House Saves Plan for Space Station : Science: Restored funding is major victory for Bush Administration. The 240-173 vote reverses a committee decision to eliminate nearly all spending for the project.

In a major victory for the Bush Administration, NASA and supporters of the nation’s manned space program, the House voted Thursday to save the proposed Space Station Freedom.

The 240-173 vote reversed a decision earlier this week by the House Appropriations Committee to eliminate nearly all funding for the station from the budget for fiscal year 1992, which begins Oct. 1. The House vote followed intense lobbying by Administration officials and NASA allies on Capitol Hill.

“There was simply not the feeling in Congress to concede America’s leadership in space,” said Rep. Bill Lowery (R-San Diego), a committee member who, along with Rep. Jim Chapman (D-Tex.), led the fight to rescue the station. The program is expected to cost $30 billion through the year 2000.

The $1.9 billion in 1992 funding restored by the Lowery-Chapman amendment, which will come almost exclusively from other NASA programs, must still be approved by the Senate. However, supporters said the lopsided House vote, which had been expected to be close, will give the station added momentum in the Senate.

The vote to save the station was bipartisan, as 107 Democrats joined 133 Republicans to form the majority. Twenty-seven Republicans, 145 Democrats and one independent opposed the funding.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration regards the station, which would be an orbiting “Erector set” of work modules and shimmering solar panels hung from a giant metal truss, as the centerpiece of its planned space exploration efforts through the early 21st Century. It is intended to serve as an orbiting laboratory for experiments in life sciences and microgravity, as well as a jumping off point for a return to the moon and a possible manned mission to Mars.

House critics charged during the six-hour debate, however, that in tough economic times the nation can no longer afford to pay for massive science projects at the expense of social programs and smaller, less-glamorous scientific endeavors.

“I absolutely object to the efforts to restore funding for this project on the backs of the least fortunate members of our society,” said Rep. Louis Stokes (D-Ohio). Stokes is a member of the appropriations subcommittee that three weeks ago slashed all but $100 million of the $2 billion that the Bush Administration had requested for the space station program in fiscal 1992.

“If we had funded the station,” said Rep. Bob Traxler (D-Mich.), the subcommittee chairman, “the subcommittee would have made drastic cuts in the Veterans Administration medical care, environmental and medical programs in the Environmental Protection Agency, in the National Science Foundation.”

Others echoed the complaints of scientists who have argued that the scaled-back version of the station, which was redesigned to cut costs, cannot adequately carry out the basic scientific mission for which it was intended.

One critic, Rep. Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.), called the station a “WPA for the aerospace industry,” referring to the massive public works program created by President Franklin D. Roosevelt during the Great Depression.

But the predominant images paraded through the House during the often acrimonious debate were those of the expanding American frontier and the people who explored it.

Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), who chairs the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, argued that canceling the station would seriously jeopardize future international scientific ventures. The governments of Japan and Canada and members of the European Space Agency are partners in the station venture and have pledged to contribute about $8 billion to the effort.

The debate was watched intently by two Southern California aerospace contractors that hold major space station contracts--McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co. in Huntington Beach, which has contracts worth about $3.4 billion, and Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne Division in Canoga Park, which has a $1.6-billion contract.

The Bush Administration had threatened to veto the $80.9-billion spending bill for housing, veterans affairs and other agencies, including NASA, unless the House included the space station funds.

Lowery and Chapman restored the station funds largely at the expense of other NASA programs. Their amendment to the appropriations bill for the Department of Housing and Urban Development, the Department of Veterans Affairs and independent agencies froze NASA spending at 1991 levels.

In effect, the amendment rescinded all increases for other NASA programs that had been requested by the Bush Administration and approved by the Appropriations Committee, and turned the extra money over to the space station program.

To reconcile the budget figures, Lowery and Chapman also eliminated $217 million that the Appropriations Committee had added to HUD’s budget for public housing projects.

The House continued to debate other amendments to the VA and HUD appropriations bill late Thursday.

The battle over the cost of Space Station Freedom has been brewing for years. When former President Ronald Reagan first committed the nation to the program in 1984, estimates then 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 panels, with living and laboratory modules 44 feet long.

But last fall Congress balked. The House and Senate appropriations committees directed NASA to 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--and the National Space Council, chaired by Vice President Dan Quayle, endorsed the new design and vowed to push forward.

INDUSTRY REACTION: Continued funding for the space station brightens aerospace industry prospects. D1