New Scientist October 13, 2001
NASA is getting ready to sell off some of the family silver
By Eugenie Samuel
THE US might privatise mission planning for the space shuttle and mothball the Apollo Moon rocks. These are just two of the options NASA is considering to slash its budget, according to a leaked memo.
President Bush's blueprint budget for 2002 allocated a 1.4 per cent increase in funding for NASA. But that increase is dwarfed by the spiralling costs of the International Space Station (ISS). Now an internal memo circulated to NASA managers reveals the projects that are in the frame for possible budget cuts or closure. The space agency would not comment on the details of the confidential document. "This was a leak," says Bob Jacobs, a spokesman at NASA headquarters. "There's no guarantee it's accurate."
However, the most prominent item on the agenda is an overhaul of space shuttle financing. At the moment a private conglomerate, United Space Alliance based in Houston, has a contract to operate shuttle launches, worth dollar 1.2 billion per year. Mission planning and ground control systems as well as crew healthcare could soon be up for grabs.
Some critics are alarmed at the idea of NASA privatising the shuttle even further. "NASA may already have gone too far in reducing oversight of the shuttle and their ability to look after it," says John Pike, director of Global Security, a think-tank based in Alexandria, Virginia.
The agency may also axe or privatise NASA television. Another possible casualty is the Lunar Curatorial Facility at the Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas. Samples of Moon rocks from the Apollo era are stored there and prepared for allocation to research scientists. But the project could be shelved indefinitely - unless NASA can find an efficient operator for the centre.
Michael Lipschutz, a chemist at Purdue University in West Lafayette who worked at the facility in the early 1970s, says that techniques for protecting Moon rocks and meteorites developed there are now practised elsewhere. So you could simply relocate the lunar samples if need be, although many would be sad to see the facility mothballed. "It was intended to be the place established to treat lunar samples as national treasures," says Lipschutz.
The memo also suggests phasing out the Super Guppy, the giant cargo plane with a nose cone that unhinges through 110 degrees. NASA has used it to transport huge pieces of space hardware that couldn't fit into an ordinary jumbo. The agency may phase out the Super Guppy after the final solar arrays get to the ISS, scheduled for March 2006. Its demise would fit with the trend towards building as much as possible in space, rather than struggling to transport and launch hefty pieces of gear.
Jacobs says the overall aim of the review is to cut costs by focusing on what the space agency does best, and farming out the rest. "A lot of these things are ways to get the agency out of operational mode and back towards its original concept of research," he says.
Copyright 2001 New Scientist, Reed Business Information
