ITAR and Secrecy Options

[Guest_Richard Trigaux_*]

From my personnal experience as working in a subcontractor company, I think it is not really difficult to share infos such as a computer interface. And anyway, such a document is closely knit to the considered computer, so it is of no use anywhere else. So, even if this document is stolen, it is useless as an industry secret or defense secret as well.

I don't know exacly if the Huygens problems were due to US ITAR or european contractors. Statements like that must rely on thorough inquiries, not on childish exchanges like "it's your fault -no we cannot be wrong it is you who did not understood" etc.

What is sure is that any ITAR-like regulation should result into "yes or no" for a given tech, not in harassment or ambiguous situation. And not in inappropriate situations, like in the design of a spaceship.

About paranoïa, it would not be the first example in the US: remember maccarthysm.


The problems helvick raises are more serious, but not an insurpassable barrier. When we design an instrument, it is on specifications, which are gathered in a document. And this document is part of the legal contract. The subcontractor must provide a device complying to the specs. If he doesn't, it is his fault (unless there was a technical impossibility). If he complies to the spec, but the spec turns to be inappropriate, uncomplete or ambiguous, it is the fault of the main company.

language barrier is not so strong, in a world where everybody more or less speak english. But cultural barriers are more a problem, as the description of physical phenomenon often relies on small paradigms which vary with culture and language. This can be a cause of misunderstanding or ambiguiites, like the time when, in the 1945' France ordered "corn" from the US. But they received "maize" in place of the expected "wheat".

[Guest_Analyst_*]

Sorry, but I find none of those examples convincing in support of international cooperation. In my opinion, the US could have built all of them at less total mission cost to itself, and that would have supported the US aerospace industry better.

Maybe at less TOTAL mission cost, but not without MORE U.S. money. You can't built the Cassini orbiter AND Huygens in the U.S. with less money than both vehicles did cost combined built by NASA and ESA. You may save some paperwork, but not that much. And some of this paperwork is because ITAR.

But all this is pointless: The U.S. can't (or do not want to) spend more money than it does. So you cooperate or have a less capable (or no) spacecraft. Why is Mr. Griffin asking for international cooperation in the VSE? Money. Why did Canada built the RMS and Europe Spacelab? Because money has been so tight that only the Shuttle itself could be built and operated (and only a small number of planetary probes, nothing between 1978 and 1989!). In theory you can do all this by yourself, and Europe can it too, but both don't. Money is the issue and will be for a long time. And ITAR makes the best solution, cooperation, less efficient or impossible.

Analyst

[The Messenger]

While it is certainly easier and possibly cheaper to build a rocket without international wrench turning, it is more difficult to build one correctly if the entire space knowledge base is at the disposal of the builders. The US and USSR both recognized this in the 60's and started a limited sharing of space techology in order to gain a greater potential of successful space science missions.

There are 10001 low tech ways to attack the US of A that are effective, cheap and not as easy to track and retaliate against as the most advanced and elaborate missile and re-entry system - it is laughable to suggest that the analysis of heat shield of MER 2 is a national security issue. However, a report might shed interesting light on the Martian atmosphere for anyone studying the planet for any reason. (And I am sure any invading Martians have already given it a once over.)

ITAR should be enforce in the way that was anticipated when it was presented to Congress: It should provide an effective prosecuting tool against US citizen who sale high tech weapon systems to embargoed nations. I have a forty-page legal report on the effect of ITAR on universities. The scope of the standard should be narrowed.

[elakdawalla]

One thing that's both a benefit and a curse about international cooperation is that when it does actually happen, it makes a mission harder to cancel. That was instrumental in saving Cassini-Huygens -- but also, of course, in keeping the ISS going. When I heard Gerhard Neukum scolding Mary Cleave at the LPSC NASA Night for the abrupt cancellation of Dawn (including, of course, its European-built instruments), and his statement that NASA was earning a reputation as an untrustworthy partner, I couldn't help but think that one of the (many) reasons space science is being squeezed so much is because we have to honor our international agreements on ISS, which are much more valuable than a couple of cameras. How much would the Europeans scold if NASA said "Sorry, the Shuttle just can't do it anymore; ISS is as complete as NASA can make it."

I think something like ITAR is necessary but it would be awfully nice if its collateral damage to international collaboration on science missions could be reduced -- it seems to be a rather blunt instrument. I saw what a hard time the European teams had getting going on MER -- at the outset they were not even permitted to touch the computers they were supposed to use to develop the sequences for their instruments -- and many, many foreign-born grad students attending various American universities who were supposed to work on instrument teams ended up being excluded entirely from participation in mission operations. MER did appear to overcome at least the foreign-PI-isn't-allowed-to-sequence-his-instrument challenge but only because they devoted a good-sized staff at JPL to solving the problem.

--Emily

[Stephen]

Do any members of the UMSF community have more background on why ITAR
was inititated and if Congress is aware of the damage that it is causing in
American efforts to explore space?

On the "why" part, check out the Space Review's A Short History of Export Control Policy.

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Stephen

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

...How much would the Europeans scold if NASA said "Sorry, the Shuttle just can't do it anymore; ISS is as complete as NASA can make it."

I'd risk a scolding from Europe, even a good finger wagging. Look at how much the US is spending in 2006, relative to other space programs:

NASA - $17.0 billion
ESA - $ 3.7 billion (2.9 billion euros)
RKA - $ 0.9 billion (25 billion rubles)
China - $ 0.5 billion

I'm repeating myself, but I sure would like to see our ISS budget applied to something more interesting. I suppose the ESA would be upset, but they could either 1) pay the real cost or 2) hire the Russians to lift the components with Proton (which is a joint US/Russian venture btw).

