Dwayne Day has an interesting article on the degree to which the space station can be considered a success, but I would have thought that he knew that it was mostly made of aluminum and composites--very little steel involved.

The justifications for the space station at that time were...A United States space station would...check out and launch rockets to higher orbit...[and] stake out options for the future, enabling a future president to endorse future missions to the Moon, asteroids, and Mars

As you have noted before, Rand, this doesn't seem feasible in the orbit in which it has been placed.

I chose it because it was cool, not because it was accurate, and because "Twenty-five gigabucks of pork" seemed a little too nasty.

Air traffic controllers call what they do "pushing tin," even though most airplanes have remarkably little tin in them.

...because "Twenty-five gigabucks of pork" seemed a little too nasty.

But much more historically accurate than either steel or aluminum (or tin). You are an historian, right? ;-)

I have a question. How has "pork barrel politics" as an objective "appeared in some official form or other since the creation of the space station program" in speeches , budget documents, memos and other records ?

That's the real problem with politics. The actual objectives often don't get written down. But most astute observers know what they are...

Well if the ISS success is defined by pork barrel politics, then it would have to be considered a staggering success. Maybe NASA should consider creating an artificial blackhole next, if they succeeded, the money could literally get sucked into it, this would eliminate a lot of political complexity.

Maybe NASA should consider creating an artificial blackhole next...

So many potential punchlines, so little time.

"I have a question. How has "pork barrel politics" as an objective "appeared in some official form or other since the creation of the space station program" in speeches , budget documents, memos and other records ?"

The phrase that is always used is "job creation" not "pork." No congressman ever says that he is "bringing home pork" to his constituents. "Pork" is always something that other, rude, people do, like experiencing the vapors in public.

But it is easy to find myriad examples of this. Without much digging, I found a good example. See the Congressional Record, House, April 29, 1992, p. H2739, remarks of Congresswoman Morella:

"The $7 billion that has been invested to date on the station has generated over 75,000 jobs nationwide in 39 states. I am proud to represent a large number of those workers, some of whom have committed their careers to developing a space station."

(Congresswoman Connie Morella represented Maryland's 8th District, which I believe included Goddard Space Center.)

This was an easy find, as I had this copy of the Congressional Record in my files. It covers a long floor debate over the space station. A member of Congress had submitted an amendment to kill the space station and numerous members of Congress spoke for and against it. Several members of Congress spoke about the jobs that the station would bring to their districts--i.e. pork.

But it was not simply Congress that justified the space station in terms of jobs. NASA also sold the station to Congress on this basis. I believe I have heard of NASA briefing charts that depicted all of the states with companies building space station components. It would take a good deal of research to find them, but I guarantee that they exist, because these kinds of things exist for _all_ large technology projects.

One category that I should have included in my article, but which is apparent in the congressional testimony, is that an oft-cited objective of the space station was to support American technological and commercial competitiveness in high technology. That may seem odd today, but it was very important in the period of approximately 1988-1992. That was when many people were worried about Japanese consumer electronics destroying our economy. Various people claimed that the United States could maintain a lead in high technology industry by supporting the space station and the research that would be conducted there.

My point in writing the essay was to demonstrate that the ISS was not built to satisfy a single goal or objective. And it certainly was not built simply to support science. Many of its goals and objectives have been achieved. Some have not and will likely never be achieved. And some may appear to be anachronistic now, but were very real 13-20 years ago.

But I know that when they finally turn off the lights on ISS--just as when NASA finally retires the shuttle--a bunch of commentators will immediately rush to declare the entire project a massive, wasteful "failure." As I demonstrated in the essay, that is an inaccurate assessment. It has succeeded at some of its goals, including, unfortunately, serving as a pork barrel project.

If a goal (jobs creation), could be met by _any_ government spending program other than the Space Station how can it be a success for the Space Station? Is it not, rather, a success simply for government spending?

To judge the Space Station as a success relative to a particular goal, it must be doing things that couldn't be done at all by any other program, or couldn't be done as well or as cheaply by other programs which could accomplish that same goal. If we could learn about living in space by sending astronauts to Mir and spending much less money doing so, it's hard to judge the Space Station as a successful way to learn about living in space.

