NASA Chief Begins Effort to Save Space Station From Budget Ax

In his most spirited defense yet of the nation’s manned space program, the new chief of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration on Wednesday launched a high-stakes campaign to save space station Freedom from the congressional budget ax.

“Space is an essential part of America’s future in medicine, science and technology,” Administrator Daniel S. Goldin told more than 100 leaders of the aerospace industry at a meeting in suburban Virginia.

Expected to cost between $30 billion and $40 billion through the year 2000, the space station will be the subject of debate next month in the House. The Bush Administration is asking for $2.2 billion for the project in the 1993 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

Critics charge that the project is an extravagance that the nation can ill afford in tough economic times. And, they say, the station has been so pared down that it can no longer adequately carry out its planned scientific mission.

But supporters say that the station is critical to the future of America’s manned space program.

The fate of the space station is being watched in Southern California, home to two of the three major project contractors. McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co. in Huntington Beach has $3.5 billion in space station work, and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International in Canoga Park holds contracts valued at $1.6 billion.

Arguing that manned missions offer important payoffs on Earth, Goldin cited three decades of space technology spinoffs that made possible such things as modern long-distance telephone service, automated teller machines and highly sophisticated medical equipment.

He also said that space-based research by humans could bring about advances in the battles against AIDS and other diseases.