NASA’s Design for Space Station

With reference to Lee Dye’s article “NASA Launches Fierce Bid to Preserve Space Station” (Part A, May 25) and Gregg Easterbrook’s column, “The Space Station Question: What’s It Supposed to Do?” (Opinion, May 26), it is necessary to introduce a problem that has plagued this project from inception--its design.

First of all, it’s the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s design and NASA is no good at the business of designing. NASA officials should have asked industry how to design; instead they told industry what they were to do. Managers in the industry have not covered themselves with glory by acceding to what they knew were outrageous demands by NASA. Keep in mind that industry had 55 years of experience behind it when NASA was formed.

We should also be stiffening the spines of our representatives in Congress by telling them we want this fiasco stopped. But we should be stipulating that the program be restarted with an industrywide competition free of NASA preconceptions, because a space station is still a good idea if it can be done well for less. It will not be necessary to define too specifically what it is to do at first; if it is designed to adapt easily for growth, it can accommodate changes as they come along. It should start with a minimum of “bells and whistles.” In 30 to 50 years, the unpredictable will often arise and the station must be flexible enough to accommodate it. The current design, with its focus on “configuration,” simply can’t hack it.

O.P. HARWOOD

Huntington Beach