a state lotto money. I took the money! So I am not here to judge. I just felt the sad side of lottes should be pointed out.

          Respectfully

          George Worthington

        • DTARS says:
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          Does sound better than the congress circus that plus x prizes.

        • mfwright says:
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          > generate over $20 billion dollars annually for all sorts of things, including schools.

          I have to cry foul on this one. My uncle, a school superintendent, said when Calif introduced the lottery in 1980s it would provide $$$ for schools. Which it did for the first few years then school budgets from state reduced that same $$$ amount as legislators figure the lotto will make up the difference.

        • DTARS says:
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          There is nothing wrong with the ISS hardware as tinker always says space real estate is valuable! It is only how we use it! Get people up there by hook or by crook! Use it to the max to help Bigelow and others start!

          Y’all be smart

          It’s not that hard

          George

      • mfwright says:
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        How about hiring theatre students from a local community college, give them this script and have them produce a short video?

        All humor aside, NASA should make it easier for researchers conduct research. However, access to ISS seems to be the limiting factor. We’ll see how SpaceX and others do in near future. Regarding a lottery, I don’t see how that could confidently work. I can see situations where a winner but someone not trustworthy of getting near ISS or support stations.

        • newpapyrus says:
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          The lottery is for giving regular people a chance to access space, not just professional astronauts and the super wealthy.

          But why should American tax payers continue to pay $3 billion a year  for a highly centralized hyper expensive microgravity lab in space when multiple microgravity labs can be easily deployed by private industry for a fraction of the price.

          And when the SLS is finally operational, we could deploy huge  Bigelow Olympus microgravity labs with  internal volumes larger than the ISS for, again,  a fraction of the price.
           
          There is no way we’re getting $3 billion worth of tremendous science out of the ISS every year. No way!

          And when is NASA– finally– going to deploy a simple rotating space station into orbit that produces artificial gravity so that we won’t have to worry about eye problems or taking drugs for bone loss, etc?

          Marcel F. Williams

          • DTARS says:
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            Marcel I agree with everything in your last post but two major things. We should not wait on NASA to build and fly SLS!!!

            First spacex or others will have heavy lift big enough to lift an Olympus long before NASA does!

            SLS is poison whether or not it flies

            If it doesn’t it is money and time wasted !
            If it does it does not help to make space flight cheaper orNor does it get stuff in space cheap enough.

            Also NASA will NEVER do artificial gravity stations. It is not in their interest .

            Stations with gravity will have to be done by those that are truly working on making space flight/ settlement Useful for all.

            NASA space transportation list

            SLS
            Orion
            ISS

            All counter to the goal which is affordable space flight, use for earth, settlement or just getting us off this rock soon!!!

          • DTARS says:
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            Marcel

            I so agree with you on so much yet I don’t understand why you want SLS it cost stands in the way of any privite commercial future just like ISS may do. If you want to fly an olympes soon you should be calling for NASA to create missions for the falcon heavy and telling Spacex to design an option to bolt two falcon heavies together.

            You seem to have one foot in the future and one foot in the past. Thats better than NASA that seems to be completely scared of the future.

