Congress, NASA

Senate committee to examine ISS utilization

The Senate Commerce Committee is holding a hearing this morning at 10 am EDT on “The International Space Station: A Platform for Research, Collaboration, and Discovery”. The purpose of the hearing, according to the brief description, is to “examine research progress, the potential for scientific breakthroughs, and any impediments to maximizing the utilization of this orbiting national laboratory.” That’s likely to include a review of the status of the Center for the Advancement of Science in Space (CASIS), the nonprofit organization selected by NASA a year ago to manage the portion of the ISS designated a US national lab. CASIS has attracted criticism for moving too slowly in the eyes of some, including members of Congress.

James Royston, the interim executive director of CASIS, will be among the witnesses testifying at the hearing. Also appearing are Bill Gerstenmaier of NASA, Thomas Reiter of ESA, and NASA astronaut Don Pettit, who recently returned from six months on the ISS.

60 comments to Senate committee to examine ISS utilization

  • amightywind

    ISS is the straw that broke the back of the US space program. Its grotesque annual outlay precludes any other meaningful manned space activities. Worse, it props up Russia, our geopolitical enemy. President Bush understood this when he proposed that it be deorbited by 2015. The current NASA malaise will persists as long as ISS exists.

  • Dark Blue Nine

    “President Bush understood this when he proposed that it be deorbited by 2015.”

    The Bush II Administration never proposed such for the ISS. Per Griffin’s own leaked email:

    “The continual reference to the supposedly planned cancellation and deorbiting of ISS in 2016 is a strawman, irrelevant to consideration of serious programmatic options. While it is certainly true that Bush Administration budgets did not show any funding for ISS past 2015, it was always quite clear that the decision to cancel or fund the ISS in 2016 and beyond was never within the purview of the Bush Administration to make. In the face of strong International Partner commitment to ISS and two decades of steadfast Congressional commitment to the development, assembly, and utilization of ISS, it has never been and is not now realistic to consider cancellation and deorbiting of ISS in 2015, or indeed on any particular date which can be known today.”

    http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewsr.html?pid=32351

  • Justin Kugler

    DBN is right. ISS de-orbiting was a pipedream of the Constellation Program supporters who simply wanted to raid the program’s budget.

  • @Justin Kugler
    “DBN is right. ISS de-orbiting was a pipedream of the Constellation Program supporters who simply wanted to raid the program’s budget.”
    Exactly, just as some SLS supporters on this very blog have endorsed splashing ISS to pay for their pet boondoggle.

  • amightywind

    ..Constellation Program supporters who simply wanted to raid the program’s budget.

    We are in total agreement on this. It will be interesting if the idea of lost opportunity cost for ISS gains steam. It might.

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ July 25th, 2012 at 8:06 am

    ISS is the straw that broke the back of the US space program. Its grotesque annual outlay precludes any other meaningful manned space activities. Worse, it props up Russia, our geopolitical enemy. President Bush understood this when he proposed that it be deorbited by 2015″

    OK and I see that this theory has already been debunked…but I am curious…why was deorbiting a good solution?

    By the time the Bush43 administration came on the scene the US had as a matter of policy spent tens of billions of dollars trying to build a space station…the effort started with Ronaldus The Great someone the right wing of the GOP claims to idolize.

    By the time the Bush43 administration came on the scene there was actually functioning hardware on orbit and the bulk of the hardware was actually off of viewgraphs and into materials…

    So why was deorbiting a good idea? ALl that money, all that effort simply gone…now there are some things which at some point nations just simply abandon…ie leaving South Vietnam was a good idea by 1970…same with today in Afland…there is NOTHING that can be tried that has not been tried and failed and almost everything that might could have worked, can no longer be tried…

    BUT we are far from that on ISS TODAY and clearly were even farther from that point in the Bush 43 administration.

    There are several problems with ISS but some of them are being resolved.

    The shuttle system was just to expensive and limited in capability (ie it couldnt stay on orbit long) to be an ISS supply system…ok we are slowly fixing that.

    ISS gets 1 person day of science per calender day instead of 3…well there are fixes for that.

    Except for the microgravity environment ISS can be fixed…should we have built it? No…but that bridge was burned along time ago.

    I dont understand people whose answer to problems that can be solved…is throw it away RGO

  • DCSCA

    http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/07/12/AR2009071201977.html

    “”In the first quarter of 2016, we’ll prep and de-orbit the spacecraft,” says NASA’s space station program manager, Michael T. Suffredini.”

    Splash this turkey.

    It’s absurd, in an era of massive deficits, when the U.S. government has to borrow 42 cents of eery dollar it spends, for American taxpayers to keep neglecting investing in necessities like rebuilding infrastructure, while subsidizing the luxury of a ‘faux market’ for desperate NewSpace firms which then try to get subsidies to finance developing redundant access to the subsidzed LEO platform itself.

    After a decade on orbit, the ISS has failed to return anything close to justifying the $100-plus billion rxpense or the costs for ongoing financing. It served its political purpose- ‘an aerospace WPA project,’ as Deke Slayton called it, as make work for U.S. firms and displaced Soviet engineers. The ISS is as much a relic of the Cold War as the Berlin Wall and represents past planning from an era long over. LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles, no where fast.

  • common sense

    ISS was put together as a tool of the US softpower. If you deorbit the thing the money will go away. NOT back into NASA. Especially now.

    I wonder:

    Are space advocates somehow totally removed from reality(ies)?

    Whatever.

  • Justin Kugler

    amightywind,
    The lost opportunity costs for your favored “rockets to nowhere” are the problem. I never could get a straight answer from folks like you why we were building Ares I and Orion solely for the ISS mission, seeing as all lunar work had been de-scoped for cost, when you wanted to put it in the Pacific even before the vehicles were ready to fly.

