Story Musgrave Thinks That The ISS is "an ungodly sin"

Arthur C Clarke's vision of a space station was a huge wheel rotating to produce artificial gravity and serving as a way station to the Moon and planets.
He decried that "Mass of junk up there".
But we have it and if it serves no use, then lets make it useful. Make it a home port for a true exploration space craft.

If "enlightened" means embracing the ISS, I guess there are many of us that aren't worthy to approach the altar of debate. Dr. Musgrave's comments are one man's opinions that are shared by many. At least he's able to articulate his reasons unlike some who use arm waving as a substitute.

Sorry Keith, I think your dismissive attitude to Dr. Musgrave is off base.

A good piece by/about Story. While I don't necessarily agree with will of his points, I do wonder why ISS cost $100billion and 26 years. While

I don't know about combining manned and unmanned programs; there is not a lot of overlap between them, the US manned programs are pretty significantly chopped into multiple pieces. He's right, the program/project management did not do their job on Constellation, and really have never done their job on ISS either, at leas tin many years. But they each tried to do their own technical jobs. Why wasn't there one team to do the individual systems instead of different teams for each program.

Poor management and that problem are both reasons why ISS took $100B and 26 years.

The sin is how much it ended up costing us and how much longer it took then it should have.

I don't expect predictability from Musgrave.
The man operates in a different dimension then most of us and has offered some of the most insightful and deep commentary in support of human spaceflight I have *ever* read.
His perspective to me is that of a true spaceman in the full sense of the word.
Understanding that, you can start to understand why he would assess the ISS harshly.

His thoughts on project management and goals?
On strong leadership?
He's dead on.

Yeah, we are in a serious crisis there today with Obama's "plan" and "leadership".

It is foolish to dismiss easily what Musgrave is trying to tell us.

There was never any logical reason to build a super titanic microgravity space station. That money really should have been spent developing a shuttle C heavy lift vehicle. Then a cheaper Skylab like space station, or stations, could have been deployed. And we could have also used that HLV to return to the Moon and beyond and deploy space telescopes much larger than the Hubble.

A super titanic space station was a bad idea when Reagan first proposed it! And the fact that President Obama wants to increase funding for the ISS even more just adds insult to injury. If anything, the $2 billion a year ISS budget should be cut in half, not increased by 50% as proposed in the Obama budget by 2015.

Marcel F. Williams

I think I understand his perspective.

100 billion clams could have bought you a quite a few things in retrospect. We spent most of that on a single station that has now become the focus of Obama's Plan-B. Which means we're going to spend a lot more on it before this is over.

If Hubble is the benchmark of exploration, challenge, and value in a big space project... How does the ISS stack up in comparison?
Is it on its way towards accomplishing a goal worthy of our investment?

Musgrave is correct.

The ISS is a white elephant with little scientific value. The money wasted on it and the Shuttle missions to supply it could have been better used for a bee swarm of robotic science missions to all the planets.

Unfortunately we still have those self-serving bullies who angrily claim their high tech welfare job is adequate justification for even more spending on human space flight programs that are basically pointless.

Interesting article. He does do a lot to highlight the advantages of a combined human-robot effort, though frankly there are still some things only a human can do (if we ever get serious about looking for microbes in the remnant geothermal systems 3km below the Martian surface, for example, we're probably going to need boots on the ground, to make sure the drill doesn't break if nothing else).

However, I would also argue that the ISS's space science return is a bit of a red herring. It was never really about space science - it was about learning how to build things in space, and keep them running.

Story Musgrave has my utmost respect, but he is forgetting the first word of "International Space Station". Aren't our international partners the reason we felt obligated to revive Space Station Freedom? To lead the world into human spaceflight instead of sitting on the sidelines (cough cough, Great Britain)?

Suppose the ISS was a mistake. Okay. That is in the past. Shouldn't we take full advantage of the station now that we've paid for it? Does canceling Ares I do that (when Falcon 9 hasn't even launched yet)? Does ditching it before 2020 do that? It's built; move on!

