House Space Subcommittee Examines NASA Space Science Budget

On April 29, Wesley Huntress, NASA associate administrator for the Office of Space Science, and Harry Holloway, associate administrator for the new Office of Life and Microgravity Sciences and Applications, testified before the House space subcommittee on NASA’s fiscal year 1994 budget request for space science.

At the outset, subcommittee chairman Ralph Hall (D-TX) expressed concern that in an attempt to add more missions, NASA would sacrifice some of the knowledge to be gained from current missions. He commented that “NASA appears to be putting a higher priority on starting new missions than on analyzing data from [current] ones.”

Last summer NASA, at the direction of administrator Daniel Goldin, identified over $23 billion in projected cost savings through fiscal year 1998. Space science took its share of reductions, including a restructuring of both the AXAF and Cassini missions, and a tightening of the Mission Operations and Data Analysis (MO&DA) budget. Huntress testified that the MO&DA projection had been reduced 3 percent for the years 1993 and 1994, but NASA was still working on achieving similar cuts in later years.

Having achieved significant savings, Goldin proposes to “addback” funding for new technology initiatives, including a series of small space science missions called “Discovery.” “Why start new missions,” Hall asked, at the expense of analyzing data from current missions? He pointed out that the chairman of NASA’s space science advisory committee had cautioned that reductions to MO&DA would have repercussions for the scientific community.

Huntress assured him that, in looking for further reductions, NASA was “focusing attention on the mission operations side, not the data analysis side.” Hall replied, “a lot of people would feel better if you could build a firewall between the mission operations account and the data analysis account.”

Another issue Hall pursued was the lack of specific funding for development of space station payloads in the life sciences and microgravity budget. Available funding would depend on the space station redesign and the amount designated for new technologies. Holloway said he had been “assured the entire [space station] payload is in that [technology] package.” He said Goldin understood that “the space station is only as good as the science it can do, and the technology it can develop.”

Several subcommittee members, warning that there would be a fight over space station funding this year, asked for justifications that they could use with their constituents. Holloway gave examples of research into blood pressure, kidney stones, bone loss and crystal production. He also discussed the sharing of data from the Russian space station Mir, and stated that both life sciences and microgravity “still require the kind of work planned for the shuttle and . . . the space station.” Rep. Tim Roemer (D-IN) countered: “At what cost, and what effect on NASA?”