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Space station may be billions over budget
WASHINGTON, Feb. 26 (UPI) -- Reports of multi-billion-dollar
cost overruns on the International Space Station have experts predicting
hard times for NASA's human space-flight program. "I know for a fact that the long-range-work, special-projects
kind of stuff will be put on hold," said Brendan Curry, legislative
assistant to Congressman Dave Weldon (R-Fla). "Any way-out research
and development being done at Marshall and Kennedy Space Centers will
also be put on hold after a while." While experts emphasized that the orbiting science outpost
will not be scrapped, they predicted that NASA will have to tighten its
belt on some of its more long-ranging and far-reaching plans. Among projects
for the station that Curry said "you can kiss goodbye" are Transhab,
the inflatable habitat module NASA wanted to send up by late 2005. Scientists
hoped that Transhab would one day serve as a prototype home for a Mars
mission or a lunar base. The Centrifuge Accommodation Module is another probable
casualty, said Jim Muncy of the space policy consulting firm PoliSpace
in Arlington, Va. The module was designed to study the long-term effects
of varying gravity levels on generations of plants and animals. Also in possible jeopardy are the X-38, the emergency
crew rescue vehicle planned for early 2002, and the station's propulsion
module, which would help the station avoid debris and atmospheric drag.
"And that's just for what's planned for the station," Curry
said. Pending the release of the president's budget on Tuesday,
congressional and NASA officials declined to comment on press reports
estimating the cost overrun at $3 billion to $5 billion over the next
four years. "Congress will want to get some answers out of NASA
about how this huge cost overrun could be kept from them for so long,"
Curry said. "Obviously, it looks to be a case of mismanagement. At
what level, we're not currently sure." Roughly $5 billion to $6 billion of NASA's annual $14
billion budget goes into human space-flight. NASA Administrator Dan Goldin
has said any cost overruns will be contained within the agency's human
space-flight office, but experts such as Muncy do not think it practical
for the agency to cut costs that way. "Do you want to take the political risk of having
another shuttle crash and killing more astronauts?" Muncy asked.
"I think any cuts will have to come out of other parts of NASA, hopefully
out of lower priority areas. But it's not going to stop until we find
some sort of way to effectively privatize and lower the operations costs
in some ways." The United States is the managing partner for the 16 nations
involved in building the International Space Station. The outpost was
projected to cost $24 billion to $26 billion to develop, and $1.3 billion
per year to operate over 10 years, said NASA spokesperson Kirsten Larson.
Johnson Space Center, based in Houston, Texas, is managing the development of the station. George Abbey, the center's director since 1995, was moved to the position of Senior Assistant for International Issues to the NASA Administrator on Friday. |