    For the foreseeable future, the ISS is the only outpost we’ve got. It’s the only place in space where we can continue to do meaningful work while we figure out how to balance the budget, the politics, and the planning to explore BEO again. Splashing it in the ocean now only makes the problem worse because there still isn’t enough money for Apollo-style architectures.

    The ISS is an asset in orbit, not something to be discarded lightly or without consideration of the consequences. How do you expect the American people to shovel tens of billions more into an expendable exploration architecture that won’t get beyond LEO for decades, at best, when you won’t even effectively use what we’ve got today?

  • amightywind

    Are space advocates somehow totally removed from reality(ies)?

    No. The insane reality of ISS is central to future space policy. Instrument of soft power? On whom, the Netherlands? Russia is being rewarded by its place on ISS. In return we get intransigence on important security issues all over the world. You cannot compartmentalize their rotten behavior. Russia’s transfer of nuclear technology to Iran is likely to lead to war. I can’t believe that their isn’t acknowledgement of this.

    The lost opportunity costs for your favored “rockets to nowhere”

    Focus on the mission, not the rockets. ISS slows progress toward an asteroid or lunar mission to near zero. They are not rockets to nowhere. They are analogous to discovery fleets of the past: Nina, Pinta, Santa Maria…

    when you won’t even effectively use what we’ve got today?

    What we got today has little scientific or engineering worth. The challenge was in building the thing. Never throw good money after bad.

    By the time the Bush43 administration…

    You blew up a simple memorial thread up with your bizarre partisan garbage. One would think you’d be chastened.

  • common sense

    “Russia is being rewarded by its place on ISS. In return we get intransigence on important security issues all over the world. You cannot compartmentalize their rotten behavior. Russia’s transfer of nuclear technology to Iran is likely to lead to war. I can’t believe that their isn’t acknowledgement of this.”

    My friend you live in an alternate reality.

    The former Soviet Union (not Russia) was enough of a threat that it made then sense to keep them busy at something else than just selling their technology and know-how to other countries. It does not mean they would NEVER do it, just it would slow the process and it did. There is no rogue country today with the means to throw a couple of effective ballistic missiles to us or our allies. By the time they actually are able to do it we will have developed enough counter measures. And no not at NASA. DoD is in charge here and they have more than enough money to do it.

    There will be no war with Iran. Only nut cases want war with Iran. Unless Iran attacks first and even then the reaction may not be what you think with nice mushrooms of your fantasy deranged brain. There are other means to wage wars nowadays. Effective means. Further for Iran to attack first would mean they have become desperate, suicidal. And who would push them to this extreme? Remember Nazi Germany? Why did they go on war footing? Do you know? We avoided nuclear annihilation with the USSR and yet now we will go for it with Iran??? What kind of brain damaged moron would favor something like this?

    And btw Pakistan gave nukes to Iran. Not Russia. At least the kind of nukes that keep you awake and threaten you so much. So of course with Fox News literacy it does not help you but try my friend, try. You, after all, have access to the Internet.

    http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1922166,00.html
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran

  • PatMcC

    Time to start from scratch.

  • Robert G. Oler

    amightywind wrote @ July 25th, 2012 at 2:24 pm
    “What we got today has little scientific or engineering worth. The challenge was in building the thing.”

    more babble. The challenges in “building the thing” were for the most part self made by NASA and American industry…and solved by taking a great deal of the construction offshore. There is a message there but since the station is built it is not germane to the discussion of what to do with the station now.

    you would propose scrapping it…not fixing it…that is not only fiscal irresponsibility but it is advocating a retreat in American power. RGO

  • Justin Kugler

    amighywind,
    There is no mission for SLS, just as there was no mission for Ares V. Your favored architecture eats so much of the seed corn that there’s nothing left for landers, habitats, or other mission systems. Study after study has shown we don’t require new boosters to explore BEO.

  • Robert G. Oler

    If a mechanism cannot be found to make ISS Useful…it is clear that such a mechanism would elude any future space goals RGO

  • Ben Joshua

    When the space station design was under review in the early ’90s, some alternate proposals seemed to have merit, including ISF and ETCO. But it is an orbiting, operational resource, and should be fully utilized.

    Science aside, just running the thing is teaching NASA and the international space community a lot that gives future human space ventures a greater chance of success.

    Besides, I think we are coming to the end of the spend billions and throw it away approach to spaceflight, and the beginning of sustained and repeated use of hardware. About jolly well time, too.

    Continued use of space station adds to the experience base and ups the design capability for future efforts, be they long term LEO or trips to Phobos, Deimos, et al.

  • red

    Here are some tweets from http://twitter.com/isscasis:

    Sen. Nelson reminds audience that ISS has been continually occupied since Expedition 1 in 2000. Expects to continue past 2020.

    Nelson discussing potential for ISS as a waystation for future exploration missions and new stations further out.

    Royston: We are working with industry partners to establish commercial research projects that will fill the cargo missions.

    Royston: Permanent Board of Directors will soon be announced and exceed everyone’s expectations.

    Gerstenmaier: Both applied and basic research on vaccines look promising. Use space to “spark creativity” and produce on ground.

    Royston: We’re looking at opportunities in muscle wasting, osteoporosis, materials science, space tech, and Earth observation.

    Gerstenmaier answers Sen. Boozman that we have good cargo launch capability. Need to bring comm’l crew capability online.

    Gerstenmaier: We are looking at technical life limiting factors. From physical standpoint, can probably go to 2028

    Gerstenmaier: ISS is great platform for technology testbeds before full-scale, full-cost deployment.

    Royston: Protein crystal research goal is to settle fundamental questions and enable commercial development.

    Royston: Developing new on-orbit systems to collect data without waiting for samples to be returned to ground.

