global_iss_reax_010305 WASHINGTON -- NASA and its partners in the International Space Station are struggling to gauge the total impact of the radical changes the White House ordered last week in the U.S. contribution to the program.
The White House directed NASA Feb. 28 to
cut back its hardware contributions and implement management reforms in order to rein in a program threatening to overrun its budget by $4 billion over the next five years. NASAs partners in the 16-nation program expressed concern about how such cutbacks would affect the station, but made no promises of additional financial support.
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"We have about come to the limit of what we can do," said Jorg E. Feustel-Buechl, the European Space Agencys space station chief. "We would love to help our American friends but money does not just appear out of nowhere."
Russian space officials fear that NASAs plans to scale back its hardware contributions could hinder research on the space station. "Unfortunately, NASA is encountering the same kind of problems as
we have had, and that is lack of financing," said a senior official with Rocket Space Corporation (RSC) Energia, the Korolev, Russia-based aerospace giant. "We have managed to cope with this problem and honor our obligations and NASA should do the same."NASAs station chief Michael Hawes said the U.S. space agency plans to scale back or eliminate its the
habitation module, crew return vehicle and propulsion module in an effort to finish the station without busting the overall $25 billion budget cap the U.S. Congress imposed on the program last year.[uplink]
U.S. funding for the centrifuge accommodation module, a major science facility under contract to be built by Japan for NASA, is also in jeopardy because of the changes in the budget.
NASA projected last year that it would have to spend about $8 billion between 2001 and 2005 to finish assembling the station. The White House believes that figure may be closer to $12 billion, according to an outline of the budget request U.S. President George W. Bush plans to submit to Congress in April.
Controversy at home
How a 50-percent overrun could catch NASA managers by surprise left some U.S. lawmakers scratching their heads last week.
"The revelation that the program is $4 billion in the red only proves how poorly NASA managed the program under the Clinton administration," said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-California), chairman of the House Science Space and Aeronautics Subcommittee.
"There are more questions than answers at this point," said one congressional source.
Rohrabacher said President Bushs prescription for the space station which emphasizes management reforms and cutting hardware content is long overdue.
One of Bushs close political allies, Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), said she is concerned about the cost growth but
disagrees with her fellow Texans plan to scrap station modules."I cant possibly imagine cutting back on the progress that were making," Hutchison told Space News.
Hutchison said she wants to see the space station finished as planned, and will be personally communicating her concerns to the president.
"I certainly think weve got to get to the bottom of the overruns," she said. "No one wants to have waste in our space programs. But once we know what the cause is, I think we must fully fund and keep our commitment to the space station and all of the research that is going on around it."
Under the emerging plan, NASA would now consider its hardware contribution to the station finished once the module known as node 2 is delivered and attached. Node 2, which was scheduled to launch in November 2003 prior to the shake-up, will serve as the attachment point for the European Columbus module and the Japanese experiment module.
But without the U.S. habitation module and crew rescue vehicle, the station cannot accommodate its full complement of seven crew members. Hawes said NASA will look for a way to add these elements back to the program once it solves its budget problem, which he said may prove significantly smaller than $4 billion.
Can NASA cut costs quickly enough?
NASA is still struggling to explain the cause of the anticipated cost growth. Hawes said a number of factors were involved, including unforeseen challenges building the station, developing its complicated software and underestimating the number of people the project would require at this stage.
"Part of it is moving into a flying program that is holding its schedule and not being able to decrease staffing at the rate that was assumed in some of the budget numbers," Hawes said.
NASA says it has about 2,300 civil servants agency-wide assigned to the program. Seattle-based Boeing Co., NASAs space station prime contractor, has 3,400 on the project -- about 1,000 less than in 1999, company spokeswoman Kari Allen said. The lions share of Boeings station work force is in Houston.
The White House is clearly concerned about NASAs management of the space station program.
An outline of Bushs 2002 budget request, dubbed "
A Blueprint for New Beginnings," directs NASA to transfer some space station program management responsibilities from Johnson Space Center in Houston to the agencys headquarters here until a new management plan is in place."The whole general theme of management requires a lot of study," Hawes said. While he offered no specifics on impending management changes, he did say that Boeing will continue to report to Johnson Space Center. Last weeks space station shake-up was preceded by the
Feb. 23 ouster of Johnson Space Center Director George Abbey.Staff writers Peter B. de Selding and Stew Magnuson contributed to this article from Paris and Washington respectively. Correspondent Simon Saradzhyan contributed from Moscow.
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