Since the space for experiments on the Station itself will finally reach its limit after the IPCC configuration is completed, the visiting Shuttles must carry additional lockers on their middecks to allow more experiments to be run in zero-G during their docked sojourns at the Station. But the Shuttles, as currently configured, will only be able to carry about 70% of the desired yearly load of middeck experiments on five flights per year.

Gerstenmaier said that NASA's solution to this is to have all four Shuttles modified so that their middecks can carry an increased load of experiment lockers. One possible way to do this is by shifting more of the crew supplies carried on each visiting Shuttle from its middeck to the Italian-built Multi-Purpose Logistics Module, which is already regularly carried by each resupply Shuttle in its cargo bay and attached directly to one of the Station's other docking ports by the Shuttle's arm.

Another is having some of the Shuttles use their excess cargo capacity to carry the "SpaceHab" manned module already flown a number of times in the cargo bays of earlier Shuttle flights to greatly increase their cargo of middeck-type experiment lockers. (A final decision on the best solution for the middeck-locker problem should be reached in November.)

But this leaves the third and by far the greatest problem -- the shortage of crew time for experiments. Up to now, the assumption has been that a 3-man crew will have only about 20 man-hours of spare time per week for experiments -- and half of that, by agreement, must be used for Russian experiments. (By contrast, a full-time 7-man crew could do fully 160 man-hours of experimental work per week.)

Gerstenmaier said, however, that experience with the ISS up to now suggests that this may be a seriously pessimistic estimate, and that a 3-man crew may actually have as much as 54 man-hours per week of total time for experiments.

But even in that case, from 2006 on a 3-man Station crew -- even with five Shuttle visits per year, during each of which the Shuttle is docked for 8 days, in which the additional 3 or 4 people on the Shuttle can do experiment work -- will have only about 40% as much time as it needs to complete the previously desired non-Russian experiment load. And if the pessimistic appraisal turns out to be true instead, then a 3-man crew with five Shuttle visits per year will be able to do only about 15% as much experiment work as NASA wants!

Gerstenmaier proposed one way to alleviate this -- again making use of the excess cargo capacity allowed by adding a fifth Shuttle visit per year to the Station. He hopes to add Extended Duration Orbiter (EDO) pallets, carrying extra supplies of oxygen and water to two of the four Shuttles -- allowing them to remain docked to the Station for periods of 10-11 days rather than just eight. Even this, however, is a very modest alleviation of the problem -- the equivalent of providing the Station with its originally hoped-for seven-person crew for only about one extra week per year.

Gerstenmaier also announced changes in crew operational procedures to maximize the amount of experiment time they will have daily. A "Crew Time Steering Team" has been formed to do so, making use of the incoming information from actual Station crews on what daily Station workloads have really turned out to be in practice.

One definite change will be to provide a crew "Task List" -- a sort of "job jar" allowing the crew much greater flexibility in how they plan their daily workloads, both in science experiments and in maintaining the Station. If they are able to complete any particular job earlier than expected, they can consult this to plan how to use their extra free time to start work on the other tasks that are highest priority at the moment.

Another is to use the extra cargo capacity allowed by a fifth yearly Shuttle flight in still another way, by carrying extra backup experimental payloads on each flight which the crew can use if -- and only if -- some of the experiments they were originally planned to carry out are unusable due to equipment failures. (Any backup payloads that can't be utilized in this way will be returned to Earth and sent up again on the Shuttle flights they were nominally planned for.)

Finally, he indicated that NASA would in the future name one crew member on the Station as official "Science Officer" in charge of coordinating and directing experimental activities -- and on Sept. 16 NASA confirmed this, naming current Station crew member Peggy Wilhide as the first Science Officer. (Since the Station's Russian crewmen are mostly in charge of running the onboard Russian experiments, probably all Science Officers named in the future will be non-Russian.)

Obviously, however, all these changes will still leave the Station doing only a small fraction of that on-orbit experimental work originally planned for it, at least for the next five years -- a very large chunk of the Station's total expected usable lifetime. So the question remains: is there any way to make the Station scientifically productive enough that Congress and the White House will continue to back it?

Obviously scientific work on the Station will have to be stripped back drastically from the OBPR's original plans. Last March, NASA created a "Research Maximization And Prioritization" ("REMAP") Task Force of 19 scientists to try to prioritize the 32 various fields of scientific and engineering study that the Station was considered capable of doing.

They ended up doing so in a very controversial way. NASA rather bizarrely forced them to issue their recommendations after a single two-day meeting, and the result was a vast degree of acrimony. No fewer than seven of the 19 members issued detailed dissenting statements to the group's recommendations -- most of them on the grounds that studies in biological and medical areas were being overplayed at the expense of studies in the physical sciences.

There was also a general feeling among the REMAP group's members that NASA simply had not provided them with enough guidance on the grounds by which they were supposed to compare the relative worthiness of different research areas -- for instance, they were still left largely in the dark as to just how far NASA did intend to go in enlarging the Station.