Now watch what happens when the Chinese and/or Russians build the first moon base and leave the US in the [lunar] dust.

Musgrave is correct.

The ISS is indeed of little scientific value and I'm a graduated molecular biologist. We can conduct all these biology experiments on cheaper spacecraft - like Foton. No need for a huge white elephant like the ISS.

What's worse, $100 billion for the station, or not having the ride to orbit to make it truly effective?

IIRC one flight of a DIRECT Jupiter class rocket could launch the same volume of working-space in one or two flights, but everyone rains on the parade that could keep us in orbit AND build ISS 2.0 in record time.....

Musgrave is right: the ISS is nothing more than a jobs program and after 12 years of working on it, I never saw any other use for it than exactly that. The money would have been better spent on UNMANNED space probes that actually do advance science and human understanding of the cosmos.

Stan Pengelly

This thread really encapsulates the issues IMO.

As BernieEOD says, ISS may be a white elephant but the past cannot be changed and the task is to make use of it now its there. De-orbiting it or not funding it after 2015 always was a failure of imagination.

Musgrave says "There has never been any money to be made in space except for commercial satellites" with the tacit implication that it will always be so. But this is precisely the challenge i.e. finding reasons other than (state funded) scientific and military ones for people to be in space. The argument about robots doing the job better is empty when the objective is to go there ourselves.

He also says "Obama's policy is ... lacks what he considers two essential elements for success: specific vision, and a solid project management approach".

Treating the conquest of space as a Project is the very false thinking which led to Constellation. Building a rocket is a project. Going to the moon is a project.

Expanding the sphere of human economic activity into space is something else entirely. Both worthwhile, but events have proven that the Which? Project approach is not enough at this time.

"While I don't necessarily agree with will of his points, I do wonder why ISS cost $100billion and 26 years."

IMHO, at least, it was the absence of an uncrewed expendable SD cargo lifter. If it were possible to launch ISS modules into orbit, where they could have been picked up by the Canadarm 2 and at least attached (if not activated) by the crew without shuttle assistance, the delay from Columbia could have been greatly reduced.

Indeed, such a facility if available from the start of the ISS project could have shaved quite a few years off of the US segment's construction timeline. It might have even allowed parallel development of BEO capability, either direct-launch vehicle, rendezvousing with the shuttle for crew transfer, or an orbit-to-orbit vehicle staging off of the ISS.

@ BernieEOD,

Whilst I have the greatest respect for Arthur C. Clarke, he was wrong in this case. A rotating artificial gravity station is still far off and has actually been broght closer by the work done of the ISS. We now know how to build large, complex structures in space, something that wasn't as clearly understood in the 1980s.

Musgrave makes some excellent points. His point about emphasizing robotic methods of exploration now is right on. He recognizes that you don't need humans directly in-situ in order to expand human utilization of space.

Gonzo,
My job is to help put science experiments on the Station. We can have an honest debate about the best use of NASA funding, but you, sir, are simply poisoning the well with your insults and accusations.

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/index.html

http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/science/experiments/Publications.html

I suggest you take some time to learn about what is actually done on the Station. For that matter, so should Dr. Musgrave.

"Musgrave is correct. The ISS is a white elephant with little scientific value... self-serving bullies...their high tech welfare job"

Eeau de contraireyion:

scientific value hmmmmmm?

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dancin in the moonlight, everybody's feelin warm and bright

I had the honor to meet and talk to Story for about 20 minutes in 2005.. The man does indeed work on a different plane that most of us, he gets down to the smallest detail on all of his thoughts. I believe that he is someone with a unique perspective (6 spaceflights at least one on each shuttle) that we should listen to. I think to dismiss a man with this much experience and this much education is to embrace Obama's new space plan as a fantastic foward thinking miracle, instead of something that resembles a lot of water treading.

