Science as a service - General Updates and Discussions

[thespacecow]

With Jared Isaacman back being the NASA administrator nominee, maybe a general thread for this concept is warranted.

Here's some quotes from Project Athena:

Directive #6: Ignite the Space Economy and Accelerate Scientific Breakthroughs (Day -9)
• Appoint a Chief Commercial Officer and consolidate the "front door" for external engagement.
• Prioritize and accelerate research throughput on the ISS to include external industry engagement.
• Kick off bulk-buy and science-as-a-service programs to bring down the cost of routine science and energize academic institutions to fund their own flagship missions.
• Reevaluate decadal prioritization process, expand access to existing data,

#3: Become a Force Multiplier for Science
• Make flagship missions routine and affordable
• Take advantage of science-as-a-service mode1s where applicable
• Reevaluate Earth science priorities. decadal frameworks, and mission pacing
• Encourage and enable academic institution-funded science and exploration missions.
• Introduce new processes for prioritizing and vetting science proposals
• Investigate ways to alleviate the DSN

Earth Science Goal/Focus Areas:

• Implement science-as-a-service model to take advantage of constellations already going up
• Increase availability and accessibility of data
• Take NASA out of the taxpayer funded climate science business and leave it for academia to determine.

Vendor Focus Areas:

Blue Origin: Kuiper: Science as a service

Constellation Operators: Science as a service, Bulk-buy busses for science acceleration

SpaceX: Starlink: Science as service or common bus for dedicated science

Comprehensive Portfolio Assessment

Within 60 days, the Chief Program Management Officer and [TBD] [Finance Person] will coordinate an audit of all programs and grants, regardless of program size. for the following:

• What scientific, economic. or national security imperative does the program address?
• Are other agencies, academic institutions, governments. or other organizations working on or capable of solving the program goals?
• Assuming the science output is comparable. could an 'as-a-service' model assume responsibilities for this program?
• Top three reasons why the program or grant should continue, and three reasons why it could be discontinued.
• The single program owner responsible for the outcome.
• The budget and resources assigned to ensure success
• The current target deadline for launch or delivery and a review of the levers/trade-offs above for accelerating timelines.
• If program goals or ultimately delivery dates are unreasonably far into the future (All programs with delivery dates more than 4 years in the future must be approved by the Administrator)
• Other obstacles impeding progress, and recommendations for clearing those blockers

Reform Science Mission Prioritization and Resource Allocation:

Reevaluate the prioritization process with the aim of generating prompt. lower-cost missions inside of the traditional decadal cadence.
Eliminate rigid dollar-value thresholds in defining scientific missions; prioritize missions based on promise and potential impact, regardless of cost category.
Evaluate opportunities, especially in Earth Sciences, to transfer repeatable and mature scientific missions to private industry through "as-a-service" models on new & existing constellations to reduce agency burden.
Expand open access to NASA scientific data, making it broadly available to qualified academic institutions, thereby freeing NASA resources to focus on new initiatives.

[thespacecow]

Here's a company actually trying to do this: Blue Skies Space - subscription service for space-based astronomy

[thespacecow]

Suggestions from someone working at Umbra: https://x.com/mouthofmorrison/status/1997682006365200653

The vision of NASA adopting privately developed “commercial” Earth science missions delivered as services is going to require a dramatic change in philosophy from principal investigators there. Including, but not limited to:
- Many narrower missions (vs fewer kitchen sink missions)
- Missions that don’t cover the entire Earth, but are underwritten to the highest-value subsets of the Earth that allow for statistically significant extrapolation
- Shorter-lived missions that iterate more quickly and must justify their existence on (at most) bi-annual cadences rather than decadal ones
- Settling for relative measurements whenever possible rather than exquisitely calibrated absolute measurements
- Problem-solving in terms of what can be accomplished by formations of smaller satellites first and only failing over to larger single-satellite solutions when absolutely necessary
- Piggybacking on missions driven by military and intelligence needs by contributing budget for priority access in regions of little or no interest to the primary sponsor
- Demanding open licensing from private developed and operated sources of data (they will cave if you have a spine)
- Partnering with cloud providers for requestor-pays egress and negotiating for free (to the government) hosting more than made up for by downstream egress and compute revenue from end-users
- Loosening top-down data formatting requirements allowing for adoption of modern, open, bottoms-up developed tool ecosystems that massively increase performance and ease of adoption outside of niche, proprietary software-captured research circles
- Negotiating directly with ground providers to bulk-purchase capacity that can be passed-through to commercial vendors saving both sides money
- And much, much more

[Tywin]

Here's a company actually trying to do this: Blue Skies Space - subscription service for space-based astronomy

Yes I waiting for his mission Twinkle, for exoplanets!!