          • DTARS says:
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              Spaceace | November 23, 2011 11:46 AM | Reply
            Noofcsq
            Thought I’d do my part and try to get someone else interested in human space flight. So after the Friday square dance me and Clem went by his double wide and fired up the wood stove and chewed the fat a little.
            I tells him about ISS and how it cost 3 billion a year. He says why so much? Well I says at 2500 dollars per pound to LEO it cost more than 5000 dollars to feed one astronaut for one day. He says what is LEO? I says that’s jargon for low earth orbit. NASA types love to use little funny words like that. He whistled and says what have the NASA engineers been doing to get the cost down on that? I says nothin. Well he didn’t take to kindly to that. He says why not? I says not in their interest I guess.
            I tells Clem about Orion, SLS and Spacex and how some on here want to use commercial companies to settle outer space the moon and mars. Clem says he remembered what the moon looked liked from the Teli back in the 60s. He says he didn’t think he would want to live on the moon.
            So I tells him about Mars and Robert Zubrin and all that. When I tells him how cold Mars was he just starts laughing???? He says that sounds crazy who in their right mind would want to move to Mars and freeze their A#$ off?
            Well I tells him Elon Musk would and how his goal was to make us a multi planet species to protect the human race from some kind of disaster that could happen on earth. He thought that was a pretty good idea. Then he says does Mr. Musk plan on going to Mars himself? I says no he says he has to be here to build the Mars rockets. Clem says, I thought so. Then he says the only martians he is ever likely to see is the Walmartians that waltz around the Walmart.
            Well I tried to detail to him how Spacex was under cutting all the rocket costs with their cheaper rocket and that Elon Musk was some kind of genius. He wasn’t to impressed. After I tells him how all the prices had been so high for years and years, with congress, primes, cost plus contracts and all that, he says it would be easy to make a cheaper rocket.
            That is when he says to me why don’t we build our own rocket. I says we can’t do that, rocket science is very hard. Well he says we could start small maybe go down to the Walmart parking lot and launch a field rat into orbit on an Estes model rocket. I says ok how do you want to go about it? Should we build our own rocket with our own money like Spacex ?? He says nooooo. He says we need to get all the people that work for nasa and the primes and their sub contractors all to send us just a little bit of their income and we will launch our rat into orbit. Well I says I don’t think we really can launch a rat into orbit on an estes rocket. And he says it don’t matter as long as they send us their money. Well I says they would be crazy to send us their hard earned money. And he says well I have to send NASA my money.
            Anyway me and Clem didn’t get no money from NASA and we failed to launch a rat into orbit but we did launch a field rat about 400 feet in the air and bring him safely back to good old mother earth. And we figured we did better than SLS and Orion cause it only cost us about 50 bucks and it didn’t cost you NASA dudes or nobody else one dime.
            Me and Clem
            PS
            Back in the day we had a right nice little town here before they closed the mill and sent all the jobs to china and all the little mom and pop stores were forced to close because of the Walmart. Now with no good jobs around here we have to go to the Walmart and buy lots of Chinese junk. No choice.
            Anyway after watching how well public agencies like NASA work I think I just might join the Tea party and Clem says he just might go somewhere and protest against that 1 percent ripping us all off, you know the banker and wall street crowd that REALLY control congress.
            Good luck with your rocket building racket, Clem says, you got a pretty good deal going there so quit whining about it.
            Oh when I told Clem about building a space economy he started laughing again and he says no one knows how to run a good economy here on earth let alone in outer space. Yup he seen that Micheal Moore movie on capitalism and that got him thinkin.
            Me/Joe tax payer and Clem/John Q public
            Thanks to all of you that share your wisdom on here. I have learned a lot.
            Hope you all have a happy thanksgiving
            DTARS

            PSS Keith unlike the jokers above I do know proper English Happy Thanksgiving
            After all NASA/Gov SHOULD be good stewards of our tax money. 

            Mr. Williams Clem seems to get it, why don’t you?

            George H. Worthington IV

        • DTARS says:
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          K6mfw

          Well Me and Clem, the guys that like to fire off Estes Rockets down at the Walmart, the creation of Mr. Consequence, have been in at least one short story here on NASA WATCH. They tried to point out how NASA employees would feel if they had to fund Me and Clems mouse to Leo Estes rocket program.  I wonder if Clem would be interested in doing something to promote commercial Space? Hummmm they like to act.  I’ll have them think about it. Clem sure hates Public program types giving him little for his taxs buck. Hummm he could do over all damage. I’ll talk to Them.

          Joe Q

    • Paul451 says:
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      Your assumption is, as always, a 1:1 correlation between ISS’s stated budget and “saving” that amount by cancelling ISS. Just because $3 billion is billed to the ISS ticket number each year, doesn’t mean cancelling ISS will free up anything close to $3 billion. How is the running costs for ISS so precisely close to the level of funding for its the development and construction?