  • Jim

    You folks who want to trash ISS aren’t using your intelligence. ISS is all we have for the next 10 years and likely longer than that. The design, the size, the operations and maintenance are all that they are and they will not change in the short term. The best anyone can do now is to figure out how to use it effectively. As today’s Commerce Committee shows, they have not figured that out yet. If they cannot operate effectively at 240 miles out, what makes you think you can operate effectively at a quarter million miles or on Mars?

  • Coastal Ron

    Jim wrote @ July 25th, 2012 at 10:24 pm

    If they cannot operate effectively at 240 miles out, what makes you think you can operate effectively at a quarter million miles or on Mars?

    Well said.

    It’s one thing to be against spending on any type of activity in space, but for those that want the U.S. to explore beyond LEO, you would think they would understand that the ISS is the least expensive and best location to learn how to live and work in space.

    And in any case, dumping the ISS in the ocean when it’s no longer needed is a pretty bone-headed idea. We’ve spent $Billions in getting all that mass to orbit, so when parts of the facility are no longer needed, we should repurpose as much of the ISS as we can.

    In any case, I would imagine if the U.S. Government no longer wants to pay for maintaining their portion of the ISS, they could put it up for sale and let U.S. companies buy it – it would cheaper than paying to de-orbit it, and a lot better use of the U.S. Taxpayer investment.

  • DCSCA

    @Jim wrote @ July 25th, 2012 at 10:24 pm

    “The best anyone can do now is to figure out how to use it effectively.”

    So your logic is to spend over $100 billion on something with billions more for operations in remaining out years, take nearly 30 years to get it up and running after endless rounds of redesign– then once assembled, figure out what to do with it. =eyeroll= In fact, it is you who isn’t using your intellegence.

    This turkey was ‘launched’ in a ’84 Reagan SOTU speech, for goodness sake, in the early heydays of shuttle and nearly three decades later, after massive shifts in political and economic realities around the planet, nobody knows what to do with it– because it doesn’t fit with the realities of our times. The ISS is a 20th century Cold War relic from an era long over that has more in common w/t Berlin Wall than the economics and geopolitics of today. .At least the Germans figured out what to do w/t Berlin Wall; sell off pieces of it worldwide and make a few bucks on it. With each rev, the ISS grows increasingly obtuse in the economic universe of the first fewdwcades of the 21sr century. It represents past planning. It’s a dinosaur– or as Googaw calls it, ‘an orbiting zombie’ which is more a part of the last century than this one as each day passes.

    “As today’s Commerce Committee shows, they have not figured that [what to do with it] out yet. If they cannot operate effectively at 240 miles out, what makes you think you can operate effectively at a quarter million miles or on Mars?”

    Except they have a pretty good baseline of data already. See the Apollo landings for details and add it to the abundant data obtained since human spaceflgiht began, including years of lengthy, multi-crew, mcrogravity on orbit ops w/Saylut, MIR, Skylab, shuttle flights and the tens years of ISS data obtained. It’s a solid database so to infer that they cannot operate effectively beyond 240 miles in the space environment is just spin. In fact, had the ISS been firmly anchored 240,000 miles away to the floor of the Ocean of Storms as a permanent lunar exploration/exploitation hub, rather than doomed to a Pacific splash, the experience with hardware, methodology, operations, planning and procedures for pressing on toward Mars would be much further along after years habitating and operating in the extremes of the lunar environment. It was Garver in her NSS/aerospace lobbying days which opposed a return to the moon and pushed the space station project, too. More’s the pity. LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles, no where fast.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 1:16 am

    “Well said.”

    Rubbish– you just want a government subsidized ‘faux market’ doomed to a Pacific grave, as a short term target for NewSpace seed contracting to develop redundant access to LEO to satisfy the Musketeer mantre of a Magnified Importance of Diminished Vision. LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles, no where fast.

  • James

    The same culture that argued for, then built, and now can’t figure how to use effectively, is the same culture, the same builders, of the SLS who can’t figure out what to use it for.

    History, despite how much we know about it, and seek to avoid its failings, has a very funny way of continually repeating itself.

  • This is just what I long-since suspected: NewSpace will never be done with the ISS! Consider all this vague, but pretty serious talk floating around about keeping the ISS in orbit and in operation all the way to 2028 or so. Of course you all know what that means: Low Earth Orbit forever! It annoys & irks me to the core, hearing all this giddyness over the recent Dragon flight to reach the ISS. So, everybody is all euphoric because an unmanned commercial craft delivered some paper-bagged goods to LEO? The same people who denigrated Project Constellation. The same people who condemn any and all possible future plans to return humankind to the Moon. The same people who think that nothing in space is worth doing unless it is the very first time that we are doing it—–with of course, the exception of any & all exploits in LEO. THOSE THINGS we can just go ahead and repeat again & again, over & over without ever stopping. Unmanned cargo deliveries to an LEO station? Didn’t the Soviet Union already do that, decades ago, with their Progress space-craft?? Doesn’t that fact alone, make accomplishing it again, unimportant, unremarkable, and completely pointless?? It is a ludicrous farce, how the anti-Moon faction condemns returning astronauts to Luna, as a pointless repeat exercise, yet glorify continued empire-building in LEO; merry-go-rounding for yet another 20 years.

  • amightywind

    Gerstenmaier: Both applied and basic research on vaccines look promising. Use space to “spark creativity” and produce on ground.

    Promising? You mean like cold fusion?

    Royston: We’re looking at opportunities in muscle wasting, osteoporosis, materials science, space tech, and Earth observation.

    Hmm. $100 billion spent on ‘muscle wasting’. If you can’t see the disconnect in the amount spent for the value of the research, you are a moron.

    Gerstenmaier: Royston ought to be fired immediately for regurgitating this pablum.

  • Dennis Wright has an interesting article wherein he explains how lunar ISRU cannot be practical until lower cost near Earth spaceflight occurs. Thus those who want to start lunar ISRU now are trying to “take the bull before the horns” as the old saying states. http://www.citizensinspace.org/2012/07/the-great-debate/

    Thus, any attempt at lunar ISRU either with or without SLS (but especially with) at this time would be setting itself up for failure.

