Gore Pledges Realistic Space Program Priorities

In a major policy address, Al Gore rebuked President Bush on Monday for not protecting the nation’s aerospace industry against foreign competition, vowing that a Clinton-Gore Administration would set realistic priorities to enable America’s space program to continue exploring the cosmos to develop “as quickly as possible” space-based technologies to help clean up the Earth.

Gore also criticized his GOP counterpart, saying that under Vice President Dan Quayle’s leadership, the National Space Council has made “politically expedient” decisions that have further harmed the country’s space program.

Gore accused the council of failing to direct the development of a sound, new rocket program in the wake of the 1986 Challenger explosion, which crippled the space shuttle program for several years. Instead, Gore said, the council proposed “not one, not two, but three--yes, three--new, costly and technically complex orbital launch systems: the $12-billion New Launch System, the $15-billion National Aerospace Plane and the Single Stage Rocket Technology program, which still has no price tag.”

Gore delivered his biting remarks at the Goddard Space Flight Center, a major NASA facility in this Washington suburb. The Tennessee senator was accompanied by Maryland Sens. Barbara Mikulski and Paul Sarbanes, both Democrats, and by NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin, a recent Bush appointee.

The seating arrangement had called for Goldin to sit on the speaker’s platform during Gore’s address. But he changed his mind after learning that Gore’s speech contained harsh criticism of his boss and, instead, chose to sit among the audience of about 200 Goddard workers, sources said.

Gore’s speech, which came just hours before the the final presidential debate, is unlikely to get much notice, but the principles he laid down are noteworthy in that he would serve as the science and technology czar in any Clinton White House, as the Arkansas governor has repeatedly stated.

Saying that “one after another, our leading (electronics) firms have surrendered in the battle against foreign competitors,” Gore warned of a similar fate for the U.S. aerospace industry.

Without a cost-effective and flexible set of priorities for the nation’s space program, Gore said, aerospace is “next on the international hit list.”

A Clinton-Gore Administration would continue space exploration but would ask other nations to share in the cost, Gore said.