ISS is not Clarke's majestic wheel in space but it is what we have and has supported sustained human presence in space, the main advance in human space activity since Apollo. The main political justification to keep it going is for fulfillment of commitments to international collaborations, and that should continue to be the focus. On behalf of all humanity we make our first steps to the stars. On robotics, absolutely agree that a thousand robotic dogs and even horses on the Moon, Mars, Europa, Titan, and elsewhere will always be more cost effective, although there is still room in this mostly robotic vision for a few human cowpokes to ride herd. As on Earth, machines will do the heavy lifting for astroengineering, e.g. deflection of errant asteroids from Earth impact. Our future saviors will more likely be a fleet of nuclear-powered robotic spacecraft with ion drives, rather than Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck, but we may need to send Bruce and Ben along to make those critical on-site management decisions and sacrifices best left to humans.

The average citizen, who may live on a lower plane than the good doctor, wouldn't much like the idea that more than $100 billion of their money was spent on something that so many would denigrate or dismiss. We've got it-at great cost-so let's make use of it. Home port for assembly of deep space missions might be a great idea, too.

I don't buy that robots are not "inspiring". When I was a kid I was _obsessed_ with the Voyagers and couldn't care less about Apollo. Many people today follow the Mars probes with great interest.

But I'm glad the station isn't going to be dumped into the sea.

Soon as we do we'll all cry about it and think of a million things we could've done with it.

Very good honest perspective from Musgrave. A major portion of NASA's problems the huge bureaucracy and the petrified methodology of doing anything. It is almost time to tear it all down and start again with new ideas and modern management practices. I've worked for NASA for years and it is so apparent. Programs start and spend big bucks only to find they are over budget, behind schedule, and technically challenged. And many fresh ideas to make things better or different are discarded by management who want to simply maintain the structure that exists. Actually Obama's vision makes much sense partly because it realizes the budgetary limitations. But I have said ever since February we need a defined goal or "vision." That is what is lacking. Why is it going to take another 5 years for a decision on an HLV? We could and should make that decision in the next 6 months. More hesitation is not going to get us anywhere.

1) Keith worked on the ISS, so I will grant him that it is difficult to be objective over a project in which you have invested personal sweat equity.

2) Frank, about your comment:

Home port for assembly of deep space missions might be a great idea, too.

It might be, if you ignore, or change, the orbital inclination of the ISS. However, you might wish to investigate the relationship between orbital inclination, how much fuel it takes to reach higher inclinations, and the resulting impact on payload upmass. The ISS inclination was chosen mostly to placate the Russians (i.e. political vs. technical reasoning). However, that higher inclination did make the ISS a good vehicle for observing the earth, since that inclination allows it to "see" more of the earth's surface over several orbital passes. But a higher inclination is decidedly NOT efficient for doing much beyond earth orbit because of the lower upmass capabilities resulting from the higher fuel requirements to reach such an orbit.

Keith's note: Oh well. So much for the notion that a whole bunch of college degrees and lots of trips into outer space automatically makes you enlightened.

Keith, you've done us all a great service by providing NASA Watch over the years. I hit this site daily and helps me tremendously. I have a lot of respect for somebody like you who can do this kind of thing. And I imagine you are a great engineer as well.

But I do want to encourage you to restrain impulses to make value-statements like you did of Story. You're too well respected and I'd hate to have that respect diminished.

I'm with Frank Sietzen. We have it, it's an asset. Now let's maximize the value we obtain from it.

but just how well would a platform built for science experimentation serve as a "space garage" for building a beo craft or serving as a real depot/transfer facility? how much would it cost to make necessary conversions to make it a viable space dock? perhaps more than building something designed for the specific job... i don't know, i'm just someone interested in the space program, and not an engineer or scientist. but as many have pointed out, other than JFK's moon challenge, there has really been no truly long range plan in our space program, and so accomplishing something long range with the piecemeal bits that we have developed over the last 4 decades makes it that much harder and more expensive.

jkugler provided an important service by porting some actual facts to this thread.