"To judge the Space Station as a success relative to a particular goal, it must be doing things that couldn't be done at all by any other program, or couldn't be done as well or as cheaply by other programs which could accomplish that same goal."

This is not true at all. If your goal is to complete a marathon, you are successful if you finish the marathon. You don't have to win, unless your goal is to win.

" "To judge the Space Station as a success relative to a particular goal, it must be doing things that couldn't be done at all by any other program, or couldn't be done as well or as cheaply by other programs which could accomplish that same goal."

This is not true at all. If your goal is to complete a marathon, you are successful if you finish the marathon. You don't have to win, unless your goal is to win. "

If we use this analogy, the goal (finishing the marathon) is having the space station in orbit. Well, it hasn't even fully met that goal, yet.

But your article lists objectives beyond simply having a space station -- it is to accomplish certain technical, political, and programmatic goals. It is a means to an end, a tool to get certain things done. I can use a screwdriver to bang a nail into a piece of wood, and get it in there, but it is such an inefficient way to do so compared to a hammer that it's hard to say I've been successful in doing so.

If the same objectives could have been accomplished for less money and a shorter schedule via leveraging other countries' space programs (Mir), using shuttle missions directly for space science instead of for cargo hauling, and long term unmanned missions, then it doesn't seem like the ISS was/is "successful" -- unless the only _real_ objective was to have a space station, in which case all the other goals you listed are kinda moot.

If the same objectives could have been accomplished for less money and a shorter schedule via leveraging other countries' space programs (Mir), using shuttle missions for space science instead of cargo hauling, and long term unmanned missions, then it doesn't seem like the ISS was/is "successful" -- unless the only _real_ objective was to have a space station, in which case all the other goals you listed are kinda moot.

Actually, if one's goal was to build a worlds largest plane that could also fly, Spruce Goose was quite a success too.

IOW, its always possible to come up with a set of goals to make a project appear successful. To declare victory and perhaps go home, so to speak.
The poblem is, a project this big should never have to _search_ for the goals.

"If the same objectives could have been accomplished for less money and a shorter schedule via leveraging other countries' space programs (Mir), using shuttle missions directly for space science instead of for cargo hauling, and long term unmanned missions, then it doesn't seem like the ISS was/is "successful" -- unless the only _real_ objective was to have a space station, in which case all the other goals you listed are kinda moot."

For starters, when the space station program began, there was no option of utilizing Mir because it belonged to a communist country. As I pointed out, one of the initial goals of the program was to serve as a symbol of the Western alliance during a time of discord. It served that purpose and Mir could not. And cost-effectiveness compared to other options was never an overriding goal of the project.

You seem to be fixated on the idea that the goal of the space station was science and that the "best" way to achieve that was by using Mir. But as I pointed out, the program has had multiple goals over its 21+ years, all of them intermeshing. And for significant portions of that time, utilizing a pre-built space station operated by a communist nation was not an option. Mir would not have allowed the United States to pursue the political goals of the space station (such as demonstrating leadership, supporting American industry, etc.). In fact, the United States _did_ utilize Mir, gaining substantial experience with several flights to the station.

Your conceptualization that it is only "successful" if it is the "best" way of doing something fails on two counts. First, it assumes that the "best" option was possible. In reality, sub-optimal choices are common when a country must reconcile competing and not entirely compatible interests. Second, it assumes that your definition of "best" is the right one. But you have not effectively demonstrated that at all.

Comparing SSF with ISS, particularly when you apply the goals of the former to the goals of the latter, is really a non-sequiter. For instance, Page 2 goes from "Serving as a construction platform for Lunar and Mars missions" (an SSF objective) to "Supporting ex-Soviet aerospace workers and institutions, and symbolizing post-Cold War US-Russian cooperation" (an ISS objective).

Space Station Freedom failed. It never left the drawing board; it was never built (save a module or two). ISS is failing too, but as a space station. It has succeeded in its political objectives primarily in keeping two government run space programs functioning.

Pardon me if I don't get all excited about that.