This event is sponsored by STAC, The Science and Technology Advisory Council. According to their website, STAC is "the Russian organization responsible for program management and implementation of US-funded space research. Reporting to the Russian Space Agency (RKA) .... $20 million in funding to Russia was provided under contract NAS 15-10110. The contract was in place in November 1993 and finalized in June 1994."

We are wondering why a meeting such as this has not been more widely publicized by NASA (other than a small 1 inch ad in the back of Space News). With all of Dan Goldin's proclamations about the 'world class science' being done aboard Mir, you'd think that NASA PAO would have churned something out by now (press release) such that people could make plans to attend this meeting. Indeed, you'd expect that Code L would be making sure that all of the staff on the Hill knew about it. This does not seem to be the case.

We have been preparing an analysis of the science output of the $400 million Phase 1 Shuttle-Mir program (and its implications for ISS science) based upon information we have found on- and off-line. The US has been doing science on Mir since 1994. As such, you'd expect to see some solid results in print (or online) by now. However, such publications have been rather difficult to find. While it certainly does take time to analyze data and prepare a publication, you'd think that some of the work done on orbit 3 years ago would be in print by now.

A series of presentations are to be made at this symposium. Perhaps this is where we will find out what we have gained from our support of Russia and the Shuttle-Mir Program - and when all of this research is going to be published. We hope that the Russian scientists who are making presentations address the issue of publishing data - and that NASA encourages and supports the publication and broad dissemination of this data.

Dan Goldin makes frequent mention of the world class science to be done aboard the International Space Station. We are inclined to believe that this is indeed going to be the case.

However, if NASA fails to show exactly what scientific results this $400 million initial investment has produced, NASA is going to find it increasingly difficult to defend the additional money it wants to take from other NASA programs to complete the ISS - especially when some of these programs have done a far better job than the Space Station and Space Shuttle Programs at explaining exactly what scientific return we have all received.