ISS + SSI

Is ISS the opposite of SSI? :-)

Robin's appeal for ISS sounded like what I would have supported 15 years
ago. I worked many years thinking SSF/ISS was the vital step toward
O'Neill's vision. (Letters to the Washington Post, lobbying, displays in
shopping centers, even an effort to put a full scale space station model on
the mall next to the Air&Space museum.)

But then I got burned by working as a contractor for NASA. After five space
station redesigns, the cancelation of the space station evolution office,
the collapse of the Space Exploration Initiative (after helping coordinate
transportation node studies), and the limbo of the Advanced Program Office,
I learned first hand how NASA's only customer is Congress, and "effort"
counts more than results (effort=jobs). Even the science mission list for
the ISS redesign was sorted by Congressional district.

It was really sad to watch as NASA Langley threw out all their space solar
power files. (Don't worry, they are not lost - I saw many of them
translated into Japanese while the International Space University space
solar power study in Kitakyushu in 1992.)

The technology developed for ISS may be of some use in future space
operations.
Maybe.

The problem has been a culture that searches for the most expensive
solution to any problem. Why? Because you need to justify the size of your
organization within tight budgets. If your 50 person office can accomplish
its task with only 5 people, that is a disaster! Some of the resulting
technology works, and might be used - but it was developed in some weird
parallel universe where cost is the last thing considered, if at all. (Some
examples: Our group designed the facility to add to ISS to assemble lunar
vehicles. But we were not allowed to see any cost assessments during our
design work. We had to read in AviationWeek that it would cost $1 billion.
On one of the budget SSF/ISS redesigns, I was finally given access to the
cost numbers. I zeroed out ALL the hardware, and we were still over the
Congressional $2.1B/year limit. Last bit of info - at NASA Langley, I
worked for the manager who was on the team that invented the initial $8B
(1984) space station cost estimate. He told me directly, 'we chose that
number since we thought that was what Congress would support - it was not
based on anything.')

That statement about the ISS crew of 3, with 2.5 for maintenance - is the
NASA line. It was strange being at the Congressional hearing on space
tourism June 26. Congress is really outraged by the cut in crew, and that
'0.5 crew for science'. Especially since there are hints that NASA used an
artificial crew constraint to sell the US Hab and/or Transhab modules. With
Hab cut, they are stuck by their earlier claims the Russians systems can
only support 3 crew. When Dennis Tito said his Russian trainers (during his
8 month training) had told him their system could support a larger crew,
the congressmen jump on his info. They actually believed Tito more than all
of NASA on this question of ISS operations. This is an indication of how
low the credibility of NASA has sunk on Capitol
Hill. http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewnews.html?id=375

Actually, I know that my negative rhetoric (above) does not work.

These are not the kind of feelings that motivate people interested in space.

Somehow we do need to find a way to let NASA finish ISS, *declare victory*,
get out of routine operations, and transform itself into the kind of agency
we need. We need to frame this as a challenge for NASA and the space community.

One idea is to let regular ISS operations stimulate space commerce. This is
the Alpha-town concept (like a town growing up around a federal fort in the
west.) It has often been pointed out that ISS logistics can serve that role
that air-mail did for early aviation. A predictable market, it includes
some payloads as low risk as water resupply. ProSpace.org pushed this point
last year and this year. We hope the 'alternative access' program for ISS
(as NASA calls it) can help startup launch companies. But NASA has a habit
of saying any vehicle can support ISS, as long as it has exactly the same
capabilities (15'x60', etc.) as the Shuttle..

An operations based management model of ISS might help. This is the
direction ISScongress.org is proposing. They are looking at port
authorities as model organizations. Ones that can make contracts for
logistics support, without following complex governmental bureaucratic
procedures (or at least follow simplified rules). The next NASA ISS
official plans on this come out in September, I think.

All of this will get critical in a couple years (say, around the 100th
anniversary of the Wright brothers).

"The ISS is complete" announces NASA and the partners.

"What is it doing for us??" asks the public, looking at the $100B
price tag.

*IF* we play it right, NASA may see it vital to their own interests to show
how the ISS will help open space according the SSI vision. Big IF.

But how do we get there, in only a couple years?

- Eric Dahlstrom

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