Newsday August 3, 2005
Hopes, dreams, contracts
Though the shuttle program hasn't lived up to its potential, politics in funding keep it alive
By James Bernstein and Tom Incantalupo
Despite two catastrophic disasters since 1986 and technical problems on the current mission, the space shuttle program seems to have nine political lives: sometimes questioned, but rarely threatened.
Although the current mission is endangered by the same technical problem that destroyed Columbia two years ago - a problem NASA believed it had solved - there has been little public criticism as the agency struggles to bring the latest crew back to Earth.
The reasons are many, and while they appear to include widespread public support for the pursuit of adventure and science, another factor is pork - the political kind.
By design, NASA decades ago spread its dollars far and wide so that today hardly a state doesn't have an economic stake, however small, in the agency's funding and in what is officially known as the Space Transportation System.
"NASA learned early on - actually in the '50s - that in order to provide momentum and continuation of programs across presidential administrations, they had to diversify their base," said Howard McCurdy, a professor in the school of public affairs at American University in Washington and an author on space flight. "They've been very good at doing that."
In the past fiscal year, NASA spread $13.5 billion around the country, including $63.5 million to New York, in contracts for goods and services, mostly to companies and educational institutions. The agency said it couldn't provide a breakdown for contracts related to the shuttle, but the system accounts for about $4.5 billion of NASA's $16-billion total budget.
Among companies, United Space Alliance - a joint venture of Boeing Co. and Lockheed Martin Corp. - got the most in contracts in the 2004 fiscal year: $1.8 billion, according to NASA.
Among states, Texas led with $3.3 billion in NASA contracts in fiscal 2004, followed by California with $1.6 billion.
Those amounts, however, include only direct awards from NASA, not subcontracts or other indirect funding.
Four units of Northrop Grumman appear on NASA's list of 100 companies getting the most money, although little if any space money is at the Los Angeles-based company's Long Island facility.
Cornell University in Ithaca and the University at Buffalo are on the list of the top 100 educational beneficiaries of NASA money.
The $63.5 million for New York includes $18.6 million for businesses and $44.9 million for educational, nonprofit entities.
This state's role now, though, pales by comparison to its importance during the 1970s, when teams of workers at Grumman Corp. in Bethpage were building the shuttle orbiters' wings while a few miles to the east at Fairchild Republic in East Farmingdale, workers were building the spaceship's vertical stabilizers.
The shuttle has no friend in a higher place in Congress than Tom DeLay, the Republican House majority leader from Texas, whose district includes NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. In a speech to NASA workers at the Johnson Space Center, DeLay described himself as "a space nut."
John Pike, director of globalsecurity.org, a Washington, D.C.-based think-tank that monitors space and defense programs, said that DeLay has seen to it that federal funds keep coming to NASA. "He has basically re-created in some sense the political support [for space exploration] that started with Lyndon Johnson" in the 1960s, Pike said.
Another friend of NASA is Rep. Sherwood Boehlert (R-New Hartford), chairman of the House Science Committee. He said the space shuttle is needed to help complete the international space station, make repairs to the Hubble telescope and acquaint human beings with the rigors of space flight.
"It [the shuttle] hasn't lived up to all of its expectations, but it's served us well," he said.
Indeed, the space shuttle has provided the aerospace industry with a largess of funds, and it will continue to do so until it is finally retired, said Paul Nisbet, who follows the aerospace industry for JSA Research Inc. in Newport, R.I.
Nisbet estimated that shuttle contractors receive $3 billion to $4billion a year in NASA funding to service the orbiters, make any necessary repairs or build new parts. He said the shuttle's successor, called the crew exploration vehicle, will mean $2 billion to $3 billion to one of two aerospace teams that wins a contract to build that vehicle.
Many in Congress, Nisbet said, are "mum" on the question of ending the shuttle program, because of the money attached to it. "There really isn't much support for abandoning" the shuttle program, he said.
There are technical arguments, though. For one thing, critics say the system represents 1970s technology. "By comparison with today's standards, the [shuttle] computers are antiquated," said Alex Roland, a former NASA historian who now teaches the history of technology at Duke University.
However, Alard Beutell, a NASA spokesman, said many systems onboard the shuttle have been upgraded over the years. Some older systems remain operating, he said, because "they are tested and work well. You can't have [new] systems crashing."
McCurdy, who co-edited the book "Spaceflight and the Myth of Presidential Leadership," said that under the original plan, the shuttle was supposed to make its first flight in 1978 and its last in 1994, by which time another manned vehicle would have replaced it.
Unless the outcome of the current mission forces a change in plans, the shuttle program is to run five more years, then be shut down.
One of the prime reasons offered for continuing the shuttle is that the United States has contracts with foreign governments - Canada, Japan, Russia, the 11 nations of the European Space Agency and Brazil - to complete the space station. Each of the nations is responsible for developing and operating a major element of the station.
The shuttle is needed to transport materials and supplies to the station and shuttle supporters say the United States cannot renege on its commitment.
But shuttle critics say that there are other ways to get those items to the station and that, in any event, the station isn't worth risking lives. Paul Levinson, chairman of the department of communications and media studies at Fordham University and author of "Real Space," a book about space travel, believes the current mission's technical problems doom the program.
"It's a tough call, but I would predict the space shuttle is finished," Levinson said. "Even though it has economic support, I think everyone recognizes that NASA and the space program can't afford another disaster."
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