Senate Ignores Scientists’ Doubts, OKs Space Station : Budget: An attempt to kill almost all 1992 funding in favor of other projects or cutting deficit is rejected, 64-35.

Ignoring the doubts of leading scientists, the Senate Wednesday ensured that the nation’s controversial program to build Space Station Freedom will survive for at least one more year.

After a divisive debate that pitted supporters of the nation’s manned space program against those who argued for deficit reduction or increased social spending, the Senate rejected by a 64-35 vote an attempt to slash nearly all of the proposed $2 billion in space station funding for the 1992 fiscal year.

The amendment to dismantle the program was offered by Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.), who argued that the project is an exorbitant luxury that the nation can ill afford. “We do not need to embark with this monster that is going to have an insatiable monetary appetite,” Bumpers told his colleagues.

The vote to continue space station funding came as the Senate considered an $80.9-billion appropriations bill for housing, veterans affairs and independent government agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Final passage of the full bill was expected as early as today.

The House already has approved spending $1.9 billion on the space station in fiscal 1992. The difference between the two figures will be ironed out later in a House-Senate conference committee. The Bush Administration has strongly supported the space station project and had vowed to veto an appropriations bill that eliminated funding for the program.

The Senate action capped months of debate over the future of the planned orbiting space platform, which was intended to serve as a laboratory for life sciences and microgravity research and as a jumping off point for a return to the moon and a possible manned mission to Mars.

In recent months, members of the scientific community have complained that a redesign of the station ordered last year by congressional appropriators to cut costs has reduced the station’s scientific capabilities to the point that it is no longer worth launching.

Just last week, the leaders of 14 scientific societies said in a letter to key senators that “ . . . the excessive cost of the proposed space station threatens the vitality not only of NASA’s science and technology programs, but those of other independent agencies.”

But the Senate rejected that argument.

“I personally am offended by these scientific groups,” said Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), a strong NASA supporter who flew on an April, 1985, mission on the space shuttle Discovery. “Some of them are simply opposed to men and women being in space.” Others, he said, erroneously believe that their scientific programs will receive more money if funds for the space station are eliminated.

“I guarantee you we will have additional discoveries that are beyond our imagination now if we are willing to invest in the future,” Garn added.

In his amendment, Bumpers proposed reducing the $2.03 billion that a Senate Appropriations subcommittee had approved for the space station to just $100 million. The leftover money would have been enough to fund studies on alternatives to NASA’s approach to the space station.

Bumpers would have transferred $182 million of the space station funds to other science programs, given $431 million in additional funds to veterans’ programs and used the balance--about $1.4 billion--to help reduce the federal deficit.

“It is not going to have any scientific pay-back; it is simply an engineering feat,” Bumpers argued.

Among those who disagreed were California’s two senators, Democrat Alan Cranston and Republican John Seymour. California aerospace firms have billions of dollars in contracts riding on the space station program. Two major space station contractors are McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach and Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne Division in Canoga Park.

Another supporter of the project was Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio), who electrified the nation on Feb. 20, 1962, when, as a Project Mercury astronaut, he became the first American to orbit the Earth in his Friendship 7 space capsule.

“Every single advance that human beings have ever made is because someone was curious about the unknown,” Glenn said.

NASA already has spent more than $5 billion on space station development. The space agency estimates total development costs through the year 2000, when the station is scheduled to be ready to house a four-member crew, at $30 billion. However, the General Accounting Office has said that station costs through the end of the decade are likely to total $40 billion. The GAO also estimated that the cost to operate the station through the year 2027, including the $40 billion in development expenses, would come to $118 billion.