  11. hamptonguy says:
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    NASA has been unable to stop doing anything for years, especially once an effort gets billions of dollars rolling thru it and it becomes political and big business.  Anyone look at the NASA 2013 NASA budget???  A little over $3B for ISS.  Seriously?  I thought it was up there already.  NASA would be better served as would the country as a whole if the ISS was given to anybody who would take it.  For free!!!  Would any country, etc. take it?  I doubt it.  If they did, excellent.  NASA could rent time for any experiments and get this white elephant off the books.  8 years is going to cost over $25B.  Money that could be used for R&D, space exploration, development of new space and aero technologies, etc.  Hell, it may even be enough to pay for the JWST.  Don’t be too surprised if no one would want the ISS, even for free.  Meanwhile, NASA is on course to close most major facilities in the coming 2 to 3 decades and it is items like ISS and the JWST that is hollowing out the agency.  In a decade or two all NASA will be is a funnel to contractors and Congressional districts.  

    • Amerman says:
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       In a decade or two all NASA will be is a funnel to contractors and Congressional districts.===== =
      NASA has been ‘a funnel to contractors and Congressional districts’ since it was created.

      $160 billion for ISS.. disgraceful pork jobs program.. 
      NASA justified the $200 billion shuttle for ISS… justified ISS as something for the Shuttle to do..

      Previous Space Stations ( Almaz, Salyuz, Skylab, Mir, etc) has proven that Space Stations had no value… 
      NASA promised a gullible Congress a $7 million/launch Shuttle.. delivered a $1.5 billion/launch boondoggle
      then NASA promised a $8 billion Space Station which cost $160 billion and counting.. useless…

      40 years and $500 billion without a single American leaving low earth orbit..

      The way NASA manned space has wasted decades and taxpayer$s on
      pork/waste (like SLS/Orion) is immoral and shameless.

       

      • Anonymous says:
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        Previous Space Stations ( Almaz, Salyuz, Skylab, Mir, etc) has proven that Space Stations had no value…

        No, what has been proven is that if you do not USE THEM they have no value.

        • Amerman says:
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          Dennis
          What value do/can space stations have..
          The fact is that space science/observations/experiments are best done by cheap, unmanned satellites..
          The last thing they need is smelly, clumsy humans banging around with their needed atmospheres, wastes, movements.. at 100 times the cost of computerized unmanned satellites…

          The fiction that these ISS astronauts are doing something worthwhile or justifiable.. or anything which shouldn’t be done for 1/100 the cost by unmanned satellites… is seductive.. alluring.. and WRONG…a LIE.

          The ISS is a pure wasteful PORK.. $160 billion worth..

          The Mercury, Gemini, Apollo astronauts risked their lives for exploration… pushing the envelope..

          Shuttle/ISS ‘astronauts’ are joyriding ‘human cannonballs’ risking their lives, wasting $billions, going nowhere and doing nothing worthwhile…

          • Anonymous says:
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            Have you ever read the Colliers articles from the 50’s on what the use of the space station would be?  Did you ever look at the SEI era images of what Space Station Freedom would be used for? Do you understand that until we break the boundaries of what fits within the fairing of a launch vehicle we are fundamentally doomed to spam cans and limited capabilities?  Think beyond the limited horizons.

            As far has 100 times the cost?  JWST will cost close to 10% of what the entire 28 year ISS program has cost.  JWST is WHY we need ISS.  Our SMALLEST optical diffraction limited telescope constructed on ISS would have 8x the area of JWST for under a billion dollars.  

            It is easy to be a naysayer, it is easy to say I can’t.  Meanwhile don’t interrupt the rest of us.

          • Amerman says:
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            Do you understand that until we break the boundaries of what fits within the fairing of a launch vehicle we are fundamentally doomed to spam cans and limited capabilities?  ====== ==
            No, I don’t….
            The Falcon Heavy max fairing is 17 feet wide..
            Far beyond any reasonable need…
            if there were a need, then it could be expanded… or snapped together on-orbit.. Or use a biglowe type inflated vehicle if we want tens of thousands of cubic feet.

            The bankrupting SLS boondoggle is $60+ billions cynical earmarked pork for legacy ‘big space’ shuttle suppliers.
            To produce another unaffordable, unneeded, dedicated, low launch rate ‘government rocket’ boondoggle white elephant…
            when the need is to utilize the cheap, multi-purpose boosters.

          • Anonymous says:
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            The fact is that space science/observations/experiments are best done by cheap, unmanned satellites..

