Space Program Seeks $7.6 Billion

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration Wednesday released a $7.69-billion space exploration budget for fiscal 1987 but immediately conceded that the Challenger catastrophe has made it unclear how--and even whether--a large part of that money would be spent.

In a rather grim briefing at agency headquarters, NASA officials dutifully presented what they called a “pre-Challenger” budget that allotted billions of dollars on the assumption that the nation would be flying four intact space shuttles for the remainder of 1986 and in fiscal 1987, which begins Oct. 1.

But last week’s shuttle explosion leaves those plans “in a very dynamic situation right now,” Acting NASA Administrator William R. Graham said. In fact, controller Tom Newman said later, the explosion leaves the $1.52-billion 1987 budget for space shuttle programs in confusion and could affect another $745 million allotted for shuttle production and improvements.

Communications Program

The disaster also clouded NASA’s $799-million budget for communications and space flight tracking. The last link in a new NASA worldwide network vanished with the Challenger when the explosion, which killed the seven crew members aboard, also blew up a communications satellite in the shuttle’s bay.

Furthermore, the Jan. 28 explosion may have dashed the agency’s hopes to reap $704 million in profits in fiscal 1987, and more this year, by leasing shuttle services to the Pentagon and commercial users.

The Defense Department was to have paid NASA $531 million and commercial users $173 million for 1987 services, with the money to be pledged against the $1.5-billion shuttle budget. The loss of the Challenger leaves the agency with the capability to fly only 15 missions annually, instead of the 24 that a four-shuttle fleet would allow.

Ironically, the fiscal 1987 budget allots the last dollars needed to bring the space agency’s facilities fully in line with the needs of a four-shuttle fleet.

Will Save Millions

“We will lose revenue” from the loss of the fourth orbiter, Newman said, although he added that NASA also will save millions because it now will pay for operating and maintaining only three shuttles, Columbia, Atlantis and Discovery. “A lot depends on how soon we resume flying,” he said.

Little of the confusion is likely to clear until the agency knows when that will happen and--equally important--whether Congress will grant money to build a replacement orbiter for the destroyed Challenger.

Graham refused to consider those questions Wednesday. But Associate Administrator Jesse Moore said that the 1987 budget includes $60 million to $70 million to complete a spare parts acquisition program for the shuttle--a program widely viewed as an effort to assemble the framework for a long-sought fifth orbiter.

The completion of that program “gives you the basic structure of an orbiter,” Moore said, “but it still takes an awful lot of internal plumbing. . . . You’re still a long way from having a complete orbiter.”

The plans for the rest of NASA’s $7.69 billion--up from the $7.3 billion that the agency will spend this fiscal year--reflect some trims to meet the White House’s budget-balancing mandates, but not enough to seriously damage space exploration plans, officials said.

Most Projects Intact

The agency curtailed plans for a joint solar exploration project with Japan and European nations and halted work on an advanced communications technology satellite. But most other science projects are intact, although the timetables for some may be set back by the shuttle’s reduced flight schedule.

The agency’s two remaining big-ticket projects--the development of plans for a permanent space station and research into an “aerospace” plane that can shuttle to and from space without cumbersome rockets--remain on schedule.

The space station was allotted $410 million for fiscal 1987, about $100 million less than the agency had desired, but still enough to keep the project in line with its scheduled 1994 completion date. The money will be spent for design and development of station plans.

The aerospace plane, being developed in league with the Air Force, the White House’s Strategic Defense Initiative office and the Pentagon’s Advanced Research Projects Agency, was given $45 million for development of advanced flight technologies. The money will continue decade-old research on new propulsion systems and high-temperature metals, among other things.

Officials say that a prototype of the aerospace plane could be flying by the early 1990s. The vehicle would fly at speeds ranging from 4,000 to 8,000 m.p.h. and would burn oxygen sucked directly from the atmosphere, instead of carrying bulky rocket tanks filled with liquid oxygen.