Management alternatives for the International Space Station

Abstract

Work completed in 2001 concluded that increasing numbers of people in the International Space Station (ISS) stakeholder community now believe that the current management structure of the ISS has some serious drawbacks that need to be addressed. These diverse interests agree that if this large and complex facility is to be efficiently and effectively managed its management will need to be restructured in ways that better serve the goals of the program. In response to these concerns a number of different proposals to change or adapt the management of the ISS have been put forward. These include: direct management by the space agencies, indirect management by the space agencies, the creation by the partners' space agencies of entities to manage/develop ISS utilization (e.g. NASA's Non-Governmental Organization (NGO), the Canadian Space Agency's (CSA) Canadian ISS Access Company (CIAC) and the European Space Agency's (ESA) Non R&D business developers), complete privatization of the entire ISS, partial privatization of the ISS, the creation of an Quasi-governmental International Organization by the international partners to assume management upon assembly complete, and -revising the ISS prime contract to create incentives for the primes to save money and subcontract more with smaller businesses. These widely-differing proposals all seem to be viable enough to be taken seriously by the space agencies, the prime contractors and various other stakeholders in the ISS program. Work on each of the various proposals is ongoing - mostly sponsored by the specific proponents of the particular proposal. This paper includes: a summary of each of the various proposals, an analysis of the extent to which each proposal is consistent with the goals of the program, a discussion of the extent to which the Intergovernmental Agreement (IGA) and related agreements may need to be modified to allow for management reform, and the effect on the relationships among the space agencies, the prime contractors and various other entities.