            Sure they are.  JWST $8 billion and climbing.

          • Amerman says:
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            Good one, Dennis..
            But imagine what JWST would have cost as manned, or part of ISS.. if at all possible..
            JWST has had the usual NASA incompetence schedule/cost slips, but nothing like the NASA’s $7 million/launch Shuttle which ended up costing $1.5 billion (over 200 times more).. or NASA’s $8 billion Space Station which cost $160 billion and counting..

            Who knows what JWST would/should have cost without Fed Govt/NASA overhead, ‘oversight’, pork….

        • Amerman says:
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          Have you ever read the Colliers articles from the 50’s on what the use of the space station would be? ====== ==
          Those articles were written in complete ignorance of modern day computers, integrated electronics, telecommunications, software, miniaturization…. and modern lb/leo costs..
          when men were required for all observations, computations..
          What’s sad is that all the previous space stations proved that they were useless/irrational pork… yet irresponsible NASA went ahead and blew $160+ billion more on ISS pork jobs program rather than worthwhile space exploration/science/technology…

        • Amerman says:
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          JWST is WHY we need ISS.  Our SMALLEST optical diffraction limited telescope constructed on ISS would have 8x the area of JWST for under a billion dollars.  ======== =
          You make no sense..
          If we could do it better with ISS, then WHY IS THERE A JWST?

        • Amerman says:
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          It is easy to be a naysayer, it is easy to say I can’t. ======= =
          I’m not predicting the future.. I’m just objectively pointing out the past…
          The $160+ billion ISS has had a decade to prove itself… yet is useless… with NASA itself wanting to dump it in the ocean as soon as it was completed..
          Again, if space stations have value, then why did Russia/US, etc dump all previous stations in the ocean?
          Where are the discoveries, the new materials, the breakthrus? 
          We could have educated A MILLION PHDs for the cost of the ISS.. what could they have discovered/invented? Cure cancer? Nuclear space drives? Green energy?

          NASA is the one who has said “I can’t” for the 4 decades since Apollo… 
          I can’t develop Falcon type boosters for  cheap/affordable booster to get cost lb/orbit below $1,000.
          I can’t make space access cheap, safe, reliable.. 
          I can’t make affordable Lunar colonies.. 
          I can’t put an American on Mars…
          I can’t succeed at Constellation….

          I am saying that America, private industry CAN!!
          but Govt/NASA has more than proven that it Can’t.. 

  12. Jerry_Browner says:
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    Gerstenmier’s “challenge to attendees to think about new ways to use the ISS” reflects the stupidity of NASA’s process. So they invested $100 billion ++ and now everybody try and think about what we can do with it?

    First, Gerstenmier as the titular head of American space flight, needs to be ensuring that payloads and utilization is made as easy, fast and inexpensive as possible for all potential users. He hasn’t done that. With a payload integration process as convoluted and as difficult as ISS has made it, and taking several years of concerted effort at the cost of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars, the program is doing far worse that earlier programs. Doesn’t he have some expertise he could apply to the problem? Why not?

    Second, Gerstenmier ought to be ensuring that a careful review of American industries, companies and academia identifies the potential payload customers and then he has an organization to go after those customers in an effort to encourage their participation. He hasn’t done that. I’ve gone to some of the ISS ‘payload conferences’, and mainly he has a bunch of neophytes talking to the choir of aerospace contractors, all saying ‘thanks for paying me to attend your conference’.

        

    • Paul451 says:
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      “So they invested $100 billion ++ and now everybody try and think about what we can do with it?”

      How is it any different to Congress forcing SLS onto NASA, then angrily demanding to know what NASA wanted it for?

      • Jerry_Browner says:
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         In the case of ISS, NASA, James Beggs, and human space flight of the late 1970s-early 1980s all developed and pursued a campaign around the ‘next logical step’, which was the space station. The Congress and President did not force it on NASA. It was one more element of what NASA was supposed to be developing: an infrastructure to gain low cost access to LEO and then the infrastructure to use LEO and to go beyond LEO. NASA got so enamored with operations that they put the development projects on hold.

