WASHINGTON -- The International Space Station (ISS) is in a scientific "death spiral" an advisory group to NASA warned today. Lack of crew and needed science gear to carry out productive research threatens the multi-billion dollar outpost's ability to carry out world-class research.

An independent NASA Advisory Council (NAC) meeting here has questioned NASA's approach in dealing with a $4 billion budget overrun in building the ISS. The space agency has chosen to solve its problem by eliminating funding amounting to 40 percent of the ISS research budget.

This budgeting strategy is "totally unrealistic" and "blatantly undermines the primary rationale for constructing ISS in the first place," reported an ISS science research group to the NAC members.

"This is a serious situation," said NAC chair, Charles Kennel, Director and Vice Chancellor of Marine Sciences at the Scripps Institute of Oceanography in La Jolla, California. He said that a "recovery plan" needs to be hammered out, one that can assess the best science possible if budget shortfalls, lack of science equipment, and available crew time continues to plague the program.

NAC member, Reverend John Minogue, President of Depaul University in Chicago, Illinois, said the rationale for the ISS remains unclear. "I don't have a clue to what's going on up there," he said.

"Were not talking about a problem here, but a crisis," said A. Thomas Young, also an NAC member. There is no way to satisfy the objective of having the ISS serve as a world-class facility with just a three-person crew, he said.

"A three-person crew is inadequate," Young said, leading to science being cut and the ISS entering into a "death spiral" as a failed project.

One interim candidate to help solve the gutting of science onboard the ISS is use of a modified space shuttle fleet, Young said. NASA has begun studying how to keep shuttles docked to ISS for extended periods of time. Loaded with its own science equipment, a space shuttle and its crew could augment and expand research done in orbit, Young said.

The science community is glum, frustrated, pessimistic and are not encouraged by the current situation, said Kenneth Baldwin of the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of California, and an NAC member.

Baldwin reported on the findings of The Biological and Physical Research Advisory Committee to the NAC regarding the redirected funding for the ISS and impact on science.

Decisions of the last few months have created a domino effect throughout the ISS program, potentially jeopardizing what ISS science can be done, Baldwin said. Projects in fundamental biology, microgravity science, and materials science are now in question, he said.

Baldwin voiced concern over waylaying science experimentation onboard the station. Maintaining the clientele of scientists that NASA has recruited to utilize the space station would be difficult, he said.

"If you put this on hold for five or six years, you won't have people coming back. Once they leave, they don't come back," Baldwin said.

"It begs the question. Should we be continuing to build out the space station? If you're going to use the justification for space station to have science as primary product, should you continue the build-up, and maintain it with a three-person crew when you can't do any science?, Baldwin said.

NAC member, John Logsdon, head of George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, aired an optimistic view.

Logsdon postulated that the Bush Administration has put the squeeze on NASA for a purpose. "You get the maximum review of the program. Cut all the fat out, and then see what the bill is. Also, see what we get out of our [international] partnersmaybe see what Congress is willing to put back," he said.

"I guess I hope that's what is going on. NASA is being disciplined by a new Administration, to get this program under control," Logsdon said, though difficult negotiations clearly are ahead for NASA.