Science Groups Will Urge Scuttling of Space Station : Exploration: Organizations joining in appeal to NASA today believe funds should go to other projects.

Some of the largest and most prestigious scientific organizations in the country will call today for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to back away from plans to build the Space Station Freedom. The unprecedented action dramatically illustrates the deteriorating support for the costly program.

At least 14 major organizations, including the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society and the American Geophysical Union, are joining forces in the belief that the space station will be so costly that it will undermine financial support for a wide range of other scientific programs.

The organizations have scheduled a news conference today in Washington to announce their joint opposition. It will be the latest in a series of blasts leveled at the space station.

Some of the organizations have adopted individual position statements in recent weeks, including one from the American Physical Society that calls the potential contributions of the station “greatly overstated.”

The statement notes that “many of the scientific objectives currently planned for the space station could be accomplished more effectively and at a much lower cost on Earth, or unmanned robotic platforms, or on the shuttle.” The society represents physicists, including many who are expected to use the station.

The station is expected to cost well over $30 billion, and some calculations push that up to $118 billion over the 30-year lifetime of the orbiting laboratory. The debate was intensified recently when the House of Representatives told NASA to go ahead and build the station, but take the money out of its regular budget, a move that could have a devastating impact on many space projects if it is upheld by the Senate.

NASA officials contend the criticism is misguided.

“Development and assembly of Space Station Freedom is our commitment to furthering America’s leadership in space,” NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly, a former astronaut, said in recent testimony before the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology. “To turn our back on funding Freedom would eliminate a permanent American presence in space and put our space program in great jeopardy.”

Truly testified that 100,000 American jobs would be lost if work on the station were halted, and he said that “America’s credibility” is on the line.

But some longtime friends of NASA say the agency’s staunch support for the station could place the future of the U.S. space program in dire jeopardy, particularly if it continues to drive a wedge between the scientific community and NASA.

The Senate is expected to consider the House bill possibly as early as Wednesday. NASA officials are hoping the Senate will provide additional funding, but many doubt it will be enough to prevent a devastating impact on many competing projects.

Critics contend NASA has locked itself into a program that almost no one likes, but it cannot back away and admit that it has spent around $5 billion on a bad design. Any change in plans now also would alienate international partners--Japan, Canada and European nations--that already have invested billions in the project.

“If we renege on these international obligations, America’s word will be in question, and our ability to negotiate international science and technology agreements will be seriously eroded,” Truly said in his earlier testimony.

NASA insists that the station represents “the next logical step” in exploring the solar system, and the agency’s top leaders have shown no sign of weakening.

Many believe there is no way NASA can win. If the station is scuttled, a badly crippled agency will be left trying to explain how it could have wasted so much money on what one key source described as a “colossal goof.” And if it goes ahead and the cost overruns are as great as some fear, or another shuttle is lost in the effort, or other key programs are killed to pay for the station, the entire space program could be imperiled.

Currently it seems that about the only people fighting for the station are those whose jobs depend on it.

“It (Space Station Freedom) was conceived as a result of an unholy alliance between the aerospace industry, who wanted a welfare program, and empire builders within NASA, who wanted to strengthen those empires,” said UCLA geophysicist John F. Kerridge, who has served as an adviser to NASA.

Continuing with the station, said Louis Friedman, director of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, would be “a mortal blow for science and space exploration for a decade.”

Many scientists believe some sort of station is necessary, but most argue that this station has been so scaled back that it is no longer suited to carry out most of the functions that originally had been envisioned--an astronomical window on the universe, a manufacturing plant in space, a medical research facility, a stepping stone to Mars.

Yet, even in its reduced form it remains very costly. And as the matter now stands the funds will have to come out of other programs.

Some scientists believe the station already has created a troubling legacy. One NASA policy-maker said the station has caused “deep and long lasting resentments” throughout the science community.

Said another: “None of this is about science. It’s about politics.”

Besides the prestigious physicists, chemists and geophysicists groups, organizations opposing the station include the Optical Society of America, the American Mathematical Society, the American Vacuum Society, the Consortium of Social Science Assns., the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics, the American Society for Zoologists, the Society of Rheology, the American Crystallographic Assn., the Institute of Food Technology, the Acoustical Society of America and the Mathematical Assn. of America.

BACKGROUND

NASA has spent more than $5 billion on design and planning for the proposed Space Station Freedom. But as the cost of the controversial project continues to climb, and funding becomes more uncertain, many prestigious scientific organizations are questioning NASA’s continued support for the project. Today, at least 14 such organizations are expected to announce their opposition to the space station.