        Today we have SLS and Orion because NASA failed to have any other meaningful plan. Some people, including in Congress, recognize that “it would be foolhardy to impose a radical reduction in the manned space program; spaceflight is not the same as running a Laundromat. You
        can’t just close one day (or fiscal year) and then reopen the next
        without losing progress and expertise. Nor can you do so while staying
        ahead of other nations in the space race.” http://www.pasadenasun.com/… Their goal was to ensure maintaining a stable NASA budget and that the NASA people continued to make some progress. It was always up to NASA and NASA’s supporters to define a meaningful plan. Although I wish Kay Bailey Hutchinson and other in Congress would be smarter than they are, mainly I find fault with the lack of any NASA leadership in defining a real and meaningful plan.

        • Paul451 says:
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          Thus confusing shuttle ops with launcher design. We have to keep our laundromat open because we might need it to make clothes.

          Leadership myth again. What plan would have allowed the firing of thousands of ageing shuttle people and their replacement with a new generation of BEO design people? What plan would have Congress volunteering, “No, my district! Sack the ones in my district!”?

        • Amerman says:
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          I find fault with the lack of any NASA leadership in defining a real and meaningful plan.======= =
          NASA is just another self-propagating, expanding Federal Bureaucray… NASA mgt plan is preserving/expanding their power/jobs.
          Dependent only on providing Congressional pork, makework jobs programs, and self-serving propaganda..

          Deadwood center and headquarter overhead grows and grows.. leaves less and less for actual space science/exploration/technology..

          NASA manned space not getting a single American out of low earth orbit in 40 years, leaving us buying rides from Russians… is a major scandal…  as is the criminally irresponsible/unaffordable/unnecessary SLS/Orion…

          Yet, unbelievably, some suckers still trust/defend Fed Govt NASA, and want to throw more $billions and decades on this pork filled/driven bloated federal agency..

      • Amerman says:
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        Congress forcing SLS onto NASA, then angrily demanding to know what NASA wanted it for?====== =
        In the end, it doesn’t matter whether NASA apologists blame NASA or Congress for pork boondoggles like SLS/Orion.. Shuttle..ISS..Constellation…

        Taxpayers and those who care about Space technology/exploration/science need only know that NASA isn’t working.. and can’t work… and that we would be stupid to keep on pretending Fed Agency NASA will ever work.. e.g. be efficient, innovative..open up space to be affordable/accessible for American enterprise/people..
        the US space program is too important to be further entrusted to Fed Govt agency NASA…

  13. Steve Whitfield says:
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    Users Wanted — You know, the story hasn’t changed in years.  ISS has been and is being under-used.  The Fix — Better define and then streamline the process of applying for, integrating and actually doing projects.  I thought CASIS was supposed to be undertaking that task under the title Payload Integration — No it’s not; Yes it is; No it’s not; Yes it is; Heads! No it’s not.

    This would make a fabulous job situation for grad students and post docs — Do a tour on the ISS doing the day to day work for the PIs for whatever experiments/studies happen to be going on.  The PIs stay home and the students are like waldos with brains.  That would look mighty impressive on a resume.  Win-Win.

    Steve

  14. sostrach says:
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    There was an entire peer-reviewed research program planned for the ISS that involved both the physical and biological sciences. It was the microgravity research program that was summarily stopped to build rockets. That program was designed for both basic and focused research. The latter is crucial for developing the closed-loop life support systems and other self-sustaining technologies in order to enable people to leave earth orbit. There are NRC reports that outline all that, but the problem is that NASA changes people around so that there is no corporate memory,

    • LennyCoan says:
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      Don’t forget that Griffin and Gerstenmier cancelled much of the research program-in order to funnel money to Constellation. One of the premiere contributions to ISS science was supposed to have been the bioreactor research facility, but after a 30 year NASA investment those two cancelled it. Their philosophy was that others, not NASA, should pay for those ‘extraneous things’ like research or education. They envisioned the NIH taking care of life sciences research or the Department of Education paying for NASA’s and ISS’s educational programs. NASA’s sole focus they said was engineering; actually almost all the money was going into operations, which is barely engineering. It didn’t work out too well for the science and educational programs, or for the ISS, or for the career scientists and others who’s careers were cut off, and it did not work too well for NASA, who’s Constellation Program was further away from flight at the end than at the beginning. What a waste.

