Rep. Brown Backs Funding for Scaled-Down Station : Space: Californian proposes spending $30 billion over next two years. He says he is opposed to a new design. His action could touch off a political battle.

With NASA nearing the end of its effort to redesign the space station, the House Science, Space and Technology Committee Thursday threw down the gauntlet for a climactic political battle over the project’s future.

Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), the committee chairman, introduced legislation authorizing civilian space spending of more than $15 billion in each of the next two years and said he will support only a scaled-down version of space station Freedom, not a new design.

“Any new concept, however attractive it may sound, will require detailed study and development before I would feel comfortable with any large-scale commitment,” Brown told reporters.

“Thus the Freedom-derived station is the only design I intend to support. If the nation decides not to pursue the Freedom space station, I would recommend that we give much more serious consideration to our next step than a 90-day study can provide.”

With $8 billion already invested and estimates of construction and operating costs soaring, the Clinton Administration ordered a hurry-up redesign effort in February, telling the space agency to find something that would cut construction and operating costs in half.

Administration guidelines would limit spending on a space station to $1.8 billion a year and a total of $9 billion over the next five years.

A downsized version of space station Freedom, Brown said Thursday, could be produced for $1.9 billion annually and $9.5 billion overall.

It would, he added, have a better chance for political approval and scientific and technical success than any alternative design.

Even so, he put the odds of House passage at no more than 50-50.

The House two years ago voted to kill the station effort begun by the Ronald Reagan Administration, but funds were restored by House and Senate conferees. Last year, 36 senators voted to terminate the project.

Strong opposition remains in the House, and influential senators--including Republican John W. Warner of Virginia and Democrats Dale Bumpers of Arkansas and Jim Sasser of Tennessee--have vowed to make a determined bid to end the project.

Of the various options considered by the redesign team, Brown said Thursday, a smaller version of space station Freedom offers the best path to a permanent human presence in space. Although Brown would not directly say whether he believes the station should have a capability for permanent human occupancy from the outset, he said essential features in the Freedom design are its capacity for expansion and permanent human presence.

“I am adamant that this not be looked at as a one-shot deal,” he said, noting that the Apollo program to land men on the moon was flawed because it provided no course for further exploration and development beyond lunar landings.

Aside from purely domestic considerations, Brown said, Congress and the Administration must assure fulfillment of U.S. obligations to foreign partners in the space station endeavor.

Canada, Japan and the European Space Agency have been partners in the project from the outset.

Supporters of the station point to the international commitments, along with jobs, as a compelling reason to continue a space station project.

If the United States opts out, Brown said Thursday, others are apt to join the Russians in building an orbiting station, “and maybe let us visit it once in a while.”