[Jim]

1.  - Missions that don’t cover the entire Earth, but are underwritten to the highest-value subsets of the Earth that allow for statistically significant extrapolation
2.  - Shorter-lived missions that iterate more quickly and must justify their existence on (at most) bi-annual cadences rather than decadal ones
3.  - Problem-solving in terms of what can be accomplished by formations of smaller satellites first and only failing over to larger single-satellite solutions when absolutely necessary
4. - Piggybacking on missions driven by military and intelligence needs by contributing budget for priority access in regions of little or no interest to the primary sponsor
5. - Demanding open licensing from private developed and operated sources of data
6.  - Partnering with cloud providers for requestor-pays egress and negotiating for free (to the government) hosting more than made up for by downstream egress and compute revenue from end-users

Here are some issues with those.

1.  Polar orbits are mostly used to provide sun synchronization and repeating orbits.  Not for full earth coverage
2. There aren't decadal earth missions.  They are short lived <5 years.
3. The idea of multiple sensor platforms is so all see the same things at the same time.
4.  Yeah, right. There are few & rare opportunities for this.
5.  What private sources?
6.  What says data access is hard?

[Jim]

1. and energize academic institutions to fund their own flagship missions.
2. Take advantage of science-as-a-service models where applicable
3. Reevaluate Earth science priorities. decadal frameworks, and mission pacing
4 Encourage and enable academic institution-funded science and exploration missions.
5.  Take NASA out of the taxpayer funded climate science business and leave it for academia to determine.

more issues., 
1.  With what money?  NASA funds the  academic institutions for their work.  See PI managed missions.
2. Buy from who?  Science is not commercial.
3.  Why?
4.  With what money are they going to use?
5.  It is in NASA's charter

[lightleviathan]

I don't really like the "science as a service model." I think building missions with the urgency and cost controls of ESCAPADE is a much better idea, with universities and NASA institutions helping to develop new missions. It just seems like an abstraction to get more money out of NASA for the same amount of work.

[Coastal Ron]

Science is an investment in the future. It always has been, because science is too unpredictable to be "service". In other words, you can't predict or demand scientific breakthroughs, they happen in unpredictable ways.

In the business world where you do see scientific breakthroughs, it has typically been when they funded their own "science as an investment" programs, knowing that it could take years for a payoff, but that it was the only way to create new revenue models in the future (i.e. disruptive innovation vs sustaining innovation).

[thespacecow]

1. and energize academic institutions to fund their own flagship missions.
2. Take advantage of science-as-a-service models where applicable
3. Reevaluate Earth science priorities. decadal frameworks, and mission pacing
4 Encourage and enable academic institution-funded science and exploration missions.
5.  Take NASA out of the taxpayer funded climate science business and leave it for academia to determine.

more issues., 
1.  With what money?  NASA funds the  academic institutions for their work.  See PI managed missions.
2. Buy from who?  Science is not commercial.
3.  Why?
4.  With what money are they going to use?
5.  It is in NASA's charter

Since this thread is about science as a service, I'm going to focus on #2: Buy from who? From companies who want to sell the service of course. You'd say there's no such company, which is more or less correct (we do have an example in astronomy already), but that's not a showstopper as you thought.

Before NASA started the CLPS program, we don't have companies that can land small cargo on the Moon either, but that didn't stop NASA from starting CLPS. With NASA as anchor customer we now have two public companies capable of doing this, plus some private ones trying to do it, a pretty good result. There's nothing preventing NASA from repeating this wrt science missions.

As for "Science is not commercial", so when LM built a science spacecraft for NASA they're not acting as a commercial company? Are there any unbridgeable gap between a commercial company building a science spacecraft and turn it over to NASA for NASA to run it, and a commercial company building a science spacecraft and run it themselves and just provide data to NASA? I don't see one.

Another example is ISS cargo resupply. Is ISS cargo resupply commercial? I don't see any other customers besides NASA, and there're no company capable of doing this before NASA started COTS. Yet here we're, with NASA buying cargo resupply service from companies.

[meekGee]

Wrt congressional hearings and specifically testimonies of 'industry experts", I would like to propose "Silence as a Service". Take my money.

[Jim]

Since this thread is about science as a service, I'm going to focus on #2: Buy from who? From companies who want to sell the service of course. You'd say there's no such company, which is more or less correct (we do have an example in astronomy already), but that's not a showstopper as you thought.

Before NASA started the CLPS program, we don't have companies that can land small cargo on the Moon either, but that didn't stop NASA from starting CLPS. With NASA as anchor customer we now have two public companies capable of doing this, plus some private ones trying to do it, a pretty good result. There's nothing preventing NASA from repeating this wrt science missions.

As for "Science is not commercial", so when LM built a science spacecraft for NASA they're not acting as a commercial company? Are there any unbridgeable gap between a commercial company building a science spacecraft and turn it over to NASA for NASA to run it, and a commercial company building a science spacecraft and run it themselves and just provide data to NASA? I don't see one.

Another example is ISS cargo resupply. Is ISS cargo resupply commercial? I don't see any other customers besides NASA, and there're no company capable of doing this before NASA started COTS. Yet here we're, with NASA buying cargo resupply service from companies.

