Congress and Administration on Possible Collision Course on Space Station

In a decision that could set the stage for a collision between the Clinton Administration and congressional backers of the space station, it was reported today that an influential panel recommends that NASA turn away from the Space Station Freedom design.

Washington has been buzzing this week with meetings and hearings on the space station. After Monday’s all-day meeting on the redesign options (see FYI #74), House and Senate hearings were held to receive testimony from NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. Sentiment at both hearings leaned towards preservation of as much as possible of the current design, a course of action at odds with the 78-page report issued today by a panel of experts headed by Charles Vest.

Vest’s panel reportedly favors Options A and C, those most unlike the current station design. Option B, a reduced version of Freedom with changes to reduce extravehicular time and cost, was characterized by the Vest panel as too expensive and risky. (The redesign team had projected Option B’s cost at between $2.6 billion and $8.9 billion more than A and C through Permanent Human Presence and an additional ten years of operations.) The Washington Post reports that Option A was viewed by the Vest panel as a “desirable simplification” of the current station design and Option B.

President Clinton is due to announce his final choice next week, and it is difficult to predict what option he will select. Congressional response to his decision is uncertain, although two different committee hearings this week indicate preference for Option B.

At a June 8 hearing of the House Subcommittee on Space, chairman Ralph Hall (D-Texas) made it clear that he and most of his subcommittee, composed of space station supporters, “will be pushing Plan B"-- the one most similar to the baseline Freedom design. Some hope was offered by full committee chairman George Brown, who backtracked on an earlier ultimatum to support only a design very close to the original Freedom, saying that he was “becoming somewhat more optimistic” that the redesign options might be feasible.

In the face of Goldin’s insistence that NASA “will not establish which configuration it prefers,” Hall revealed that he had received “numerous calls and letters” suggesting NASA had unfairly weighted the options. In particular, questioning brought out that the incorporation of science utilization flights during its assembly increased the cost and schedule of Option B. The NASA team responded that they felt such a schedule met the objective of maximizing the science productivity of the program.

A primary concern to members was the effect of management streamlining on aerospace jobs in their districts. In a rather contentious encounter James Sensenbrenner (R-Wisconsin) accused Goldin of destroying data on job losses, to which he replied, “I don’t know of any circumstance where I did.”

On June 9, House science committee members marked up their NASA authorization bill, H.R. 2200, defeating by 30-10 an amendment to kill the station. The authorizing bill provides for stable funding of $1.9 billion a year for the space station over the next six years. However, the ultimate funding decision will come from the appropriations committees, which have control of the federal purse strings.

The Senate VA, HUD, Independent Agencies Appropriations Subcommittee met yesterday (June 10) on NASA’s FY 1994 budget request, with the space station being almost the sole topic of discussion. During this three-hour hearing Chairman Barbara Mikulski (D-Maryland) and Ranking Republican Phil Gramm (R-Texas) repeatedly stated the need for a strong science capability in the redesigned station. Gramm went so far as to say that “you can count me out” if the redesigned station was a “man in a can.” Both senators expressed strong support for microgravity and life sciences research. In discussing life sciences, it is biomedical research, and not human studies for eventual voyages to the Moon and Mars, that is strongly favored.

The senators repeatedly asked for “bottom line” comparisons between the competing options in terms of cost, scientific merit, and international obligations. Options A and C were the least expensive; with our international partners favoring Option B, concluded Goldin. Considerable discussion revolved around scientific capability, with NASA officials at last declaring that Option B was stronger because of its power level and scientific availability capability. No figures were available on what option was best in terms of payload versus cost.

Reports indicate that Mikulski supports Option B. She closed the hearing with a few closing questions concerning the Hubble Space Telescope repair mission and Mission to Planet Earth (with Mikulski expressing the hope that it would not become another space station controversy.) Administrator Goldin and the Vest panel have both called for funding stability for the space station through the rest of this decade, with Goldin saying yesterday that this redesign must be the last one. Ominously, there is one chart in NASA’s presentation which NASA and the Congress both seem content to overlook-- a chart which shows that each one of the redesign options, to meet the costs NASA has provided, will need significantly more than the science committee’s annual $1.9 billion, or the House appropriations VA/HUD subcommittee’s fiscal 1994 amount of $1.85 billion. All the proposed options ramp up sharply in the 1995-1997 time frame; the lowest requires nearly $2.75 billion in fiscal year 1996. If not faced now, this issue will return to haunt the program in the not-too-distant future, possibly even precipitating another round of destructuring and stretch-out. In the short term the space station faces an even larger threat: what is being called “Option D,” or termination of station funding on the House and Senate floors.