  • Thirty seconds at the ISS Benefits for Humanity web site will reveal all anyone needs to know to understand what a huge resource the ISS is for the future of this world and its people.

    But I guess it’s a lot easier to post uninformed nonsense on a blog than actually doing some self-education.

  • Justin Kugler

    amightywind,
    Those research pathways that Jim Royston mentioned were driven by an independent scientific review panel and the interests of commercial industry. Those areas are where American companies think they can make money and save money on ground research costs.

    Did you actually watch the hearing or are you just taking the Twitter feed out of context? I think I can guess which one it is.

  • You folks who want to trash ISS aren’t using your intelligence

    There is an unwarranted implicit assumption in that statement…

    This is just what I long-since suspected: NewSpace will never be done with the ISS! Consider all this vague, but pretty serious talk floating around about keeping the ISS in orbit and in operation all the way to 2028 or so. Of course you all know what that means: Low Earth Orbit forever!

    No, only people…ummmm…”not using their intelligence”…would think it means that. Especially with the exclamation mark.

  • Torbjörn Larsson, OM

    @ DCSCA:

    “After a decade on orbit, the ISS has failed to return anything close to justifying the $100-plus billion rxpense or the costs for ongoing financing.”

    Besides the infrastructure know how which can save billions in the near future when BEO crafts are developed, the science return may easily surpass it if the discovery and utilization of space lowering the immune system opens up the large window of medicine it promises.

    Sickness removes billions of $ on a yearly basis. If space research can cut even a % into that, it will break even just on that.

    @ amightywind:

    “ISS slows progress toward an asteroid or lunar mission to near zero.”

    And here I thought the use of reliable ISS modules in BEO crafts were utilizing a deep space technology resource. As would be the NASA idea to loft a similar Gateway ISS derived structure to EML2 for BEO missions.

  • Robert G. Oler

    Rick Boozer wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 8:23 am

    Dennis Wright

    >…

    Rick…it is Ed Wright more or less taking on Dennis Wingo…I read those last night before bed and am pretty sure Ed is more right then Dennis…but want to think somemore about how to word it…

    RGO

  • amightywind

    Those research pathways that Jim Royston mentioned were driven by an independent scientific review panel

    Yes, and independent review board where everyone draws a government check and recommends that they keep on getting one.

    Thirty seconds at the ISS Benefits for Humanity web site

    The content on the site is just as flaccid as the words of the NASA leadership, but thanks for the link. Let me repeat. $100 billion spent!

  • guest

    The focus ought to be on fixing the culture and people at NASA who do not know how to use the asset that is ISS (remember all of these NASA people running ISS are the engineers who mainly want to build things-actually not even build it themselves-everything they do is pretty much outsourcing, and they love big lumbering bureaucracy because it made them what they are today and they have little interest in utilization and BTW they are the same types running Exploration), and on getting ISS costs under control so that the constrained money supply can be used for other things like Exploration. The fact that ISS took $100 billion and 27+ years is water under the bridge-for better or worse that money and time cannot be recovered. It is now an investment and a sunk cost. Now its time to use the asset in an effective and efficient manner-not time to throw the asset away and then you’ll be left with nothing.

  • Robert G. Oler

    http://www.citizensinspace.org/2012/07/the-great-debate/

    this is Ed Wrights reply to Dennis…

    and Dennis comments on Lunar resource are here

    http://moonandback.com/2012/07/17/changing-the-conversation-about-the-economic-development-of-the-moon/

    Dennis is a bright person whose heart is in the right place and he is a super advocate for a space future…However Ed is more right then wrong here and Dennis comments in my view are premature.

    Dennis writes convincingly of the notion of a “second industrial revolution” (I might quibble with this being the second…but unimportant) but then after some interesting thought, he stumbles into the trap that all “lets go to the Moon” ventures fall into…at some point he tries to “force something” by using government funds and policy…that really history has proven cannot be forced.

    There is no earth bound analogy (except maybe south pole development) to that in space. I’ve used the transcontinental railroad…but its not really valid. by the time the TR was started there were enormous settlements and wealth being excersized daily in the American west. At best Dennis notion is to start the TR in say 1820 just as the western expansion passed the Ohio was starting.

    There WERE already transportation systems IN USE to get from the Atlantic to the PAcific (you could walk in theory some did) when the US government moved toward the TR. Now I realize Dennis is using the TR as an example not the end all and be all of his theory…

    But any lunar effort that is directed at ISRU is going to have to have massive US government funding trying to force not evolve a market.

    Wright is on much more solid ground arguing that we need to develop an economically viable near earth infrastructure (and access which we are on the verge of starting) before any of Dennis concepts are doable.

    There is no indication that any Government effort on the Moon would not bog down such as ISS has. Dennis once argued for programs on ISS which are at the same caliber of thought (ie good) but the infrastructure and decision making at NASA would not support such efforts…until that is fixed there is no chance a lunar effort will be much different.

    Dennis is a good thinker and this result reflects it…however in terms of historical and contemporary development; its premature. RGO

  • Robert G. Oler

    guest wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 11:18 am

    The focus ought to be on fixing the culture and people at NASA who do not know how to use the asset that is ISS >>

    the entire post was well said RGO

  • Coastal Ron

    amightywind wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 11:16 am

    Let me repeat. $100 billion spent!

    Are you against building infrastructure?

    I suppose you’ll be against building colonies on the Moon too?

    Let’s see, for $100B we built reusable infrastructure in space that we can use to learn how to live and work in space, and use as a stepping off point for beyond LEO missions.

    The $100B Constellation plan would have left us with what? More flags and footprints on the Moon. And you think that would have been better? Weird.

