Total Space Station Costs Over $9-Billion Ceiling

The price tag for redesigned versions of the proposed space station Freedom will be billions of dollars higher than expected because, for the first time, the costs will include all related expenses for the project, a NASA official said Saturday.

Three options for scaling back the program will be unveiled Monday by a team of experts that has been laboring since March 10 to drastically cut the space station’s costs to save it from the budget ax.

The new approach will calculate the total price of the station at more than the $9-billion ceiling called for by the White House, but the figures will include all costs related to the project that have in the past been spread throughout the NASA budget.

Those additional costs have been known for some time. Most recently, a General Accounting Office report said NASA was off by $11.7 billion when it estimated that the previous design for the station would cost $31.3 billion. Nonetheless, including the total costs in the new price tag could give opponents of the station even more reason to argue against the project.

“There is going to be sticker shock,” said the NASA official, who spoke on the condition that he remain anonymous.

But the official also predicted that the more honest approach would be welcomed by President Clinton, who in the next few weeks is expected to decide whether to proceed with any of the options for building the space laboratory.

Congress must ultimately decide whether it will appropriate the money needed to continue the program. Although past support has been solid, its future has been put in doubt by a combination of major changes in Congress, which has more than 110 new members, and a bitter fight over the Administration’s plan to raise taxes.

The station’s future is being watched closely in Southern California, where the aerospace industry is reeling from defense budget cuts. Two of the three prime contractors--the McDonnell Douglas Space Systems unit in Huntington Beach and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International in Canoga Park--together hold space station contracts worth more than $6 billion. More than 4,000 Californians are directly employed on the space station program.

The NASA official said the higher cost estimates, reported to range from more than $9 billion to nearly $14 billion, are not due to any failure by those responsible for the redesign. Instead, he said, they will include, for the first time, all costs associated with the program. Previously, NASA carried many of the science, research and operations costs associated with the program in other parts of its budget.

NASA, the official said, “never told the American people what the space station was going to cost. . . . Our accounting system was archaic. The new design will include all the cost elements.”

At the same time, NASA has revised its cost estimate for the previous version of the space station program. Until Saturday, NASA insisted that the earlier, more elaborate design would cost $31.3 billion through the end of the century. That figure included development costs of approximately $13 billion over the next five years.

But the NASA official suggested that new estimates, including costs previously spread elsewhere throughout the NASA budget, would push the earlier estimate significantly higher.