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Congress grills NASA on space station
WASHINGTON, April 4 (UPI) -- Congress grilled NASA officials
Wednesday about the agency's estimated $4 billion cost overruns for the
International Space Station. Members of the House Science Committee emphasized that
they wanted to help keep the station alive so it could pursue groundbreaking
science. "But this is all making our jobs much, much more difficult,"
Rep. Gil Gutknecht, R-Minn., said. Marcia Smith, a Congressional Research Service aerospace
specialist, reported that overruns were due mainly to optimism, which
led NASA and Boeing, the station's lead contractor, to underestimate actual
costs. "I sometimes get the feeling that part of the uniform
at NASA includes rose-colored glasses," said Rep. Sherwood Boehlert,
R-N.Y., the committee's chairman. "I hope the rose-colored glasses
are off now. I want them to be optimistic; I want them to be enthusiastic.
We are, and have been traditionally, very supportive. But I also want
them to be realistic." Smith said other factors hiked up the cost figures, including
the need to replace obsolete hardware and unexpected growth in the workforce
needed to maintain safety operations after the station components were
assembled. NASA revealed the overruns to Congress in late January.
NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said agency managers first noticed hints
the station was over budget in July, when the Russian module Zvezda was
launched. Zvezda provides crew quarters as well as guidance, navigation
and control functions. The White House has directed NASA not to cannibalize its
other programs to fund the station's completion. This means that over
the next five years, the money to pay off the $4 billion cost overruns
must come only out of the $5 billion to $6 billion NASA devotes annually
to human space flight. As a result, NASA is slashing the station's research budget by at least 40 percent -- from 23 science projects to about 10 -- and scientists devoted to the manned Mars program will be moved to the station project. Other casualties include:
Members of Congress took the indefinite postponement of
the escape vehicle and the habitat module especially hard. Dropping the
extra living space means the station can hold only three astronauts or
cosmonauts. Two to three crewmembers are required at any one time to maintain
the station, which means there will be scant time left to devote to science,
the research outpost's primary mandate. "Who are we going to have up there?" said incensed
Rep. Sheila Jackson Lee, D-Texas. "The janitor and the guy who looks
out the window?" Eliminating the U.S. rescue vehicle also means that the
station's international partners will have to continue relying on Russia's
Soyuz lifeboat spacecraft. This may prove a troublesome arrangement, given
Russia's shaky financial condition. But Goldin testified that NASA was negotiating with some
of the station's other partners, including Italy and France, to fund the
crew return vehicle. NASA is also talking with private space firm Spacehab
in Houston, in order to use its upcoming module Enterprise as an interim
habitat module. The multi-purpose module is set to be deployed in 2002.
Significant cost growth has plagued the International
Space Station project since it was unveiled in 1993. NASA first estimated
the outpost would cost $17.4 billion, a figure that rose to roughly $21.3
billion in 1998 and at least $24.1 billion last year. Given the new cost
figures, NASA now estimates the outpost will cost around $28 billion to
$30 billion. "This is very frustrating for people like me and
many of my colleagues here," said Rep. Dave Weldon, R-Fla. "We've
been fighting for this program to try to keep it alive, and it seems like
every two years we get handed another hot potato." NASA expects to complete a new cost analysis report by
mid-May to establish revised budget estimates. In the meantime, NASA headquarters
in Washington is taking over space station management from Johnson Space
Center in Texas, though Goldin insists this change will only last a few
months. Russell Rau, NASA assistant inspector general for auditing,
also recommended the agency run periodic estimates on the costs for the
station. "I don't know why they haven't done them in the past,"
Rau said. GOP members of the House Science Committee accused Russia
and Clinton of causing the station's budget woes. Democratic representatives
insisted that blame also lay on government contractors and the Republican
Congress. The committee members also disagreed over how best to
relieve the financial burden the overruns imposed. Rep. Dana Rohrabacher,
R-Calif., recommended commercializing the project and working more with
the station's international partners from Europe. Rep. Brian Baird (D-Wash.)
warned against relying on foreign sources and insisted on completing the
crew rescue vehicle so the station would not need to depend on Russia's
Soyuz. The International Space Station is devoted to experimental
research in biology, physics and other fields that is possible only in
space. The outpost program also is designed to support future human space
exploration and commercial space ventures. The United States is the managing
partner for the 16 nations involved in building the orbiter. America's efforts to build an outpost in space have been
full of challenges. The United States' first outpost, Skylab, ran into
trouble roughly a minute after it launched in 1973, when its meteoroid
shield deployed early and tore off, leading to further loss of a solar
array and resulting in constant power deficiencies. Planned as a temporary research station, Skylab fell to
Earth a year or two earlier than expected in 1979 because of unanticipated
sunspot activity that greatly increased atmospheric drag on the orbiter.
In its uncontrolled descent, Skylab rained debris over the Indian Ocean
and sparsely populated areas in western Australia. In 1984, Reagan directed NASA to build a permanent U.S.
space station by 1994. After nine years of redesign after redesign, NASA
had spent $11.2 billion with little progress toward actually building
the facility, dubbed Freedom. Freedom was terminated in 1993 and replaced
by a less expensive design that has evolved into the current International
Space Station. Five days before the simplified outpost design was released,
President Clinton announced that Russia would join the station program
in as a partner, a controversial move may have saved the program by attracting
Congressional votes along foreign policy lines. Critics contend that Clinton's
decision also may have doomed the station because Russia's unstable economy
led to many broken promises concerning station commitments. The first two segments of the International Space Station
were finally launched in 1998 -- the Russian-built, U.S.-financed Zarya
module and the NASA Unity module. An expensive 19-month launch hiatus
followed due to Russian delays in building the Zvezda module. Without
the living quarters aboard Zvezda, crews had nowhere to stay except the
space shuttle. Since Zvezda went up last July, two crews have boarded the station. The Destiny lab module and solar power arrays were added recently, along with gyroscopes to keep the station oriented properly. Though NASA initially said station assembly was to be completed in 2002, that date has now slipped to 2006. |