Go and look at the links he posted. As you peruse the long list of publications, remember that very little research could be done until the full crew of 6 began working (it takes a crew of about 3 to operate ISS) and that the NASA part of the ISS R&D effort was badly underfunded and misdirected because of Constellation. Only in the future under the new program will we see what can really be done on the ISS.

"While I don't necessarily agree with will of his points, I do wonder why ISS cost $100billion and 26 years."

Don't remember the exact number but we lost a bunch of money and time waiting for the Russians to finish the Service Module. It ended up being at least 2 years late, mostly because the Russian government couldn't come up with the money to pay Energia. Added in Columbia related delays and changing designs and program direction due to political impacts and there you are.

Musgrave is correct.

Change could only come from putting real scientists on-board instead of highly respected astronauts with cream-of-the-crop blemish-free credentials.

No offense, of course.

The probability of that ever happening, however, is quite slim. However, probabilities change over time since time wounds all heels.

Now that we have it, we need to make use of it instead of disposing of it. It could actually be part of a modular exploration vehicle. Dock a VASIMR powered exploration craft to it and have it borrow the various scientific modules from the ISS as it goes from LEO to the Moon, asteroid, or other exploration mission.

As jkugler showed, some things are being done on ISS. How much is useful, applicable science? Questionable.

There are several things that really make the ISS difficult to use for science (or for anything else).

-THE ASTRONAUTS -few -IF ANY- have ever gone up as a
laboratory researcher/scientist or even as an engineer that ensures some special scientific hardware is working properly like Charlie Walker did several times on Shuttle in the mid-80s, with CFES. So really you have some well trained scientists, pilots and engineers who are going up mainly as technicians to keep ISS and the some equipment on-board operating, and as tourists to send some pictures back home.

If you want a 'manned space laboratory' then send people in a capacity where they can be used to do some serious work. If you go back to the 1950s and earlier, the stations were filled with people who were experts applying their expertise.

The US segment must be kept pristine, and therefore nothing with any possible of contamination is allowed to be handled. The astronauts are not trained, dressed, or otherwise equipment to do real hands on work. So everything has to be automated.

As it is, the equipment usually needs to be made automated because so many experimenters want the astronauts to have as little to do with possible with their hardware.

- interfaces on-board for operation. The ISS does not have a standardized interface for power (or for virtually anything else). That means that every minor little piece of equipment has to be built specially to be able to plug in on ISS. This gets to be a complex and expensive problem. Most researchers do not have the deep pockets NASA has.

- interfaces, integration processes and schedule on the ground and between the ground and space. It can easily take the same length of time developing an experiment to fly and working through all of the integration processes (and documents) as it takes to get a PhD. Its not conducive to anyone wanting to fly real science. It takes so long, that FREQUENTLY your experiment gets bumped in the later stages or you lose funding...it is a GREAT RISK to plan to work on an ISS flight experiment for years with the near expectation that it likely will never fly.

There were several examples on Shuttle of just how streamlined an integration process could be. Spacehab and Shuttle Mir were really processes developed with the payload user in mind. There the experimenters had their hands held the entire way. ISS has now reverted back to the early Shuttle ways, and the convoluted, poorly managed and integrated process, in combination with schedule issues and the problems above, means the ISS is really not of much value to the scientist on earth. Its easier to do science by working the Russian side, going up on a Soyuz, having your Russian take care of the payload in orbit, and returning it on the Soyuz, even though there are a lot more Americans and American facilities at the other end.

- beginning in a few months, lack of ANY downmass. The only way to get any kind of experiments or samples back is only what will fit in an astronauts pocket in their spacesuit. Until an Orion super light or one of the COTS carriers comes through, nothing else is in the plan. If its like 95% of experiments that requie returned samples, why would anyone invest serious money now in the expectation that at some point in the future the experiment MIGHT become supportable?

Story Musgrave is right on. The US could have gotten by with much simpler Skylab type stations and the money better spent. And he gives good examples of what could have been done with the money spent. I would emphasize the robotic (NASA SMD) side of the NASA program. Without the robotic missions, Manned flight would have been written off as folly and cancelled. The public would not have long accepted its lack of productivity and its failures before cancelling or reshaping to focus on robotic vehicles.

