Too Many Astronauts With Too Little to Do, Report Finds

NASA attracts some of the most well-educated and highly motivated scientists, pilots and engineers in the country to become astronauts -- maybe too many.

The space agency has so many astronauts that more than half of them have never flown in space and the way things are going it could take until 2010 before all of the current 116 astronauts get even one chance to fly, according to a report by the space agency’s inspector general.

Only 53 astronauts have been to space, leaving the rest to engineering jobs and other tasks that do not require the intensive training they receive at the Johnson Space Center, the report said. NASA is preparing to hire yet more astronauts next year.

Curtis L. Brown Jr., a retired astronaut who now flies jets for American Airlines, said Monday he left the program in May 2000 after he had racked up six spaceflights and felt it was time to give younger astronauts a chance to fly.

“I think it is a terrible loss to the individuals and to our society,” Brown said. “The pilots and test pilots are the top of the top and now they are being used to go to meetings. I don’t know how they can go to work every day, because the prime of their careers are passing them by.”

The report was completed in February but was withheld because of the sensitivity of the Columbia accident. As a result, the report’s conclusions do not factor in the effect of losing one of the four orbiters in the shuttle fleet or the grounding of the fleet. Spaceflights are not expected to begin before April, 14 months after the Columbia accident.

NASA spaceflight chief William F. Readdy, a former astronaut, agreed with the conclusions in the report and pledged to adopt a number of reforms. A spokeswoman said the agency still does not know whether the Columbia accident will exacerbate the problem.

The surplus is caused by NASA’s chronic optimism about how often it will fly into space, the report said. In 2001, for example, NASA projected it would fly seven or eight shuttle missions.

The astronaut office in Houston had an even more optimistic projection of eight or nine flights. Only six flights occurred.

The pattern was the same in every year from 1998 to 2002, meaning that 20 to 25 new astronauts were hired with the intention they would fly, but instead remained grounded, according to the report.

Another factor causing a surplus of astronauts is NASA’s decision to assign just three astronauts to the space station, Brown said. Originally, the space station was to have seven astronauts. After the Columbia accident, NASA decided to staff the station with just two astronauts.

The astronaut office conducts its own estimates but does not have to perform a thorough analysis or document how many it will need, the inspector general said.

NASA agreed and said it will address the problem. It takes at least 28 months to train a shuttle astronaut and at least 3 1/2 years to train an astronaut for a mission aboard the international space station.

The surplus of astronauts drives up NASA’s costs, according to the report. Astronauts earn up to $130,000 per year, but that is a small fraction of their training cost.

“Although [the] Johnson [Space Center] was unable to determine the full cost of the astronaut corps using the cost accounting system available in 2002, astronauts clearly cost more than other civil servants,” the report said.

Charles Bolden, a former space shuttle astronaut, said he agrees there are too many astronauts but took sharp exception to the criticism that it is causing a budget problem for the agency.

“This issue has been a source of disagreement between NASA headquarters and the flight crew operations for more than a year,” Bolden said. “They do have too many astronauts, but to say that causes budget problems is nonsense.”