    How are we supposed to learn how to live in work in space if we aren’t living and working in space. You have yet to provide an alternative that allows us to accomplish the same goals.

    In comparison, so far we’ve spent how much on the Orion/MPCV and SLS? And gotten what? Nothing useful that flies today, and nothing but a $13B/year liability in ten years.

    $13B/year you say?

    Yep, that’s right, and that might even be low. Take the cost of one 130mt SLS flight (~$2.5B per NASA), add in the NASA overhead for a year, and it will probably be about $3B/year just to support the SLS. Add on top of that what likely will be the minimum $10B just to build a worthwhile SLS-sized payload every year (JWST weighs about 6mt and is projected to cost $8B), and that brings the minimum NASA budget requirements for the SLS program to $13B/year – which Congress will never fund, because no department is getting budget increases, especially those that don’t have a universally recognized “National Imperative”.

    A wind blew and it was deemed feeble and of no consequence…

  • @Chris Castro
    “Of course you all know what that means: Low Earth Orbit forever!”

    Chris, SLS is the surest means of keeping NASA in LEO. Notice I said, SLS will keep NASA in LEO. Americans will be going back to the Moon and relatively soon, but it won’t necessarily be under NASA auspices.

    It doesn’t have to be that way. It could be NASA going back to the Moon and points beyond with the help of an economically thriving commercial human spaceflight industry; however, that can only occur if SLS is abandoned.

    I am truly sorry that you and others have difficulty understanding that fact. You will see when it actually happens. Don’t expect the rest of us not to say “I told you so” when that day comes.

  • Vladislaw

    Good points Ron.

    I love it how the lunatics rant endlessly how NASA had built and operates this 100 billion dollar boondoggle called the International Space Station. They constantly cry how we can not afford it. Then they instantly pivot and call for a lunar base and somehow it is not only going to be cheaper, but done faster as well.

    The ISS, at only 200 miles away, is a porkladen nightmare, but the SLS/Orion building a lunar base 230,000 miles away .. well that is going to be cheaper, faster and contain no pork…

    “help I’m steppin’ into the twilight zone, place is a madhouse, feels like being cloned ……”

  • DCSCA

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 1:30 pm
    “amightywind wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 11:16 am
    “Let me repeat. $100 billion spent!”
    Are you against building infrastructure?”

    Pretty much all Americans are against building infrastructure pegged as ‘bridges to nowhere.” =eyeroll= … which is exactly what the ISS is… unless, of course, you’re a contractor thats’ gonig to cash-in on the construction.

  • DCSCA

    @Vladislaw wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 2:39 pm

    You do realize that had the ISS been anchored to the floor of the Ocean of Storms, 240,000 miles away as a exploration/exploitation hub, and not doomed to a Pacific splash from 240 miles up, that financing for commerical NewSpace ops to service it would most likely have been an easier sell today, in tandem w/government BEO space operations. =sigh=

    Politically, it’s a lot easier to splash expensive space stations (as the Salyut/Skylab/MIR experence shows), as most people, who pay for these things, can barely find’em in the night sky 240 miles up, than to abandon a moon base, a quarter of a million miles away on another world, pretty much ‘seen’ worldwide every night, rising and setting, tugging at the tides and hearts of humans everywhere. .

  • DCSCA

    @guest wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 11:18 am

    “The fact that ISS took $100 billion and 27+ years is water under the bridge-for better or worse that money and time cannot be recovered. It is now an investment and a sunk cost.”

    It’s no more an ‘investment’ than the Berlin Wall or empty Minuteman missile silos. It’s an expense from an eera long over. And advocating throwing good money after bad is a pretty weak rationale. And it’s on the national credit card, BTW. Sunk cost is apropos labeling as it’s doomed to a Pacific splash.

  • vulture4

    DB9: “While it is certainly true that Bush Administration budgets did not show any funding for ISS past 2015, it was always quite clear that the decision to cancel or fund the ISS in 2016 and beyond was never within the purview of the Bush Administration to make.”

    Dear DB9: Sorry, but I was there. I watched the briefings and spoke personally with international PIs flying experiments on Shuttle and Station. They were told the program was ending, and when I asked their plans they threw up their hands. America was not going to support ISS, and we had no plans to make it possible for anyone else to do so. Indeed, the Bush Administration had no choice, since it made the still incredible claim that America could build moon colonies with the aging Constellation/SLS technology while simultaneously cutting taxes.

    The email to which you refer was not “leaked”, it was a mass mailing by Griffin attacking the Augustine Commission. Obviously Dr. Griffin realizes which way the wind is blowing and, still determined to regain power, has been trying to rewrite history and claim he never directed that ISS be terminated. His supporters seem to have no trouble simultaneously claiming that his decision to cancel Shuttle was just a vague suggestion to Mr. Obama.

    The mark of a good leader is not that he is always right, but rather that, right or wrong, he takes responsibility for his actions. That would not be Dr. Griffin.

  • In watching the August 2009 Augustine Committee presentation by Sally Ride, it was quite clear that Dr. Ride and everyone else were under the impression that the ISS was to be deorbited circa 2016 to pay for Constellation. Since these people did all the detailed research into the current status of the program, one would assume that they were right.

  • DCSCA

    @guest wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 11:18 am

    “The focus ought to be on fixing the culture and people at NASA who do not know how to use the asset that is ISS… ”

    It’s a liability, not an asset, and keeps HSF ops chained to LEO, which is a ticket bto no where, going no place fast.

    If you stop looking at the ISS as an element of space ops and start looking at it for what it truly is, a government works project pursued as policy to resolve a festering problem of geopolitics from another century, in an era long over, you’ll recognize that it is as obsolete today as Minuteman missile silos, carbon paper, the Berlin Wall, cathode ray TV tubes and the Saturn V.

  • Explorer08

    common sense asked: “Are space advocates somehow totally removed from reality(ies)?”

