Space Station Is Imperiled by Plan to Fund Orbiting Lab, NASA Says

WASHINGTON — NASA officials warned Congress on Thursday that the space station program will be destroyed if money is diverted to build an unmanned scientific and manufacturing facility in space.

At the same time, the space station budget came under attack when Rep. Edward P. Boland (D-Mass.) pressed for more money for housing programs next year and said if that money is not allocated, Congress will “kiss goodby to the space station.”

The outcome of the space station debate will have a significant impact on a number of Southern California defense contractors, including McDonnell Douglas Astronautics Co. in Huntington Beach.

Restore Housing Fund Cuts

Boland, whose House Appropriations subcommittee handles funding for housing programs as well as independent agencies including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, said his panel will take money for housing from the budgets for NASA and the National Science Foundation unless Congress changes the overall budget priorities.

Boland said “it would take $1.5 billion to restore” the cuts in housing funds to the level needed. Unless Congress finds another source for those funds, he said, “you can kiss goodby to the space station,” new rocket boosters and other improvements in the space program.

Andrew Stofan, the retiring head of NASA’s space station program, said he would strenuously oppose any attempt to take money from the space station budget to pay for a commercially developed “Industrial Space Facility.”

NASA, which is under congressional and White House pressure to make use of an unmanned scientific and manufacturing facility, recently said it will seek to lease an orbiting laboratory for five years at $140 million a year. Some congressmen want that money to come out of space station funds.

‘No Use for It’

“I see no use for it (the ISF) as far as developing the space station is concerned,” said Stofan, who is retiring after 30 years with NASA. “If the $700 million came out of developing the space station, I would definitely say no.”

Some NASA officials and members of Congress fear that forcing the agency to accept the ISF or another facility like it is a move by station opponents to kill the project altogether.

Stofan testified at a hearing of the House space science subcommittee, which is considering the administration’s request for $1 billion in the fiscal year that begins in October to start construction of the space station.

“If we get less than the $1 billion we ask for . . . we will have a program, but not on the schedule we have today,” Stofan said. He said any skips in the schedule waste far more money than they save.

$350 Million Cut

After budget cutters got through, NASA’s 1988 request for $767 million for the space station was trimmed to $425 million.

“That $350 million less will cost us $1.4 billion” by the time the station is completed,” Stofan said. And, he said, it will delay completion of the station by one year.

Last December, NASA awarded four major space station contracts potentially worth up to $6.5 billion. At the time, the agency announced that the space station would generate nearly 12,000 new aerospace jobs, nearly half of them in California.

McDonnell Douglas Astronautics in Huntington Beach won a $1.9-billion contract to build a major portion of the space station. Rockwell International’s Rocketdyne division in Canoga Park was awarded a $1.6-billion contract to build another part of the station.

Hiring Postponed

McDonnell Douglas has postponed hiring the first of an expected 1,300 new workers for the station project until the funding situation is more definite.

Stofan said any cut in the NASA budget will have disastrous results just as the agency is trying to spring forward again from the calamities that began with the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. NASA has requested $11.5 billion in 1989, an increase of $2.5 billion over 1988.

Rep. Jack Buechner (R-Mo.), who is a member of the House budget committee as well as the space science subcommittee, said he thought NASA will get only a $1-billion increase.

“As we are standing on the springboard ready to dive in the water, they are draining the pool,” he said.

Orbiting Lab

The schedule, Stofan said, calls for the first elements of the station to be launched in the first three months of 1995. It will be ready for temporary visits by astronauts a year later and will be completed in the first three months of 1998.

Again and again, Stofan was asked by committee members about the industrial space facility.

He said the private Houston firm that is developing the facility--which would be carried into orbit by the space shuttle--tried to find commercial customers for it but couldn’t. Under the NASA proposal, the government would lease back 70% of the space.

There is no advantage to building the ISF before the space station is ready, Stofan said. He said it should be built only if there is a commercial demand for it.

Thomas Moser, director of NASA’s space station program office, said the ISF would have only double the usefulness of carrying a Spacelab in the shuttle’s cargo bay. He said a permanently manned space station would be 50 times as useful as the ISF.

Times staff writer David Olmos in Orange County contributed to this story.