Space Station Study Predicts Repair Woes

The proposed U.S. space station will begin to wear out while being built, requiring an unrealistic number of spacewalks for repairs before astronauts are even aboard to do them, a NASA study released Friday said.

The findings raise questions about the feasibility of the proposed $30-billion space station, seen as the centerpiece of NASA’s future space program, at a time when the space agency is already reeling from a series of setbacks.

But space station director Richard Kohrs said he was confident the agency could overcome the potential problem and reduce the need for maintenance to a more realistic level.

“I’m confident we’ll get it down. It’s going to take us two or three months but we . . . will be well within reason,” Kohrs said.

John Pike of the American Federation of Scientists was skeptical.

“I think they still have some serious unsolved problems that they’re going to have to solve before they get the show on the road,” he said.

NASA is already under fire because the space shuttle fleet has been grounded by fuel leaks and a defect in the $1.5-billion Hubble Space Telescope has blurred the observatory’s potentially revolutionary view of the heavens.

The blunders have triggered a storm of criticism in Congress, which is considering NASA’s $15-billion proposed budget.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration hopes to begin building the 500-foot-long space station Freedom in 1996 or 1997 as an orbiting outpost where astronauts can conduct scientific experiments and stage exploration into the solar system.