New Scientist March 10, 2001
Houston, we have no money
BY: Jeff Hecht (Boston)SPACE science under George W. Bush looks set for tough times following the announcement of the US budget "blueprint" for 2002 last week. The 1.4 per cent budget increase proposed for NASA is dwarfed by cost overruns on the international space station. As a result, programmes will have to be cut. The space station, a mission to Pluto, a probe to sample the Sun's corona and the X-33 space plane are likely victims.
The final budget won't be ready until next month and will then be the subject of months of wrangling in Congress. But NASA's 1.4 per cent increase for next year - just dollar 0.2 billion to bring the total to dollar 14.5 billion - will not go far when the space station has overspent by around dollar 1 billion this year and predictions point to a similar overrun in 2002. At this rate, the total cost of the station will far exceed the dollar 25 billion ceiling set by Congress last year.
The blueprint only hints at where the axe may fall, but advocates of different programmes are already drawing up battle plans. Foreign space agencies that collaborate with NASA, especially on the space station, are watching nervously. "None of the budget cuts are firm and final," says Jurg Feustel of the European Space Agency. "Everything is really in discussion."
To control the space station budget, Bush wants to abandon plans to build the four-person living module, a propulsion module to reposition the station and a vehicle capable of bringing seven people back to Earth. That would end construction of the American "core" in 2003, leaving the station able to support only three astronauts.
A crew of three is needed simply to keep the station running, so that will leave no one free to do any science. "There are key astronaut interactions that are required" to perform many life science experiments, says Nick Bigelow of the University of Rochester in New York state, head of a NASA advisory panel on fundamental physics research. A small crew won't have the time to do them.
Other projects could be cancelled completely, such as the Solar Probe mission to sample the outer regions of the Sun, which has already overrun its budget. NASA cancelled the Pluto-Kuiper Express last year, also because of cost overruns. But chances to survey Pluto are rare, so academic groups pressurised NASA to consider plans for a new cheaper mission. This now looks uncertain, although the Senate Appropriations Committee last week told NASA to ignore Bush's directive to kill the call for new Pluto proposals. "This cancellation of missions is very worrisome," says Louis Friedman, director of the Planetary Society. "The whole process is crazy, trying to take programme action on a budget that's not revealed."
A definite high-profile casualty is the X-33 space plane. NASA has so far spent dollar 900 million on this potential replacement for the shuttle. "Our technology has not yet advanced to the point that we can successfully develop a new reusable launch vehicle that substantially improves safety, reliability, and affordability," admits Art Stephenson, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville.
Instead, Bush is boosting NASA's Space Launch Initiative fund by 64 per cent to dollar 475.6 million in search of other successors to the shuttle. Details are vague at best. "I don't think anybody knows what this new initiative is," says John Pike, a space policy expert and director of GlobalSecurity.org, based near Washington DC.
One of the few bright spots in the blueprint is a call for a "more robust Mars exploration programme". NASA says this might enable it to move forward the date for a sample-return mission.
For more science news see http://www.newscientist.com
Copyright 2001 New Scientist