    My answer: given their total lack of effectiveness over many years, I would say a resounding “yes.”

  • guest

    DCSCA wrote ISS… is a ticket to no where…

    Sorry to disagree, but used in the right way ISS can help to develop a lot of the technology required to go much further out from LEO. In the same way that some are claiming Space-X’s dragon already provides the capability we need for hauling humans-not it does not, not yet. So far they have made a couple of successful test flights. If they build a series of them and get them all flying routinely into orbit and returned successfully, then maybe we will have a capability in a few years, but so far that has not happened. Similarly there is a lot we can do with ISS and with adaptations of the systems and hardware its given us. People like Griffin, and yourself, seem to want to rush to get somewhere. We don’t know everything we need to know to go on long interplanetary trips. NASA once was in the technology development business and its a business they need to get back to.

  • guest

    Robert Oler wrote:
    …There is no earth bound analogy (except maybe south pole development) to that in space. I’ve used the transcontinental railroad…but its not really valid. by the time the TR was started there were enormous settlements and wealth being excersized daily in the American west….

    I agree the transcontinental railroad is not really a good analogy. After all the settler could live off the land and as you say walk across it from one shore to the other.

    I think a more adequate analogy is Juan Terry Trippe’s and Pan Am’s conquest of the Pacific islands. The islands of the Pacific were not tourist destinations at the start. There was no capability to fly large numbers of passengers across the ocean at the start, though theoretically it was known to be possible. Ten years earlier crude airplanes carried one or two people across the Atlantic and then the Pacific in stunts. One of them was Charles Lindbergh. There was no practical value to his flight but it did show what was possible and it won him the Orteig prize. But in order to make the Pacific islands into passenger destinations a new class of passenger airliner needed to be created and hotels and logistics infrastructure needed to be established. It was done using ships and starting out with small flying boats carrying a few passengers, and in time the prefabricated hotels grew into major cities and the small flying boats grew to much larger flying boats and then to major intercontinental airports with large jetliners carrying hundreds of people. And it was done mainly by private industry and commercial business, though in WWII the military took over use of the airplanes and the facilities and helped to develop the island destinations further.

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ July 26th, 2012

    It’s no more an ‘investment’ than the Berlin Wall or empty Minuteman missile silos.

    You have trouble making valid analogies, and those two examples prove it.

    The ISS is a National Laboratory tasked with understanding what it takes for us to live and work in space. How do you do that without putting a laboratory in space?

    You have dreams of going back to the Moon, which is 1,000X further away than LEO, and you expect THAT to be an inexpensive place to figure out how to survive in space? How absurd.

    If you stop looking at the ISS as an element of space ops…

    Why would any sane person do that?

    If the goal is to EXPAND our presence out into space – which I think even you agree the goal is – then why wouldn’t we want to put a permanent presence in space and learn how to operate it long-term? The facility is paid for, and now all we have to do is provide sustaining support, which is a lot cheaper than building a brand new facility of any type (especially on the Moon).

    The common thread that you and Windy have is that you complain about the ISS, but you offer no alternatives for replacing the science it is doing – and Windy didn’t even know there was a website to see the science progress the ISS has been making, so it appears that detractors of the ISS are ignorant of any facts about it. I wouldn’t be surprised if that describes you too.

    As my boss used to say, don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.

    How do we learn to live and work in space (i.e. survive and thrive) if we’re not living and working in space? The ISS is the place to do that until a better facility comes online.

  • DCSCA

    @guest wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 10:20 pm

    “Sorry to disagree, but used in the right way ISS can help to develop a lot of the technology required to go much further out from LEO.”

    Except it’s not. And had it been firmly anchored to the Ocean of Storms, as an exploitation/exploration hub, 240,000 away rather than doomed to a Pacific splash from 240 miles up your pitch might carry weight through the Age of Austerity. But it doesn’t. Simply because LEO is a ticket to no place, going in circles, no place fast. And after a decade on orbit and 27 years from Reagan’s SOTU pitch as a WPA aerospace project and $100 billion plus in costs, it has come no where close to delivering anything to justify the expense. This ‘orbiting zombie,’ as Googaw calls it, is a Cold War relic akin to the Berlin Wall, representing planning from an era long past. It is an an engineering marvel but a geopolitical dinosaur.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 11:58 pm

    “Why would any sane person do that… if the goal is to EXPAND our presence out into space…”

    Because smart people know it’s a multi-decade $100 billion-plus geopolitical works program left over from the Cold War, literally ‘a bridge to nowhere.” not a project expanding presence out into space. The ISS does not take us anywhere- it goes in circles, no place fast.

    “As my boss used to say, don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions.”

    Smart bosses don’t wait for underlings to bring them anything; they issue directives underlings carry out. And in the case of the ISS, the directive is clear-terminate the project; splash the turkey.

    “…the science it is doing…” =eyeroll= It is not doing/returning any ‘science’ that comes anywhere close to justifying the $100 billion expense. It is a Cold War relic, as obsolete in the early 21 century as Minuteman missile silos, Polaroid film, typewriters btsss hotel keys and the Mac SE.

    “The facility is paid for…” Except it’s not.They’re on the national credit card. Apollo was paid for- by the generation that initiated it. The ISS, shuttle, not so much.