Another opportunity to educate you again.  None of that is applicable.  LM, CLPS contractors and COTS contractors are building space vehicles.  They have nothing to do with design, construction and testing of the cargo, instruments and sensors they carry.   They provided the services mounting, power, temperature, pointing, etc as negotiated in interface control documents.  Cargo, instruments and sensors are  provided by NASA centers or FFDRCs and universities (funded by NASA).  NASA, aside from Goddard and JPL in-house projects, has always paid for a contractor to provide a spacecraft.  The issue is the instruments and sensors, they are bespoke and not COTS.  There is no market for these.  What works for one planet doesn't always work for another.

[Coastal Ron]

1. and energize academic institutions to fund their own flagship missions.
2. Take advantage of science-as-a-service models where applicable
3. Reevaluate Earth science priorities. decadal frameworks, and mission pacing
4 Encourage and enable academic institution-funded science and exploration missions.
5.  Take NASA out of the taxpayer funded climate science business and leave it for academia to determine.

more issues., 
1.  With what money?  NASA funds the  academic institutions for their work.  See PI managed missions.
2. Buy from who?  Science is not commercial.
3.  Why?
4.  With what money are they going to use?
5.  It is in NASA's charter

Since this thread is about science as a service, I'm going to focus on #2: Buy from who? From companies who want to sell the service of course. You'd say there's no such company, which is more or less correct (we do have an example in astronomy already), but that's not a showstopper as you thought.

I think you are thinking of "Science" as a Service backwards.

For instance, when you think of traditional "SaaS", that is "Software as a Service", where the company with the software is offering to you - as a service. The same with "Infrastructure as a Service" (IaaS), where a company builds out the infrastructure (typically in advance of customer orders) and then offers that infrastructure as a service.

"Science" as a Service would have to be a company DOING SCIENCE and then offering that output to whoever would buy it.

There are companies and entities that do science without a contract, but usually it is to satisfy internal needs, not external customers.

So do you see the difference here?

Jim addresses most of the rest of your post with his response, and I'll just respond to this part...

Another example is ISS cargo resupply. Is ISS cargo resupply commercial? I don't see any other customers besides NASA, and there're no company capable of doing this before NASA started COTS. Yet here we're, with NASA buying cargo resupply service from companies.

Commercial Cargo is a service contract. Or in the spirit of this thread topic, "Service as a Service"    No "science" involved, they are just moving "stuff", they are transportation providers.

[meekGee]

"Science" as a Service would have to be a company DOING SCIENCE and then offering that output to whoever would buy it.

Like, say, DuPont?

(I'm new to the conversation, sorry if I'm missing the context)

[Coastal Ron]

"Science" as a Service would have to be a company DOING SCIENCE and then offering that output to whoever would buy it.

Like, say, DuPont?

(I'm new to the conversation, sorry if I'm missing the context)

Yep, you missed the context, and you missed when I said:

There are companies and entities that do science without a contract, but usually it is to satisfy internal needs, not external customers.

DuPont, 3M, Bell Labs, etc. The U.S. used to be the preeminent country for company funded research. But that has steadily declined as sophisticated (and unsophisticated) people wanted short-term gains out of their stock holdings, and so companies were not rewarded for having a long-term strategy.

[HMXHMX]

Post-Challenger, I actually proposed to NASA "science as a service" – a build of commercial, largely common bus spacecraft and commercial launch service on Delta II, with JPL providing the mission payloads but everything else being handled privately.  The proposal was for a suite of three missions, a Lunar Polar Orbiter, a Mars Orbiter and a Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous.  Naturally, it didn't go anywhere at the time, but during the 2004 NASA CE&R contract (for which my t/Space company had an award) I used that original proposal (plus our work on the 2001 AltAccess effort) as a template for what became COTS.

[Hug]

The common spacecraft bus is a fairly common proposal and it's a reasonable line of thought. Why are we spending ~$100M's engineering new vehicles when we could just mass manufacture a single spacecraft. Most missions base their hardware on existing commercial satellite designs, but this is obviously a different scope of activity. The problem is generically is that the shifting requirements for different environments can produce fairly different vehicle designs. The scale also isn't there, 2 science missions a year doesn't really shift up the economics. Ames Modular Common Spacecraft Bus first mission was supposed to be a ~$30M lunar lander and it ended up $280M lunar orbiter after it became an official NASA mission with the associated systems engineering. Then no further missions were flown with the Bus.

Rocket Lab Explorer bus does look like the first one that might meet the vision. They have a vertically integrated space supply chain that can produce vehicles tailored to the requirements while still being reasonably cheap, effective and reliable. It's identified by Athena as such, but I am hopeful that Rocket Lab can introduce a new paradigm for Simplex <$100M missions to Venus/Mars/Asteroids (Jupiter at a stretch). Pending outcome of Escapade and Venus Life Finder of course.