Space Station Supporters Warn Clinton : Science: Lawmakers favor most expensive option proposed by NASA. They say the President faces obstacles if he picks low-cost redesign.

Congressional supporters of the nation’s proposed space station are warning that the project will face serious trouble on Capitol Hill if President Clinton throws his weight behind a radical, low-cost redesign.

The space station’s chief supporters in the House and Senate made it clear this week that they favor the most elaborate and expensive of the three proposed cost-cutting redesigns developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

With a cost of $13.3 billion over the next five years, that version, known as Option B, would pare more than $4 billion from the cost of the current design. Yet it would preserve most of the space station’s scientific capabilities, and much of the $11 billion in work that NASA has done on the project over the last nine years.

The fight over the space station is being closely watched in California, where more than 4,000 jobs and $6 billion in space station contracts are at stake. The state is home to two of the program’s three prime contractors: the McDonnell Douglas Space Systems unit in Huntington Beach and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International in Canoga Park. About 60 other California companies also have pieces of the project.

Clinton, who ordered the cost-cutting study last February, is expected to choose one of NASA’s three money-saving plans within the next week. A panel of aerospace experts will present Vice President Al Gore with its independent analysis of the NASA options at a meeting today.

But congressional backers of the project have gotten out in front of the White House. Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, which oversees NASA and its programs, said that an approach like Option B is “the only sound approach to the evolution of the (space) station.

“Option B saves umpteen billion dollars, and gives the President something he can point to as a major effect of his reanalysis. At this stage in the program, it would make little sense to veer off on an entirely unproven track with an uncertain schedule and unsubstantiated cost.”

Brown’s view was echoed by Sen. Barbara A. Mikulski (D-Md.), who chairs the Senate Appropriations subcommittee that funds NASA and the space station.

Option B provides “maximum science with minimum disruption to what we’ve already gained from our investments in technology, hardware and software,” said Mikulski, who along with Brown and former Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), has been one of the space station’s most powerful patrons.

Another important Senate player, Republican Phil Gramm of Texas, on Tuesday derided the lowest cost option devised by NASA, which would involve the single launch of a long metal cylinder that would act as a “core” space station.

“If all we’re doing is fulfilling a commitment that has been made with a ‘man in the can,’ then you can count me out,” Gramm said. On the other hand, he added, “if NASA will give us a no-frills space station that will do the job, I believe it will get funded.”

Congressional aides, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said they believe that in the new era of tight budgets members of Congress will continue to fund the space station only if they are convinced that the program has been trimmed to the bone but can still produce meaningful science. “And that means Option B,” one aide said.

Space station critics, however, have vowed to do their best to kill the program, no matter what option Clinton selects. They argue that the program has been trimmed so severely that its scientific capabilities have been hopelessly compromised and that it is a luxury the nation can ill afford in tough economic times.

Once Clinton makes his choice, the battle moves to Capitol Hill. Both the House and Senate must approve multiyear spending ceilings for NASA, as well as separate appropriations for the 1994 fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1.

Earlier this week, NASA outlined plans for three different types of space stations whose construction and development costs over the next five years would range from $11.9 billion to $13.3 billion.

The least expensive would involve the launching of a core station on a single space shuttle flight. Fully outfitting the 23-foot, 92-foot long cylinder would require nine more launches.

Two variations on a middle-cost option would involve modular construction in space and 16 shuttle flights. The most expensive option, favored by Brown and Mikulski, would look most like the last plan for space station Freedom. It would require 20 shuttle flights to complete.