  15. nasa817 says:
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    NASA didn’t spend $100 billion on ISS.  We’ve spent about $35 billion on it since the program’s inception in 1985.  However, this is the way of NASA human space flight.  Spend billions and billions on something with no real purpose other than the experience of building it, i.e., a jobs program.  The only argument not to deorbit it is the sunk costs, a losers argument.

    • LennyCoan says:
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      Just the Shuttle flights to loft the pieces and logistics during the assembly process were a minimum $20-25 billion (40 Shuttle launches X .5b$ each, and some people would say that is a very low estimate since virtually the entire Shuttle effort the last 14 years went to ISS assembly and support, which is more like $36-40 b; remember we were told they need to shut down Shuttle in order to get its $3 b per year for Constellation/Orion. In today’s dollars the ISS budget has remained fairly steady at around $3+ billion per year, since about 1984, that is 28 years. So I am not sure how you got $35 billion. That does not include all the international pieces and launches. Seems like it adds up to a lot more.

      • Steve Whitfield says:
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        The comments above leave me with two thoughts:

        1) People seem to combine what it cost to build ISS and what has been paid to date to operate it into a single lump sum, without making any distinction between them. To be at all meaningful, I think you have to evaluate these two items, and their costs, separately. The value of the experience and the cost of each haven’t had a lot of impact on the other. Also consider that the NASA administrator and senior management, as well as the government higher-ups changed mor ethan once during the period of time involved, yet they seem to be rated and treated in comments as is it were all the same people from start to finish. For example, it was President Clinton who brought in the Russians; whether that was good or bad should reflect on him and the Russian participants at that time, and not any of their successors. It was during Griffin’s autocratic reign that NASA basically put the ISS on life-support-level funding and it starting being ignored and attacked. Neither his predecessors nor his successors had any effect on that, and once done, it’s pretty much impossible to undo it. One man changed an accomplishment of pride into an albatross.

        2) Do any of you believe that were at the end of the space age? That all future activities will never include building stations or anything else in space, at LEO or anywhere else? If we assume that we will carry on in the future and build structures in space, or on other planets/moons, then consider what the situation would be if we had never built the ISS, which so many of you are criticizing now. We’d have exactly zero experience building for space and in space. We’d still be at the same level of expertise as we were before Apollo. In building the ISS, we’ve learned a lot, technical and otherwise, about how to do it — and how not to do it. This is experience that we had to get sometime as a first step. And there was no other way to learn what we have but to go out there and do it. Was there pork and politics and all the rest of it? Unfortunately, yes. But that too, was part of the learning experience. Was the ISS worth whatever it was that was paid to build it? That’s very subjective. A separate question: Is it worth what has been paid and is still being paid to operate it? That too, is subjective. Is it the complete waste that some are claiming? a program of no value? a program that should never have been done? Only to people with complete tunnel vision. Only to people stuck living in the past or the now, with no mind for the future. The ISS gave us valuable experience that the human race has to have. If we paid too much for it, that too, is experience we had to acquire.

        Steve

        • LennyCoan says:
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          Actually, since the 1993 Freedom to ISS management changeover, the management personnel have been pretty near continuous. Yes, there has been some attrition due to age and retirement of the top NASA people, and in a couple cases people were banished when they could not control costs, like Holloway, but generally the people in charge today are the same people who were in charge 19 years ago, though at that time they were frequently the second or third in command versus the first. 

          Many of the lessons learned have been learned multiple times, on Apollo, on Skylab, on Shuttle, on Mir…but the ISS management crop in place today and for most of the last 2 decades are the ones who have repeatedly said they did not want to do things the way others had done them before, because they were going to do it better. That never happened. They’ve spent a lot of money and just as much time. The integration process now is far more difficult and more poorly managed than Shuttle, Spacehab or Mir. They’ve not succeeded in bringing in any significant new users/customers. 

          They definitely have not lived in the past. A mind for the future? No signs of that. Mainly they have just been doing their own thing in the present, such as it is.  

  16. rcb1053 says:
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    Bigelow I believe cannot deliver on any of the suggestions due to the fact they have reorganized and operating with a limited staff.