House-Senate Panel Pegs Space Station Funds at $2.1 Billion : Exploration: Figure is $125 million less than Administration sought but will permit work to proceed on schedule.

House and Senate negotiators agreed Tuesday to spend $2.1 billion next year to continue building the controversial Space Station Freedom, scheduled for launch in late 1995.

Although the compromise figure is $125 million less than what was sought by the Bush Administration, officials of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said the accord will permit work on the station to proceed on schedule.

The decision is of special importance to Orange County, where McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co. of Huntington Beach holds contracts on the project worth $3.5 billion.

“I’m pleased with the funding level for the space station, very pleased with that, considering the budget restraints,” said retiring Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), one of the program’s staunchest supporters.

Earlier, the Senate had earmarked $2.1 billion for space station work in the 1993 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. The House had set aside $1.7 billion, despite protests from some scientists and members of Congress.

NASA officials said an appropriation of less than $1.9 billion would almost certainly have seriously delayed the project.

During a series of spirited congressional debates, critics contended that the planned orbiting laboratory is too expensive and of dubious scientific merit. Supporters, however, argued that the space station is critical to the nation’s future in space exploration.

The station, which will serve as a 220-mile-high orbiting platform for research on life sciences and microgravity, is to be launched aboard a series of 17 space shuttle flights beginning in November, 1995. It is scheduled to be ready to continuously accommodate a crew of four by the year 2000.

The agreement on space station funding came as a House-Senate conference committee approved an appropriations bill that calls for spending about $87 billion next year on urban and housing programs, veterans affairs and independent federal agencies, including NASA.

Approval by both houses of Congress is expected, perhaps as early as Friday, and President Bush appears likely to sign the bill.

Under the agreement, the space agency will get $14.36 billion in the 1993 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1. That figure is about what the agency received in 1992, and more than either the Senate or the House had set aside for 1993.

Despite his space station victory, Garn said he was disappointed by the conference committee’s decision to include $360 million in NASA’s budget for a controversial rocket program that the Administration had sought to kill.

Research on the advanced solid rocket motor, which would give the space shuttle greater lift capabilities, is under way in the home district of Rep. Jamie L. Whitten (D-Miss.), chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

In another controversial move, the House and Senate negotiators did not include any money in NASA’s budget for work on the National Aerospace Plane. The experimental craft would take off from the ground like an airplane, but then fly into space like the space shuttle.

However, the budget for the Department of Defense is expected to include substantial funding for the program.