April 28, 1998
Space Station Is Assembled, But Only on the Ground
By WARREN E. LEARY
ASHINGTON -- After years of planning and promises, pieces of the proposed international space station are finally coming together. But instead of being assembled in orbit, they are stacking up at testing sites and prelaunch warehouses awaiting a decision to begin putting the giant laboratory together in space.
A new date to begin rocketing the station components into space, already delayed several times by hardware and money problems, is to be set by the end of next month, NASA project officials say. While there is still a good chance that assembly will start before the end of the year, they say, completing the project will probably take longer and be more expensive than predicted.
The old schedule, put together just last year when delays in building a critical, Russian-made module forced a seven-month postponement, called for the first element of the station to fly in June on a Russian rocket, followed the next month by an American component lofted by a United States space shuttle.
With recent word that the crucial Russian component, called the service module, is another three to four months behind schedule, the first assembly flight is now not likely to occur before September, experts say.
A decision on when, and how, to proceed with the space station will depend heavily on information gathered by a National Aeronautics and Space Administration team visiting Russia this week. NASA officials, meeting in Moscow with their Russian counterparts, will assess the status of the much- delayed service module that has been holding up the program and determine if the Russian Space Agency is getting money long promised by the financially troubled Russian Government to participate in the space station. If not, NASA may elect to substitute a standby module that it has ordered from the Navy.
The planned space station is envisioned as a huge orbiting laboratory weighing more than one million pounds and covering an area almost the size of two football fields with its giant solar power panels deployed. Orbiting some 220 miles above earth, the station is to house six astronauts at a time as they work in seven laboratories conducting studies in the weightlessness of space.
Over more than five years, astronauts are to assemble the station from components made by 16 countries and carried into space by at least 45 rocket flights, including more than 30 American space shuttle missions. Major partners in the venture, expected to cost at least $30 billion initially, are the United States, the European Space Agency, Russia, Japan and Canada.
The long assembly process is to begin with the orbiting of a Russian-made, American-financed module called the functional cargo block. This 20-ton power and propulsion unit, which is completed and ready to launch on a Russian rocket, is to be followed in less than a month by the first American component, a connecting hub called node 1 with six docking ports for other segments.
The third station component is to be the Russian-made and financed service module, a 42,000-pound unit similar to the core section of Russia's Mir space station that would provide early living quarters for astronauts as well as flight control, data processing, power distribution and communications during the initial stages of station building.
After an additional two American shuttle flights to carry up supplies and components, the sixth space station mission, about six months after the first, would be a Russian Soyuz capsule that is to bring the first three-member crew to stay aboard the growing complex.
NASA says that by the end of 1997, the United States and its partners had produced more than 368,000 pounds of flight hardware for the station, including a half-dozen major pieces that have arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for processing prior to shuttle flights.
The most crucial hardware, and the biggest bottleneck in this plan, is the Russian service module.
A Congressional delegation led by Representative F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., a Wisconsin Republican who is chairman of the House Science Committee, visited Moscow early this month and reported that Russian space officials had admitted that they did not receive all the money promised for 1997 and had no secure source of financing for space station work this year.
"When we got there," said Mr. Sensenbrenner, who is a critic of Russia's participation as a partner in the space station project, "we were told that the service module would not be ready until late March of 1999, a three- to four-month slip that NASA had not been told about."
Then, referring to NASA's Administrator, Mr. Sensenbrenner said: "When I came out of Russia, I called Dan Goldin immediately and told him what we'd learned. I told him that the program was in trouble and that he had to get President Clinton involved directly to talk to Boris Yeltsin and get him to fulfill Russia's obligations to the space station."
The Russians, under President Yeltsin, are not the only ones facing money problems with the space station. Delays and changes in plans are increasing overall costs for all the partners, and NASA is also having to deal with cost overruns on some of its components as well as paying for contingencies to buffer the project from Russia's lack of money. The international partners have invested more than $4.5 billion so far in the project, NASA says.
When the Clinton Administration restructured the space station program in 1993, which included bringing in the Russians as a full partner, it capped Federal spending on the project at $17.4 billion through assembly, forecast to be in 2002. But by March 1998, Mr. Goldin, NASA's leader, acknowledged in Congressional testimony that American costs would probably be $21.3 billion, with full assembly delayed until the end of 2003.
A new study, however, suggests that American costs are likely to climb even higher, to as much as $24.7 billion. Last week, NASA formally released a much-discussed cost assessment report it had commissioned last year from an independent committee headed by Jay Chabrow, an aerospace consultant and former TRW executive.
The Chabrow committee, while generally praising NASA's management of the program, said the agency had underestimated the costs of such a big, complex project. The panel said the agency's estimates were based on assumptions that each planned step in assembling the station would be successful and did not adequately take into account risky elements of the program, like hardware failures, that could add costs and take more time to solve.
The report said completion of the station was likely to be delayed one to three years beyond the 2003 target by technical and financial problems, and that NASA would need an additional $130 million to $250 million annually beyond the current spending cap to complete the project as planned. The agency said that the report mainly questioned how much reserve money the program needed to handle unexpected problems, and said it would review the study to see if it needed more insurance against these contingencies.
Dr. Ray A. Williamson, a research professor with George Washington University's Space Policy Institute, in Washington, says that so far, NASA has successfully shifted money from other programs to cover added space station costs.
"There now is a question as to whether NASA can cut more from other programs, such as space science, without harming them," Dr. Williamson said. "It's never easy to determine if in cutting fat from programs, you cut into muscle and bone and cause irreparable damage. NASA may have to bite the bullet and ask Congress for more money."
W. Michael Hawes, NASA's chief engineer for the space station, said the agency would review its options for the project and put together a plan on how to proceed before the end of May. The agency will first assess the status of the service module and a United States science laboratory, scheduled to fly next year, that is two months behind schedule, he said. Then officials have to decide whether to wait on the service module or recommend flying an interim American-made unit to replace some of its functions while the rest of the station is assembled.
"Obviously, we are going to pre-brief key people in the Administration and on Capitol Hill on the options we are working," Hawes said.
At the end of May, program managers from all the international participants will meet to approve a new assembly sequence, and the new schedule and sequence will then get final authorization from the heads of the space agencies of the five major partners, officials said.
Hawes said a major decision in the process was how to use the American-made backup unit for the service module, termed the interim control module. Late in 1996, NASA officials concerned with the uncertain fate of the Russian module met with representatives of the Naval Research Laboratory about adapting the propulsion unit of a secret spy satellite for the space station.
Last spring, NASA signed a contract for more than $120 million to have the Navy build the standby unit and develop the computer software to run it.
NASA could use the interim control module in one of two ways, Hawes said. It can stand in as a temporary substitute for the Russian unit, providing propulsion and stability, but not living quarters and communications, to the station as more components are added. Or it could be attached to the service module at some point, increasing the station's maneuvering and propulsion capability.
"It's a nice bit of insurance to have, knowing we have options for the unit," Hawes said. "But we have to commit to one of them soon so the development team can start planning for a flight, which includes developing guidance and navigational software for the option chosen."
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