What has the space station ever done for us, except make us look even more ridiculous than we would have anyway? A small space station is the easiest post-Gemini manned space program imaginable...and after twenty-six years the thing isn't even finished. But it has set a record for cost over-runs! The return so far is exactly zero. Sure, the station could be used for worthwhile things...but who among us thinks there's any chance at all that it ever will be?

Why does it have to be all about science. What is sending probes and robots into space going to tell us about working in space, living in space, building in space. If you want we could all sit back and view everything from here on Earth but to get the practical experience of space you actually have to go there. Probes and robots aren't going to save us from an asteroid or get us to another planet. I think that's more important to us than things like dark matter, sure it's all very interesting but of what practical use is it.

Skylab was great but its a lesson we have forgotten and about to make the same mistake with Shuttle.

There was all of the equipment ready to do a Skylab II. The Skylab is sitting in the Smithsonian. The Saturn is sitting at JSC. The 3 Apollo vehicles were also standing by. One was used for ASTP. One was the ASTP rescue vehicle and is now in the Saturn V center at KSC. And one is in the Saturn V tin shed at JSC.

But by the time the decision to continue with a second Skylab series needed to be made, they thought the Shuttle was done deal and in fact one of the reasons Skylab was called an orbital workshop and not a space station was because they did not want to confuse Nixon, Congress and the public. Station was going to be Shuttle's prime payload.

By the time Shuttle was finally sold, a couple years later in 72, Station was deferred to the next decade.

Same thing we are going through now with Shuttle. Everyone, including the people who manage Shuttle today, wanted to focus on Orion and Ares so they all supported terminating Shuttle. And that is exactly what we are now doing, except that Orion and Ares are probably gone, because the architecture was never well defined for it. At least while Skylab was flying the Shuttle program had been approved for about a year, and the first Shuttle was taking shape and would be airborn about 2 years later. Still, the orbital gap was about six years long.

We are now about to be left with nothing.

sounds right!

but wait, we have real SPACEBALLS:

US wants to revamp miniature satellite research onboard space station

DARPA scientists want new algorithms, flight control technology to try out in space

http://www.networkworld.com/community/node/60398

while criticisms about the station r&d management & costs may be valid (& remember how the CxP crowd were retreads-explains alot huh), station value being assessed by professional students who only value neverending research?

but how do spaceballs avoid being space junk fod and coexist with rockets/shuttles?

"If you want a 'manned space laboratory' then send people in a capacity where they can be used to do some serious work. If you go back to the 1950s and earlier, the stations were filled with people who were experts applying their expertise."

http://davidszondy.com/future/space/colliersstation.htm

Actually a brilliant idea. Especially if there is no capability to return samples and experiments for the next several years.

Have microbiologists and scientists who do research on humans and life sciences do on-board sample analysis, cell cultures, etc.

Have meteorologists, geologists, oceanographers crop growth and urban land utilization scientists conduct observational research and report results back daily and in the journals.

I've only heard of one or two astronauts trying to do real scientific work up there. One was Don Pettit. He had to rig screwdrivers as camera mounts but took wonderful astrophotography and auroras. And the other, maybe it was Ed Lu(?) wrote a scientific paper about using an ultrasound device it ways it had never been intended and published a paper from orbit. Why don't the astronauts have the right kind of equipment to do work that might have been planned? Are the astronauts given schedule time to do work like this? We've got enough people doing the planning.

Why haven't Pettit and Lu flown again?

Why aren't the astronauts on ISS doing real science? What are they waiting for? Why aren't we using the ISS for what it was supposed to be able to do, or is it just a big zero-g room and everyone is just circling, biding their time?

Is the ISS equipped to do science work? Are the astronauts capable?

Well.
This is sad, STS-107
hey we have to build ISS why have a Mission Status Review? Nothing hit the wing and there is nothing we can do anyhow?

