Space Station Champion Says Outlook ‘Grim’

In an effort to save the space station from the scientific scrap heap, a spending bill was unveiled Thursday urging Congress to shave funds from other National Aeronautics and Space Administration programs and keep plans for the orbiting laboratory alive--at least for another year.

The bill, authored by Rep. George E. Brown Jr. (D-Colton), would cut one space shuttle flight and delay several other programs to keep on track a space station that NASA has already spent $11 billion and a decade designing.

“The situation is grim,” Brown said as he presented to reporters the $14.1-billion NASA spending bill he intends to introduce in the House next week. “With fewer resources than this, I will oppose the space station program in its current form--either by reducing funding for the station or by killing it outright.”

The loss of support by Brown--chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology and long the champion of human exploration of space--would almost certainly sound the death knell for the space station and for thousands of California jobs associated with it.

Two of its prime contractors--McDonnell Douglas in Huntington Beach and the Rocketdyne Division of Rockwell International in Canoga Park--together hold space station contracts worth approximately $6 billion. The project supports 1,500 jobs in Orange County alone.

NASA’s budget has lost about $500 million a year for the past several years at the hands of a Congress increasingly unenthusiastic about American space study. The space station, long considered one of NASA’s most illustrious efforts, squeaked through the House by a single vote last year.

The budget drain has infuriated Brown, who said this month he would recommend killing the station outright if Congress was not willing to adequately support it.

President Clinton requested $14.3 billion for NASA in 1995--$2.1 billion of that for the space station--but members of a powerful appropriations subcommittee have made it clear they would not meet that entire request.

Brown countered with the spending bill that cuts $290 million from the President’s request, his attempt to set a bare-bones agenda for NASA spending that leaves with the space station intact. The influential chairman delivered the bill with a vow that he will not agree to much less.

“For those of you who have been asking where I draw the line on the space station--this is the line,” said Brown.

Opposition to Brown’s spending plan was already shaping up Thursday with Rep. Dick Zimmer (R-N.J.), one of the station’s leading opponents, saying he would try to delete the lab from it.

“This legislation provides more evidence that the space station has been cannibalizing the rest of NASA’s programs. Once again, space science is being sacrificed to the space station,” Zimmer said, referring to Brown’s proposed scale-back of the Spacelab program and the elimination of the Mars Surveyor program, the only new space science effort NASA plans to start for the remainder of the century.

But the station still has some powerful allies. The Clinton Administration has refused to cut it and Vice President Al Gore has repeatedly emphasized its foreign policy advantages since the Russians joined the venture last year.

“I know that Al Gore believes in his heart, as I do, that America would benefit greatly from a space station,” Brown said. “But I do not know if the Administration’s commitment--however fervent--will be enough to stop the Congress from treating NASA as a cash cow for other programs. . . . “

Even if he continues to support it, Brown put the space station’s chance of survival at 50-50. Worse, there is every indication that Congress will continue the same dance every year, with the space station’s fate hanging in the balance.

If passed by the House, the bill would not reach the Senate until late this summer.

Should the funding survive this year, Brown said, he is optimistic that support might increase for the floating lab in the next five years.

“I will consider we reached the bottom of the pit this year,” he said.