| Space Station Could Cost Another $4 Billion By Larry Wheeler FLORIDA TODAY and Steven Siceloff FLORIDA TODAY posted: 07:00 pm ET 16 February 2001 |
WASHINGTON -- The International Space Station could cost American taxpayers an additional $4 billion to complete -- bad news for a project plagued with cost overruns and delays after it seemed to be getting back on track with the impressive delivery of the U.S.-built laboratory module Destiny.
If accurate, that would put the development cost of the orbiting research facility at $28.2 billion, a 62 percent increase since 1993 when NASA redesigned the station and said it could finish the project for $17.4 billion.
With the Bush administration still putting together its budget request and Capitol Hill lawmakers settling into new assignments, NASA headquarters officials have been making the rounds with the startling numbers.
Friday, headquarters managers put space centers in Florida, Alabama, Texas, California and elsewhere on notice that their budgets were going to get cut to feed the space station's growing appetite.
Kennedy Space Center spokesman George Diller said the center still is waiting to see what effect the space-station budget crisis will have on the facility.
"We're going to play our part in this," Diller said Friday. "We know we're going to have to look for ways to cut."
At headquarters, a spokeswoman acknowledged that NASA managers recently identified a number of what she called challenges in the station spending profile, but she declined to quantify the amount.
"The space-station program has been reviewing its budget over the past several months," said Kirsten Larson, a NASA spokeswoman. "We've kept both the [Bush] transition team and congressional folks on our committees informed about our budget situation hoping to avoid any surprises."
The few lawmakers who pay close attention to the space program aren't pleased.
"I'm very concerned about these significant cost overruns," said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., chairman of the Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee. "Costs in the $4 billion range are not easily explained."
McCain said he asked NASA to provide an immediate explanation of the unexpected overruns and predicted the station again would come under close scrutiny in his committee and elsewhere.
The United States is building the orbiting research outpost with Russia and 14 other nations.
After President Reagan proposed building an outpost to be called Space Station Freedom, NASA first estimated such an operation would cost about $10 billion.
In 1993, the Clinton administration ordered NASA Administrator Dan Goldin to redesign the station or lose it. What emerged was a smaller research outpost that could be built more quickly with the assistance of the Russian Space Agency.
At the time, NASA said it would take $17.4 billion to finish the station by 2002. Since then, the development price tag has increased to $24.2 billion and complete assembly is now projected for 2006. Including operations and shuttle transportation costs, NASA estimated the final cost to be about $60 billion.
The General Accounting Office, however, estimates the lifetime costs of the project -- including the cost of shuttle transportation -- at about $95 billion.
The additional $4 billion that NASA may need to complete the station does not correspond to any GAO estimate, said Allen Li, a GAO associate director who has specialized in space-station cost analysis.
"If it is true, that seems like a large increase," Li said.
NASA's Larson said costs associated with delays of both Russian and U.S. components are contributing to the escalating price.
Workload is another big factor, she said.
"We've kind of recognized we're requiring more manpower than we expected," Larson said. "This manpower is necessary to test hardware and software and get different elements of the station ready for launch in a timely manner."
Unanticipated hardware and software problems also are draining budget resources, she said.
For example, in October, NASA had to spend about $20 million to fix a problem with devices called control moment gyros before they could be launched aboard a shuttle and installed on the station, Larson said.
How NASA's space centers will absorb the hit isn't clear yet.
At KSC, the largest cost is the shuttle program, already cut in recent years as the agency downsized and transferred operational duties to the aerospace consortium United Space Alliance.
If NASA tries to save money by slowing the pace of shuttle flights to the station, it would not save much, said Andrew Allen, USA's director of technical shuttle operations.
"If there was a major cut to the space shuttle program, the difference between flying three or four flights or seven or eight is not a significant cost factor," Allen said. "We have 6,000 people working here at USA and about 8,000 to 10,000 people working the total space-shuttle program. The work force for four is pretty much what you need for eight."
Some in Congress said they suspect NASA has kept these costs hidden for 18 months or longer to allow the first pieces of the orbiting outpost to be launched and become operational, thus making it harder for lawmakers to kill the project.
However, even with previously known delays and cost overruns, Congress has shown increasing support by voting in ever-larger margins to defeat annual amendments designed to cancel station funding.
The latest challenge comes during a leadership void in U.S. civilian space policy. The Bush administration has yet to appoint its own NASA administrator, preferring instead to leave Goldin at the helm for the time being.
On Capitol Hill, Rep. Sherwood Boehlert, R-N.Y., has taken over as chairman of the House Science Committee. In initial comments and speeches, Boehlert has not emphasized the civilian space program.
But warnings of unexpected station costs now have caught the committee's attention.
"We need to take a good look at it," said David Goldston, staff director for the House Science Committee. "With these cost overruns, it is time to review with a fine-toothed comb."
Rep. Dana Rohrabacher, R-Calif., and chairman of the House Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee -- the panel that has scrutinized NASA programs more than any other on Capitol Hill -- declined to comment Friday.
John Pike, director of GlobalSecurity.org, a Washington, D.C.-based think tank, said the Bush administration doesn't know what it wants out of the space station.
"The Bush administration does not have those ducks lined up yet," he said.
Pike said the options are clear-cut:
- Write a check to NASA to cover the extra costs.
- Slow construction to spread costs over a longer period.
- Send up a few more pieces and call the station a done deal.
The station has life-support equipment for three crewmembers in the Russian Zvezda Service Module. Huge solar arrays added in December provide enough power to run the station, and the $1.4 billion Boeing-built Destiny laboratory was added last week.
The station is scheduled to get its own 52-foot-long robot arm in April. In June, an airlock is to be added to allow astronauts and cosmonauts to make space walks around the station.
The president or Congress could order construction halted after the airlocks are delivered and still have a functioning research lab.
But stopping construction at that point could undermine Bush's foreign-policy goals, especially his pet project -- a ballistic missile defense shield, Pike said.
"I don't think [Secretary of State] Colin Powell wants to go to Europe to discuss national missile defense and then have to tell them they won't be a big part of the space station," Pike said.
The Japanese Space Agency and European Space Agency are building laboratory modules of their own for the station. The Japanese contribution includes a pallet and robot arm to let researchers expose materials to the vacuum of space.
Japan also is building a centrifuge under contract from NASA. The module, scheduled as the last piece added to the station in 2006, would simulate gravity in space.
NASA is to build two more 18-foot-long nodes connecting segments of the station and a large habitation module. The habitation module would allow a crew of six or seven to live aboard the outpost. NASA wants to build and deploy a $900 million emergency escape pod now on the drawing board to supplement or replace the Russian Soyuz spacecraft that now fills that role.
NASA also is responsible for the 360-foot-long span of solar panels that will power the station.
Many components are lined up in the Space Station Processing Facility at the Florida spaceport awaiting launch.
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