Billions in O.C. Pacts Ride on Space Lab Fight

With $3 billion in contracts at stake, workers at McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co. in Huntington Beach are watching intently as congressional supporters of Space Station Freedom fight to restore the most serious budget cut in the project’s seven-year history.

In an era of increasingly tight budgets, the battle to rescue the already pared-down plan to orbit a manned laboratory by the end of the century will pit those in Congress who insist that government must spend more on social programs, especially housing, veterans affairs and the environment, against those who regard the station as the nation’s last chance to move forward with a manned space program.

“Our federal government’s budgeting has hit a dead end,” said Rep. Bob Traxler (D-Mich.), chairman of the House subcommittee that earlier this month chopped from NASA’s budget all but $100 million of the $2 billion that the Bush Administration had requested to continue the space station program.

“We simply can no longer afford huge new projects, with huge price tags, while trying to maintain services that the American people expect to be provided,” Traxler said.

But others in Congress disagree.

“There are a lot of issues far broader than space station at stake here,” said Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), one of three members of the House Appropriations subcommittee that handles NASA who voted to continue the space station. “I just think it’s essential for the country,” Lowery said. “America has led the rest of the world because of our technological superiority, and I would hate to see us throw that away.”

Added Rep. Ron Packard (R-Carlsbad), a member of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology: “The space station is really the linchpin, the keystone, of our future programs in space.” Packard’s district includes southern Orange County.

If the stakes are high for NASA, they are astronomical for the aerospace industry. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration, which already has spent $4 billion developing the station, plans to spend another $26 billion on construction by the end of the decade. That money is to flow to McDonnell Douglas, Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne Division in Canoga Park, Boeing Defense & Space Group in Huntsville, Ala., and a host of subcontractors.

McDonnell Douglas is under contract to provide the station’s propulsion, navigation, communications and other key systems, in addition to the 353-foot-long truss structure that will act as the station’s backbone.

The truss will support three giant solar arrays that will power the station, as well as 27-foot-long laboratory and habitation modules, where the crew of four astronauts will work and live. The current schedule calls for launching the first elements of the station aboard a space shuttle sometime in early 1996, and permanently manning the station in the year 2000.

“The vote to cancel (Space Station) Freedom was extremely disturbing,” said McDonnell Douglas spokesman Thomas E. Williams. “The space station is the next step in space for America. Without it, we’re not going back to the moon, we’re not going to Mars. We feel very strongly that we as a nation cannot walk away from our heritage in space.”

About 2,000 of McDonnell Douglas Space Systems’ 12,000 employees are working on various space station projects, Williams said. Of those station workers, about 1,200 are employed at the Huntington Beach plant.

Worried about prospects for funding, NASA recently launched a counterattack against doubters, pointing out that 2,000 businesses in 40 states benefit from the program, including 203 in California, representing some of the largest contracts.

In material prepared for lobbying Congress, NASA has stated that “cancellation of Space Station Freedom signals the end of future U.S. manned exploration of space.”

NASA is struggling with a number of troubled programs, including the launch of the Hubble Space Telescope with a flawed mirror and continued delays in launching the space shuttle, which will have to make at least 23 flights to launch and build the station as it is now designed.

The battle over the cost of Space Station Freedom has been brewing for years. When President Reagan first committed the nation to the program in 1984, original estimates put the cost of developing and launching the station at about $8 billion.

By last summer, that estimate had grown to about $38.3 billion, through fiscal 1999. That figure was to pay for a station that would support a crew of eight, powered by four giant solar arrays, with living and laboratory modules 44 feet long.

But last fall, faced with a skyrocketing budget deficit, Congress balked. The appropriations committees directed NASA to go back to the drawing board and come up with a leaner, less expensive design. At the same time, the committees told NASA it could reasonably expect to receive about $14 billion for the station from fiscal 1991 through fiscal 1996--about $6 billion less than previously anticipated.

NASA unveiled the stripped-down design in March, to the immediate criticism of scientists, who said the new station could no longer adequately carry out its scientific mission

the study of the effects of weightlessness, or microgravity research, and biological studies.

Nevertheless, the National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, endorsed the new design and vowed to push forward. At the time, Quayle made it clear that scientific research is not, in the Administration’s view, the principal reason to put Space Station Freedom into orbit.

“Is America going to lead the way to space? That’s the fundamental question,” Quayle said.

That question next will be asked of the full House Appropriations Committee, which is expected to meet early next month to consider the appropriations bill that was reported out by Traxler’s subcommittee. That legislation funds the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Veterans Affairs and independent federal agencies--including the Environmental Protection Agency and NASA.

When Traxler and five other subcommittee members voted to cut from their bill the $2 billion for the space station, they distributed the funds to other programs, including veterans’ hospitals, asbestos cleanup and housing construction. That will make it all the more difficult to put the space station funds back in the legislation, members of Congress said.

Lowery and others involved in the rescue effort said they have yet to decide whether to mount an attack in the Appropriations Committee or wait until the measure reaches the House floor.

Regardless, one Bush Administration official, who was not to be named, was not optimistic.

“It’s hard to fund programs that don’t have an immediate payoff. (Members of Congress) have become current consumption junkies,” the official said.

In the Senate, support for the space station appears to be stronger. Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who chairs the Senate appropriations subcommittee that finances NASA, and Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), the panel’s ranking Republican, both have publicly backed the station.

“We believe there is significant support for the station on the Senate side,” one congressional aide said.

Ultimately, the fate of the station is likely to be decided in a House-Senate conference committee, where the outcome is uncertain, several officials said. Conference committees take separate versions of legislation approved by the House and Senate and craft them into a bill that conference members hope will be acceptable to both bodies. The legislation must then be approved again by Congress and signed by the President before it becomes law.

“Ultimately, in conference, I think there will be funding for the space station,” Lowery said. “Will it be adequate to keep the current schedule? Probably not.”