Space Lab Discount Plans Hailed, Flailed in Congress : Science: After Clinton ordered costs cut, it’s still $3 billion short of goal. Some say project should be scrapped. Others say NASA has done its best.

Plans to cut the size and price of the nation’s proposed space station Freedom drew mixed reviews on Capitol Hill Tuesday, with supporters of the multibillion-dollar project applauding the redesign effort and opponents citing the costs as further evidence that it should be abandoned.

During a House subcommittee hearing on three proposals to scale back the orbiting space laboratory, congressional supporters commended Daniel S. Goldin, administrator of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, for paring the program’s development and operating expenses.

Goldin accepted the compliment and warned that congressional efforts to permanently ground the program would irreparably harm the nation’s 35-year effort to fly humans into space.

“I believe it will be a calamity if we do not have a human spaceflight program,” Goldin told members of the space subcommittee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology.

But House critics noted that NASA’s three-month redesign effort missed by $3 billion the target set by the Clinton White House of squeezing the space station budget to no more than $9 billion over the next five years.

“I do believe that the President gave NASA an impossible task, and we shouldn’t be surprised that NASA failed to perform,” said Rep. Dick Zimmer (R-N.J.), a longtime opponent of the space station program who said that he found none of the three proposed redesigns acceptable.

“It is my conclusion that, among all the options that have been proposed, the option the committee should accept is none of the above,” Zimmer said.

The space station’s first test in the 103rd Congress could come as early as next week, when the House is expected to vote on legislation authorizing NASA funding over the next six fiscal years.

The bill, which will face challenges from Zimmer and others, is to be considered today by the House science panel. As proposed, it would authorize $2.2 billion a year for the space station and related NASA science programs, enough to keep the project afloat.

“This plan funds (the) space station at a level that can be sustained without breaking the bank while still delivering a station that has the capabilities for the important scientific and engineering research that the nation needs,” said Rep. Ralph M. Hall (D-Tex.), chairman of the space subcommittee.

But on the other side of the Capitol, several senators said Tuesday that the space station and the $8-billion superconducting super collider are among the first programs likely to be targeted as the Senate searches for more cuts in President Clinton’s budget.

“The super collider is in big trouble,” said Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-Ark.). “The space station may have more of a chance, but in these times neither makes much sense.”

Clinton ordered NASA last February to come up with three options to cut space station development costs over the next five years to either $5 billion, $7 billion or $9 billion. After three months of study, NASA concluded that the closest they could come was spending $11.9 billion over the next five years for a radical new design that calls for launching a core space station, a 93-foot-long cylinder, on a single shuttle flight.

Other options, which would more closely resemble plans for the earlier space station, would cost up to $13.3 billion over the next five years.

Times staff writer Michael Ross contributed to this story.