It's especially annoying to be helping the ESA launch their ISS components, when they just passed a law making it illegal to use our commercial launch services. That is not good international cooperation.

[djellison]

There is already an international agreement that lays out who does what for the ISS. If the US is getting a bad deal out of it, then the US is to blame for not . In launching Columbus (and the module from Japan) - the US also earns itself access to a considerable percentage of those facilities time on orbit (i.e. we'll build this module, and give you 50% of it if you launch it for us)

If the US were to go "sorry - no can do" then Europe would be entitiled to some sort of renumeration imho - a deal's a deal as far as I'm concerned, if you made a bad deal, then tough luck, should have made it better.

Besides all of that - I agree with just about everyone here in saying that the ISS is a financial pain in the backside...but I still think it should be finished - the prospect for ANY international cooperation in the future will take a serious dive if it isn't.

Doug

[Stephen]

I'd risk a scolding from Europe, even a good finger wagging. Look at how much the US is spending in 2006, relative to other space programs:

NASA - $17.0 billion
ESA - $ 3.7 billion (2.9 billion euros)
RKA - $ 0.9 billion (25 billion rubles)
China - $ 0.5 billion

Dunno about the RKA or China, but comparing the size of NASA's budget to the ESA's is like comparing apples with oranges given that a large part of NASA's goes towards its manned space program while the ESA has no manned space program to speak of. If NASA had no manned spaceflight program either I suspect it's budget would not be that much bigger than the ESA's.

NASA's budget may now be $17 billion, but it was less than 10 billion dollars before the ISS (& VSE) came along; and if you factor out another five billion for the space shuttle (as suggested by various sources), what's left is indeed not that much more than the ESA's $3.7 billion.

Incidently, see the graph on this Wikipedia page showing NASA's budget from 1958 through to 2005, in actual dollars (of the day) as well as in adjusted 1996 dollars. The 1996 dollars graph shows off both the spectacular spike of the Apollo moon missions as well as the ISS's less spectacular but still impressive contribution to NASA's bottomline.

(It also clearly illustrates that having gone up in the late '80s thanks to the ISS it has been coming down--in adjusted dollar terms--ever since, much as NASA's budget did after Apollo, if less steeply.)

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Stephen

[Guest_Analyst_*]

If I look at the Apollo spike I wonder how Mr. Griffin could say a year ago everything is an allocation issue, e.g. NASA has the money but is spending it at the wrong things. And GWB announced the VSE in the same way. IMO you can't "go to the moon and do the other things" with the current funding level. They don't even start to develop a heavy launcher now. I guess we will be ending with up the CEV in LEO (and it's booster), wich will cost eventually only a little less than the shuttle to operate. No lunar landing. Everything else is dreaming, like in the 60ies of lunar bases and a flight to mars by 1980, and in the 70ies of Shuttle missions every week, and in the 90ies of a complete ISS by 2004.

Analyst, Pessimist

[Borek]

As for the US losing through ITAR: frankly, IMHO international cooperation is overrated.

If it weren't for international cooperation, Cassini would never get off the ground.

[djellison]

This is the problem isnt it

"Go to the moon in this decade...here's a huge ammount of cash"

"Go to the moon...what...you want money?"

One's feasable...one isn't.

Doug

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Dunno about the RKA or China, but comparing the size of NASA's budget to the ESA's is like comparing apples with oranges given that a large part of NASA's goes towards its manned space program while the ESA has no manned space program to speak of. If NASA had no manned spaceflight program either I suspect it's budget would not be that much bigger than the ESA's.

That was my point, we could be spending a lot more money on something more useful than ISS. We don't need to be spending that much money just so countries can take turns playing Astronaut.

With all the money NASA is spending, it is cutting science missions, cutting the HST budget, etc. All to pay for this ridiculously useless space station.

If it weren't for international cooperation, Cassini would never get off the ground.

I'm skeptical about that statement. You mean in terms of providing money? Certainly not in terms of technology, ESA is still a beginner at interplanetary probes. Nevertheless, I think it was good to cooperate with them, I'm not saying it wasn't.

I worry about the long-term future of NASA, about the numbers of new engineers and scientists in America, etc. But at this point in time, NASA is the leader by a long way in space. Who knows what things will look like in 20 years?

[Borek]

I'm skeptical about that statement. You mean in terms of providing money? Certainly not in terms of technology, ESA is still a beginner at interplanetary probes. Nevertheless, I think it was good to cooperate with them, I'm not saying it wasn't.

I mean that Cassini was on the verge of being cancelled and was only saved through intervention of ESA director. I agree on other points, though.

[Guest_PhilCo126_*]

Lots of 'negative' comments on the ISS here, O.K. it'isn't doing the amount of science it should do, but it could contribute in some way to unmanned space missions ( e.g. receiving laboratory for the return of surface samples from Mars r other targets in the solar system ).

[Guest_DonPMitchell_*]

Lots of 'negative' comments on the ISS here, O.K. it'isn't doing the amount of science it should do, but it could contribute in some way to unmanned space missions ( e.g. receiving laboratory for the return of surface samples from Mars r other targets in the solar system ).

It's just so damn expensive, and the committment to keep the shuttle working is a staggering drain on NASA. It feels like a strategic mistake for NASA that is holding it back.

Personally, I'd love to see a privately funded orbital habitat, purely for entertainment. Let rich people pay for it, they can fly up, have zero-g sex, come back with coffee mugs and T-shirts. And in the process, spaceflight will get commoditized.