Critics doubt value of space station science

WASHINGTON After the White House decided recently to prolong the life of the International Space Station until 2024, the nation's top science official declared that the four-year extension would help NASA get a big return on its $100 billion investment.

The station is "proving to be an amazingly flexible laboratory," said John Holdren, chief science adviser to President Barack Obama.

Yet despite his endorsement, critics ranging from space bloggers to official NASA watchdogs say the agency still has work to do before the station reaches its scientific potential.

"The old adage is that if you build it, they will come," said Keith Cowing, a former NASA space station payload manager who runs the popular website NASA Watch. "Well, it's there, but NASA has a lot of catching up to do in terms of fully utilizing the capability of the space station."

Billed as the "largest spacecraft ever built," the football-field-sized observatory began in 1998 with the launch of a bus-sized module from Russia. Since then, the station's two major partners the U.S. and Russia have steadily added pieces and equipment, along with contributions from Japan, Canada and Europe.

Astronauts have lived there continuously since 2000, but as recently as 2008 crew members were spending only about three hours a week on science. Now NASA officials say it's up to about 50 hours a week, due largely to the crew size doubling from three to six members in 2009. But about 15 percent of the U.S. racks for experiments onboard the station sat empty as of Dec. 31, and in a report issued last July, NASA's internal watchdog raised questions about the "real world" benefit of station science.

"A vast majority of the research activities conducted aboard the ISS have related to basic research as opposed to applied research," wrote investigators for NASA's inspector general.

It's the difference, they noted, between figuring out the biology of life in space and developing "more efficient materials" for products that could be used on Earth.

"While discoveries made as a result of basic research may eventually contribute to 'real world' applications, investors and for-profit companies may be reluctant to allocate funds to basic research especially when the likelihood of profitable results is unknown," the authors added.

Much of the research done so far on the station has focused on astronaut health, and that's partly by design. More than 200 space travelers have visited the station since 2000, and the steady flow has provided NASA scientists with plenty of test subjects to study risks to the body from muscle atrophy to vision problems.

Original post:
Critics doubt value of space station science