NASA's Mistakes, Optimism Cost Taxpayers Billions By Frank Oliveri FLORIDA TODAY posted: 07:00 pm ET 21 June 2001 ET
Space agency's mismanagement fractures promise of space station
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- NASA struggled with massive work and testing delays on the International Space Station and badly underestimated costs to build and run it -- missteps that cost $4 billion and crippled the outpost's scientific promise.
NASA managers failed to grasp the complexity of space station Alpha, a FLORIDA TODAY investigation found. They ignored inspectors' warnings of ballooning costs and over-optimism. And they burned through almost $1 billion earmarked for thrust and living modules that may never be built.
The $4 billion overrun announced in April was the second of its size in three years.
The space agency has never publicly explained where the money went. And NASA director Dan Goldin offered little if any explanation to Congress.
To find out where the billions went and why, FLORIDA TODAY examined more than 1,000 pages of documents, many obtained through the Freedom of Information Act. It interviewed engineers and auditors and reviewed NASA managers' testimony. The investigation revealed:
Over two years, NASA made about $897 million in changes to its contract with Boeing, the prime contractor on the project. NASA ordered the work from Boeing without first negotiating a price. It's a practice most federal agencies forbid, but NASA does routinely.
Key congressional leaders received numerous warnings of cost growth and management problems at NASA, but did not act on the warnings.
Over four campaign cycles, members of Congress received more than $6.4 million in campaign donations from the top six space station contractors.
Delays in building and testing the parts led to higher costs to store completed components. They also forced NASA and its contractors to keep hundreds of workers on the payroll longer than planned. Cost: $2.25 billion.
NASA spent almost $1 billion earmarked to design living quarters and a propulsion module. It canceled both projects when station costs began to balloon.
More than 1,000 software problems, including at least one "showstopper," were detected in tests at Kennedy Space Center. If not for a 19-month construction delay caused by its Russian partners, NASA would not have had time for such tests. The tests may have saved up to a billion dollars.
Once projected to cost $17.4 billion, the station could cost American taxpayers as much as $30 billion. The overruns alone amount to more than $28 per American.
"Could we have done better in estimating the end cost? Maybe," NASA Administrator Dan Goldin said. He also defends the program: "I make no apologies, zip, nada, nothing. This program is spectacular."
But the overruns cut to the very heart and purpose of the station. To save money, science experiments on the space station have been reduced from about 180 man-hours a week to about 20 hours.
And the agency that put a man on the moon, sent probes to distant planets and still dreams of putting people on Mars still faces questions about how to pay for the most complicated engineering feat ever attempted.
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