  • niksus

    Coastal Ron wrote @ July 26th, 2012 at 1:30 pm
    What did you mean by infrastructure? Almost always infrastructure is something that can support/provide the useful activities in a region/or possibility to go further. Bridges, roads, towers, farms, factories, forts, ports and shipyards, not museums, libraries or labs. Right now ISS is just a international laboratory, not shipyard or space fuel depo.
    For space LEO infrastructure – examples: electrorocket/laser/etc propulsion testbed, space farm to imitate sustained human presence(without earth food supply), fuel depo/fuel station, spaceloop/spaceelevator/hydrogen gun/mass driver, space shipyard that can construct spaceships from materials thrown by mass driver/etc, robotic space debries reusage factory, space tugs for LEO-GEO-L1/etc operations, solar sails test ground, inflatable tourist hotels, and many more. Every task can be much easier implemented by small/medium sattelite/space station specially designed for it. Not by big multibillion ISS- specially designed for human presence in confined 0-gravity environment as laboratory, not smth else. Where are the proposals to use ISS as an infrastructure? Now I see a possibility to use it like a testbed for VASIMIR.
    And there is a need of goal/goals/destinations so different parts of LEO infrastructure is used simultaniously to complete those goals. I mean somithing like NEA/Moon for resource extraction for a goal of constructing permanent free space colonies, near Mercury/Sun orbits for solar power&manufacture, asteroid belts and Juputer/Saturn moons for fuel/gas/carbon mining.
    Exploration of space without exploitation of it will never bring people on Earth anything of value and be a wasteful activity for all but small research oriented community on goverment paychecks. Now ISS brings little – cause most of human health/plant research already done on Salut6-7 and Mir stations, except some experiments that can be done robotically on small lab sattelites cheaply. Mostly the proponents give talk about utilization of already wasteful research only project with very high cost of maitaining it. There is 2 solution – redisign it for useful purposes, that means for research projects clearly pointed toward future exploitaion of space, Moon/NEA/Mars missions to make it real infrastructure, or demolished it to parts and combine them to create productive entities like space farm/shipyard/factory with the purpose to make money/goods. And don’t give me BS that goverments can’t make money or can’t lease it to companies.
    Throwing ISS to the ocean or Moon will just evaporate 100+ billion $ for nothing.

  • Justin Kugler

    DCSCA,
    It’s not where we go that is as important as what we’re doing and why we’re doing it. The ISS is the only foothold we have for human spaceflight right now. It’s our only outpost for answering all the questions we still have outstanding about what it’s going to take to reliably send people to other worlds. It’s the only research platform we have for doing both fundamental and applied microgravity science.

    If all you see is its orbit, you’re not looking at the whole picture. You’re not looking at the fact that NASA is preparing to send up a wide array of exploration testbed technologies, like an optical communications system, a new telerobotics project, and, possibly, an electric propulsion testbed facility. You’re not paying attention to the fact that private industry is actually coming back to the table now, after having been burned by Shuttle ops, and is serious about using microgravity studies to accelerate ground research. You certainly don’t understand its importance as a linchpin for international partnerships, especially with damage done by Constellation’s “go it alone” approach and the ExoMars debacle.

    I think you willfully ignore that we’re not going anywhere BEO in a sustainable fashion until we get launch and operations costs down enough for NASA to build exploration systems with the budget it has. Orion/SLS doesn’t get us there. Splashing the ISS certainly doesn’t because it removes NASA’s ability to do sustained testbed work on-orbit.

    Smart bosses understand that is their primary responsibility to ensure their people have the resources and guidance they need to get the job done and accomplish the mission. They’re not dictators. Can you even tell us what mission you hope to accomplish?

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 6:45 am

    Smart bosses don’t wait for underlings to bring them anything; they issue directives underlings carry out.

    While you may enjoy being told what to do – essentially checking your brain at the workplace door – most people in management appreciate having employees that can think for themselves. And if you look at why good companies are good, it’s not because of one person like a Steve Jobs, it’s because they knew how to hire, train and motivate people to get the best from them.

    Your type of thinking likely affects your view of the ISS too. You think you can command discoveries to be made on a schedule – I can imagine if you were in charge you’d say to the first ISS researcher “here’s a test tube, I’ll be back in an hour, and when get back I expect you to have solved the problem of bone loss in zero-G.;-)

    Not much I can add to that. Luckily you’re not in a position of importance, even on a minor scale. You probably would have enjoyed the middle ages, where your views on management would have been more in tune with the thinking of the time.

  • Coastal Ron

    niksus wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 10:09 am

    What did you mean by infrastructure?

    Wikipedia defines infrastructure as:

    Infrastructure is basic physical and organizational structures needed for the operation of a society or enterprise, or the services and facilities necessary for an economy to function. It can be generally defined as the set of interconnected structural elements that provide framework supporting an entire structure of development.

    In this case we’re talking about expanding out into space, and the ISS currently functions as our outpost. NASA and others have also viewed the ISS as a jumping off point for beyond-LEO trips, and it certainly has the flexibility to do that even today.

    Right now ISS is just a international laboratory, not shipyard or space fuel depo.

    True, but it wouldn’t take much to alter it’s capabilities. In fact the most important part about the ISS is that it’s already there, so if you wanted to do artificial gravity experiments using spinning structures, the ISS could either accommodate them connected, or act as a nearby base to do tests. You wouldn’t need to build a whole new outpost to support a free-flying test platform.

    And there is a need of goal/goals/destinations so different parts of LEO infrastructure is used simultaniously to complete those goals.

    The mission of the International Space Station (ISS) is to “enable long-term exploration of space and provide benefits to people on Earth.”

    The other stuff you mentioned is much further out, after we’ve learned how to survive long-term first.

    Now ISS brings little – cause most of human health/plant research already done on Salut6-7 and Mir stations, except some experiments that can be done robotically on small lab sattelites cheaply.

    The Salyut and Mir stations were state-of-the-art at the time they were built and used, but they have been far surpassed by the ISS in both capabilities and science output. Our ability to collect and analyze what’s going on with experiments as they happen today far exceeds what was possible even with the Mir.

    And don’t give me BS that goverments can’t make money or can’t lease it to companies.

    I’ve already addressed this earlier when I said that the U.S. could lease, sell-off or even give the U.S. portion of the ISS to private U.S. entities.

