
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, June 26, 1990                   TAG: 9006260425
SECTION: EDITORIAL                    PAGE: A6   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: 
DATELINE:                                 LENGTH: Medium

LOST IN SPACE

PRESIDENT Bush and Congress are in colliding orbits. The president wants $300 million in the next budget that's directly linked to his space-exploration initiative. A House Appropriations subcommittee has cut that amount. Bush says he'll fight for "a fully funded space program."

The president accuses critics of the program of favoring solutions to social problems first, an approach he calls self-defeating. That doesn't seem to be the issue at all. Few in Congress say the nation must choose between space and society's multiple, seemingly intractable problems.

Chopping $300 million from the 1991 budget for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration would hardly stop the space program. That sum is less than 2 percent of the $15.2 billion Bush wants for NASA, nearly a 25 percent increase and the largest boost for any major agency.

No, the question is, or ought to be, the cost of space initiatives. When last seen, they were headed for hyperspace.

Prime example is the 500-foot, 290-ton space station Freedom. When the project was broached to Congress in 1984, the cost was put at $8 billion. In six years, half that sum has been spent, and there's nothing to show for it but a lot of paper and some prototype parts.

As for the overall cost - hold onto your seats - that has mounted to at least $120 billion, two-thirds of it operating expenses. Even then, say experts, Freedom will need further costly modification to enable the launching of Americans to the moon and Mars.

Freedom has commercial possibilities. It could advance research in science, communications, metals and life-saving medicines. But such potential can't be realized until the station is built, and the more it costs, the longer will the commercial payoff be delayed.

NASA scorned the Soviets' method - followed with their own space station, Mir - of orbiting small operating modules that could be connected with each other. NASA chose to build big all at once, a way of assuring large budgets and broad political support. That's a recipe for waste and delay.

A related concern about big projects - not just in space - is that they drain federal funds from "small science." These include innovative, goal-specific projects that can more quickly and directly advance American technology. Congress and the White House have always had a fondness for grand-scale, gee-whiz programs that also provide spectator sport. The Appropriations subcommittee vote suggests, in a small way, that priorities could change.

by CNB