June 27, 2001
Space station to undergo external review
Goldin will select committee to investigate Alpha overruns
By Frank Oliveri
FLORIDA TODAY
CAPE CANAVERAL - An outside team of scientists, academics and former civil servants will conduct a top-to-bottom review of the International Space Station to determine its future following a $4 billion cost overrun.
NASA Administrator Dan Goldin decided to cancel an internal review of the overrun and appoint the outside team to give an unbiased assessment of the program, Goldin told Florida Today on Tuesday.
Dan Goldin. Image copyright © 2001, Michael R. Brown, FLORIDA TODAY.
"We'll be appointing a committee in the next couple weeks and have them dig in, go through it and make everything available to the American public," Goldin said.
Goldin initially told Congress in May that NASA would conduct a review itself and issue a report to the president's Office of Management and Budget in July. The agency was days away from releasing its internal assessment.
Experts said the change is politically sound given the pressure NASA has faced recently.
Goldin's decision follows a Florida Today investigation that revealed mismanagement, over-optimistic planning and ignored warnings about cost growth led to a $4 billion overrun. It also follows two recent government reports that gave low marks to NASA's management practices
The overruns have forced cuts to scientific research on the station - the very purpose of the outpost - by 40 percent. Man-hours devoted to science would be cut by 90 percent, with much of the work done instead by remote control. NASA already killed efforts to build living and propulsion modules, which would have cost about $1 billion. It also canceled plans for an escape craft. The loss of the escape craft and living space cuts the station's crew to three people instead of six or seven.
NASA hopes an outside assessment, which should be completed later this year, will point the way toward a station that could house six or seven occupants while not costing more than a congressionally imposed limit of $25 billion.
Jay Chabrow, who led a key independent assessment of the space station program in 1998, said Tuesday that Goldin's decision was politically astute. An outside review is better than an internal examination, he said.
"I think it's better because it's 100 percent for sure they will get an unbiased review," Chabrow said. "I have participated in both, and the internal reviews are always very objective."
He said someone could always accuse an internal review team of being biased "because they're still wearing a NASA suit."
However, John Pike, founder of Globalsecurity.org, said the outside team may bear responsibility for future space station problems.
"Setting up a commission is a standard Washington solution to a problem too big for one bureaucracy," Pike said.
Pike said an internal review would not stand up well to political pressure. An external review would.
"In the real world they've got to have a redesign in time for the budget allocation," Pike said. "NASA will start working on their (plan) by the end of the summer."
Staff Writer Steven Siceloff contributed to this report.
