NASA’s Heart in the Clouds, but Head May Limit Ambitions

They did it again, to minimal fanfare. Out at Pad B, seven human beings recently climbed into a spaceship pointed toward the blue Florida sky.

So many things had to go right. Half a million gallons of liquid hydrogen and oxygen had to burn correctly. Bolts had to blow at just the right moment. Seconds before liftoff, a quarter of a million gallons of water flooded the pad to dampen the vibrations. In theory, the astronauts could escape a disaster by hopping into baskets and sliding down wires to the perimeter fence.

But everything worked. Eight and a half minutes after liftoff the astronauts were in orbit. Even critics admit that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration has mastered the technological side of space travel.

But these are ominous times for NASA. Sept. 11 has changed national priorities, and sending people into space does not appear to be high on the government’s agenda. A panel of experts recently criticized NASA for spending billions more than expected on the International Space Station. The space station may never be fully built, which has outraged NASA insiders as well as the United States’ foreign partners.

All this has made people here at the Kennedy Space Center apprehensive. They worry that the NASA of the future may not share their enthusiasm for rocketing astronauts into orbit. They also worry that NASA’s future administrator is a budget expert who speaks nary a word about the grand, romantic aspirations of the Space Age.

“Where,” asked Robert B. Sieck, the former launch director and now a NASA advisor, “does human spaceflight factor into the big picture?”

This part of the world is hallowed ground for the space community. The cape is dominated by the Vehicle Assembly Building, 525 feet high, forever encircled by buzzards, with doors tall enough to admit a vertical moon rocket.

But it’s a period piece now. It was thrown up without architectural flourish at the height of the Space Race, when the United States was desperate to beat the Soviet Union to the moon. Sen. Bill Nelson (D-Fla.), who years ago rode the space shuttle into orbit, said recently that the building’s panels are coming loose. “God help us if a hurricane comes through there,” he said.

The Apollo Era’s sense of urgency is gone. America’s enemies today are not the kind of people who possess a space program.

NASA’s most immediate problem is that the space station costs billions of dollars more than expected. That’s been a chronic situation for a project that began in 1984 as Space Station Freedom, then morphed in 1993 into an international collaboration.

No one really knows what a finished station would cost. NASA said earlier this year that it faces a $4.8-billion shortfall over the next five years. Sean O’Keefe, the man nominated by President Bush to become NASA administrator, testified recently that he had “no confidence” in that number or any other estimate he had heard so far.

Roy Bridges, director of the Kennedy Space Center, says the space station is a complicated piece of hardware built by several different nations. Some components are never put together until they get into orbit. Just about everything is custom-made--there’s hardly a screw or bolt anywhere on the station that’s off-the-shelf.

“Nobody’s ever built a space station before--there’s really not a lot of cost models out there,” Bridges said.

Bridges, a former astronaut, believes that space exploration is essential to America’s cultural survival. He knows that NASA is not an entitlement program, that it’s part of the discretionary portion of the federal budget. He also knows what it’s like to float to the window of the space shuttle and see an entire continent below him.

“You have this enormous sense of speed,” he said. “You can see the entire Andes mountain chain from the tip of South America all the way up. The whole Mediterranean basin. If we could get people to space for seven or eight days like I did, they would pay a lot of money.”

Ed Weiler, who oversees space science for NASA at headquarters in Washington, says, “Exploration is not predictable. Making miracles happen doesn’t always happen on schedule.”

Talking about miracles was one of the trademarks of Dan Goldin, who ran the agency for nearly a decade and abruptly announced his departure in October.

Goldin has invariably been described as a visionary, a true believer in what might be called the mythology of the Space Age. Goldin increased the number and reduced the size of unmanned spacecraft exploring the solar system--his mantra was “faster, better, cheaper.” He pushed his scientists to search for signs of life beyond Earth and for habitable planets orbiting distant stars. He routinely declared that NASA’s job was to make dreams come true.

His designated successor, O’Keefe, vowed to make sound management principles come true. Since January, O’Keefe has been deputy director of the Office of Management and Budget. Until O’Keefe’s nomination, the Bush administration showed little interest in the space program; Bush did not talk about space when running for office.

In his testimony, O’Keefe said that the challenges NASA faces today “are, largely, not scientific, technical or engineering in origin. . . . Rather, the challenges are more aptly described in management terms--financial, contractual and personnel focused.”

O’Keefe endorsed the idea that NASA needs to prove, over the next year or two, that it can rein in costs in the human spaceflight program. Only then should it be allowed to expand the space station to its original planned configuration.

O’Keefe spent much of the hearing fending off probing questions from Nelson and Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison (R-Texas), who have NASA centers in their home states.

Nelson advised O’Keefe not to view NASA with the “mind-set of OMB,” and Hutchison declared, “I don’t think the leader of NASA can be just a budget-cutter.”

O’Keefe agreed that it would be a “tragedy” if the station couldn’t achieve its goals in scientific research, but made no promises.

“Let’s get the house in order, the basics in order,” he said.

At the close of the hearing, Nelson asked O’Keefe an open-ended question: “What is your vision?”

O’Keefe spoke for several minutes about “prudent management principles,” reinvigorating “the entrepreneurial spirits” of NASA, and the importance of collaboration with other elements of the federal government.

He did not mention space.