CBS Evening News July 20, 2001 Friday (6:30 PM ET)
Rising costs to fund International Space Station construction
DAN RATHER, anchor: These days NASA's astronauts keep busy constructing the International Space Station. The shuttle Atlantis is there tonight. But here on Earth, as Bobbi Harley reports in tonight's Eye On America, the station's critics are growing fast, right along with its cost.
Unidentified Man: ...one and lift-off of space shuttle Atlantis, launching a door to partnerships in space.
BOBBI HARLEY reporting: It's been called the greatest construction project since the pyramids, and it's expected to go down in history as one of the most expensive. With a nearly $100 billion price tag, some say the International Space Station is nothing more than a flying white elephant.
BILL HARWOOD (CBS News Space Consultant): I don't know if it'll ever live up to its potential. It's certainly going to live up to the predictions that have been made all along by its critics; that it's a black hole, a bottomless pit for money.
HARLEY: Now government auditors, trying to balance the station's budget, have found another price overrun; this time it's $4 billion. Even the program's supporters are accusing NASA of mismanaging, even lying, about what the space station would cost.
Representative DANA ROHRABACHER (Republican, California): We got sucked into a project and spent billions of dollars before we fully realized that this was not the time to start the project.
HARLEY: That project started in 1984 with grand visions that scientific research carried out on the space station would find cures for diseases, like cancer and AIDS, and that it would serve as a platform for travel to far reaches of the universe.
But the reality is economical and political. The billions spent in the early years sustained America's aerospace industry after the demise of the Cold War. And the billions spent now keep the project's international partners working with the United States.
Mr. JOHN PIKE (Space Policy Expert): As a foreign policy initiative, as a way of keeping Russian rocket scientists in Russia and out of North Korea, the space station is a bargain, but as a science project, it's obviously a boondoggle.
HARLEY: NASA says the problem boils down to the cost of doing business, like this week's spacewalk to install a doorway. The price tag: $164 million and that's not counting the money spent on the mission to get there.
Mr. DAN GOLDIN (NASA Administrator): We had no real understanding of what the operational costs might be when we got this system up. We've never done anything like this before.
HARLEY: And it's not going to get any better, as the Bush administration has already scaled back the budget, diminishing the scientific promise of the space station and making that long-ago dream seem still farther out of reach. In Miami, I'm Bobbi Harley for Eye On America.
Copyright 2001 CBS News Transcripts