This bring us to the current NASA Re-plan! Once again!

In the short term, Musgrave is right. But nothing about HSF is about the short term. The hope, and that's what it is, is for a long term pay off. Until then, every penny feeds the learning curve.

That's because President Obama really doesn't want NASA building a new heavy lift vehicle. He wants to outsource that too to private industry. So he's hoping that in 4 or 5 years, a company like Space X will have developed its own HLV so the federal government won't have too.

Besides, if we build an HLV then we'd have to use it. And President Obama wants the Federal government completely out of the manned spaceflight business. If people want to fly into space then he thinks private industry should do it-- not the government.

He has a very conservative-- Nixonian-- perspective on this, IMO.

Marcel F. Williams

While the ISS stack in it's current configuration and orbital inclination leave it pretty much useless for doing some of the sexier things in space that it could have done the fact is we have it and we should do everything we can to maximize it's utility and science return.I hope that the coming vasimir experiments in re-boosting the station may possibly lead to the station's orbit slowly being made elliptical turning the station into an Aldrin cycler for use in support of a real Mars mission. Why reinvent the wheel when we already have a long duration facility in orbit available for re-tasking just need to change it's delta -v.

I would only argue with Story's arithmetic. Voyager was about $0.9B in those year dollars. More like ~$2B in ISS-peak-year dollars. So you'd get about 50 Voyager-class missions for ISS, not 300.

Lest someone think that since you got two Voyager spacecraft for $2B, that you could get one for $1B, it doesn't work that way. The second Voyager spacecraft built at the same time cost much less than the first, except the second launch vehicle did not get a discount. Let's say a one-spacecraft Voyager mission would be $1.5B.

Considering ISS more completely, it cost ~$100B for the US, but another ~$50B for the international partners. Total $150B. So my bottom-line guess is you could get ~100 single spacecraft Voyager-class missions for ISS. So Story was off by a factor of three.

Story said nothing about the $100B being too much for ISS, rather that the US should have spent it on something else. We should not be surprised that ISS cost $150B. Instead we should be surprised that anyone thought it could be anything less. A good metric for typical space hardware (a representative mix of structure, plumbing, and avionics), including delivery, is around $500K per kg. ISS currently is around 350,000 kg on orbit. So it should have cost around $175B.

Hey, we got a bargain!

Now consider applying that metric to a crewed Mars mission ...

jkugler, I took a look at the ISS science link you provided. In particular, I looked into SEITE (a random project from the list) and as far as I can tell, that project involved the Space Shuttle and various existing satellites, and the project has nothing to do with the ISS. Am I missing something, or is the list of ISS science projects exaggerated?

On a total tangent, if any of you haven't taken a look at the ISS as it goes overhead, you should do so. It's pretty cool: http://esa.heavens-above.com/esa/iss_step1.asp
(By the way, that site is much better than the corresponding NASA site http://spaceflight.nasa.gov/realdata/sightings/ )

If you look at the second site carefully it states "The publications (bibliographic references) listed on this page result from research performed on the International Space Station (ISS) or on Shuttle Missions to the ISS ("Sorties")". I am guessing that science done on shuttle during missions to ISS is probably managed by the ISS payloads office and that is why it is included in the database.

There are several things that really make the ISS difficult to use for science (or for anything else). (...)

Brian, thanks for your comments. You pointed out the real issues with flying experiments on the ISS.
I participated in a few things flying up there and you pointed out all the non-sense in starting every time from scratch, re-inventing the wheel each time, not re-using existing stuff and so on.
I proposed years ago a common experiment box with a standardized power interface and even a standardized embedded controller, but the idea was quickly dismissed. Scientists have to start from zero every time and normal science never considers ISS as an option for doing research.

And about Dr. Musgrave, I strongly respect him, but I cannot agree with him (at least fully) because having the ISS is in part a good thing: too late to not use it now. But I am puzzled, because (perhaps I am mistaken) I think he never said that so strongly when he was still on active status.