Do We Spend Too Much On Space? |
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At $54 Billion, The International Space Station Is Costing NASA Six Times Its Original Budget |
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NEW YORK
Wednesday, April 28,1999 - 08:05 AM ET |
(CBS) Depending on whom you talk to, the space station is either the key to sending scientists to Mars or a financial black hole.
The International Space Station will take more than 40 American shuttle flights and Russian launches before it's complete. But with a $54 billion price tag for NASA, the project comes at a much higher cost than originally anticipated, CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson reports.
As the space station program officially gets underway, NASA has to contend with the gravitational pull of politics and critics who say costs must be capped.
"One of the biggest scams that has taken place in the last eight or nine years is NASA keeps coming back and coming back and coming back with cost overruns to the tunes of hundreds of millions of dollars," said Space Committee Chairman Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz.
The space station was supposed to have been finished by 1994 at a cost of $8 billion. Now, construction of the space station won't be done before 2004, and the price tag is more than six times that initial cost.
Still, the station's supporters argue that it's all worth it. "The space station is the essential stepping stone if man is to return to the moon or eventually send scientists to Mars to look for life there," says John Pike of the Federation of American Scientists.
But cost overruns have run rampant with the program. It's been an ongoing controversy on Capitol Hill, where some in Congress have tried unsuccessfully to impose spending caps on the space station.
All of the problems have tested even the most ardent station supporters. "No one would hold up the international space station as how to design and manage a program," says John Logsdon, Director of the Space Policy Institute.
But he argues it makes no sense to limit future spending.
"The idea that somehow you're going to cap costs now, not invest in using it now that we've committed to building it, seems to me to be rather stupid policy," Logsdon says.
Congressional hearings are planned for February, as many House members say they're losing their patience for a program fraught with the possibility of cost overruns and delays.
What bothers members of Congress is that America is the one paying the bulk of the tab on the space station. The space station was intended to be more of an international project than it is, and other nations were supposed to be picking up more of the cost than they have so far.
The Government Accounting Office estimates that the space station program, including launches and operation of the facility, will cost NASA more than $95 billion before the ISS is decommissioned. Comparably, the United States' international partners will chip in just over $12 billion combined.
Even the plan to bring the Russians aboard five years ago to save U.S. taxpayers money has backfired. NASA has already sent Russia $750 million, and has promised $660 million more just to keep them in the program.
That's drawn sharp criticism from congressional leaders. "The problem is that our relationship with the Russian space program is fundamentally flawed and is hurting our national interest," said GOP Rep. James Sensenbrenner, chairman of the House Science Committee.
NASA is aware that Congress will be watching its every move during the five-year construction of the space station. Many experts believe the fate of the entire manned space program rests with whether the space station is viewed as a success.
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