    Quick observation though – when the ISS was being planned to be ended in order to fund the Constellation program, there were no commercial transportation systems that would have allowed private U.S. entities take it over, so that wasn’t even considered. Once Commercial Crew is in place, that means that the U.S. won’t have to de-orbit the ISS if private organizations want to continue supporting it. THAT is one of the unrecognized benefits the cargo and crew systems bring, is the reuse of space assets that earlier could have only survived with 100% government funding.

  • DCSCA

    @Justin Kugler wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 10:13 am

    “If all you see is its orbit, you’re not looking at the whole picture.”

    No, in fact the ‘whole picture’ is what you’re missing- this is less of a HSF project than a leftover relic from Cold War planning. The ISS was originally supposed to be an element of a larger space exploration/exploitation plan, strangled as the financing fizzled over the years as the Cold War thawed and melted away. It is really no more than a government works project initiated as a solution to a Cold War political problem. Today, it is a one-off and increasingly obtuse within the geopolitical and economic framework of the early 21st century. It is a dinosaur that has more in common w/t Berlin Wall, carburators, Minuteman missile silos, boomboxes, cathode ray TV tubes and the back-up Skylab– museum pieces all.

    “Splashing the ISS certainly doesn’t because it removes NASA’s ability to do sustained testbed work on-orbit.”

    Rubbish- there’s half a century of LEO ops data to tap from varous programs, U.S. and others, and the cost/benefit analysis for this particular turkey worsens with each rev. Relentlessly under crewed w/an over abundance of time spent on maintenence chores rather than research, such as it is– and now time dicvered to ‘grappling’ a Dragon or two on occasion as well. If this was 1988 and the thing was up and running, you might have a pitch, but for this era, it’s woefully obsolete and represents past planning from an era long, long over.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 2:35 pm

    =yawn= You said it yourself, by labeling the ISS a ‘national lab’ =eyeroll= Edison had a ‘research lab,’ too, and the people financing him directed him to channel his research to produce results- that is, deliver a ROI for them, or they’d pull the fiscal plug. And he did just that. The ISS isn’t doing that. You have it backwards, it is DCSCA who does the telling. And you’ve been told. ;-)

  • For those who missed it, I’ve posted the video of the ISS Benefits hearing on YouTube at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8onrYd_AFrc . It runs 1 hour 40 minutes.

  • DCSCA

    @Stephen C. Smith wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 4:46 pm

    “It runs 1 hour 40 minutes.”

    After 27 years of planning, $100 billion expended and over a decade on orbit, that’s all?!? LOL

  • Coastal Ron

    DCSCA wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 5:46 pm

    After 27 years of planning, $100 billion expended and over a decade on orbit, that’s all?

    Based on the timestamp of your post, you didn’t even watch the video.

    As usual, you don’t even know what you’re talking about.

  • Justin Kugler

    DCSCA,
    Go look at the NASA Human Research Program website. It has all of the outstanding questions and risks that all the data we currently have either can’t or doesn’t address. We simply do not have enough data or understanding of human physiological systems in microgravity to adequately design countermeasures for long-duration BEO missions. Even if we developed rotating or constant-acceleration structures, we don’t know what is the minimum level required for homeostasis.

  • DCSCA

    Coastal Ron wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 6:32 pm

    =yawn= As if we wait for Smitty to post to view televised herarings on matters space. Yep, you’re a fella who waits to be tols what do do allright. And youv’e been told. ;-)

    Justin Kugler wrote @ July 28th, 2012 at 2:30 pm

    Justin, the desperation to keep selling this turkey after decades and billions of dollats spent is evident. It comes down to this- what did they do up there today to justify the cost… or yesterday…that’s what it’s all about. When Apollo astrounats were doing EVA at their various landing sites, it was calculated that it was costing taxpayers about $1 million/minute as they worked out on the lunar surface. And subsequently virtually every fragment of time was busy time, with plenty to do, and thanks to checklists and TV, it was all pretty much accounted for. Yeas later in retrospect, it remains on of the common laments by Apollo crews that they had essentially no time to just personally internalize where they were and what they were doing. =sigh= The ISS is a dinosaur, Justin. A relic of Cold War planning and with each rev, fins it increasingly difficult to find a raison d’etre in the 21st century.

    @Coastal Ron wrote @ July 27th, 2012 at 6:32 pm

    =yawn= As if we wait for Smitty to post to kepe up w/ televised hearings on matters space. =eyeroll= Yep, you’re a fella who waits to be told what do do for sure. And you’ve been told. ;-)

  • Vladislaw

    DCSCA wrote:

    “You do realize that had the ISS been anchored to the floor of the Ocean of Storms,”

    Can you name anyone from NASA that has suggested that a base at the floor of the Ocean of Storms would be a good place for a base?

    The US has routinely abandoned bases. How many military bases have been abandoned in our history? Unless that base was buried under a few feet of regolith it’s life expectancy would actually be less than a base orbiting in LEO.

  • Justin Kugler

    DCSCA,
    What is evident is your complete inability to respond to the salient points I have actually raised.

  • Vladislaw

    DCSCA babbled …

    “Justin, the desperation to keep selling this turkey after decades and billions of dollats spent is evident. It comes down to this- what did they do up there today to justify the cost… or yesterday…that’s what it’s all about.”

    Granted, congress made this the pork wagon of the century, but you are totally insane trying to characterize it like you do.

    This is a lab, regardless of how long it took to get built, that was just finished. It doesn’t matter where you build a lab, it is insane to write it has produced nothing before the freakin’ thing is done.

    Second, lets build a lab on the ground, and limit it to one truck load of material every few months. We do not have a reliable, consistant cargo transportation system yet.

    AGAIN, it is insane to make these statements when a lab just comes on line but astrotechs still can’t travel to it on a regular basis and ground personal can not get experiments moved there and back …yet.

    How soon after a lab is FULLY operation and max personal are employed does it take for a lab to get some results? According to you 5 minutes after they do the ribbon cutting dedication.

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