BY TIM BONFIELD
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Supporters call it the most ambitious space project in history. Critics call it a boondoggle.
Either way, construction is slated to begin Nov. 20 on the International Space Station. The $30 billion-plus project, co-sponsored by 16 nations, is expected to be complete in 2004.
The space shuttle Discovery flight that carried Sen. John Glenn is the last scheduled to fly before the program focuses almost exclusively on assembling the station.
The space station is designed to become the platform for long-term studies of how to live and work in space, for developing new materials and for researching new medicines. Lately, however, the over-budget and behind-schedule project has been a favorite target of Congressional budget cutters.
"The International Space Station will be the biggest scientific engineering effort ever put forward by mankind," Mr. Glenn said before the current Discovery flight. "I'm just going for nine days. Imagine what we might learn in nine months or nine years."
The ISS will be four times larger than the Russian space station Mir. NASA estimates it will take 43 Russian rocket launches and U.S. shuttle flights to carry 1 million pounds of components into orbit. Assembly will require more than 1,700 hours of spacewalking. The yet-to-be-named space station will include seven laboratory modules, a power plant, two lifeboats, a robotic crane, multiple solar wings and a single chamber that combines bedroom, bathroom and kitchen for a crew of six.
Partners include Russia, Japan, Canada, Belgium, Brazil, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and the United Kingdom.
What NASA officials call "the next era of space exploration" will begin in just 12 days. That's when a Russian Proton rocket will blast off from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazahkstan to carry the first space station component into orbit.
The Zarya unit will serve as the power and propulsion unit for the station. The shuttle Endeavour flight, set to launch Dec. 3, will connect Zarya with the Unity node ‹ a 22-foot-long central connecting passageway with six hatches that will lead to the space station's various parts.
Planning for the space station goes back as far as 1984 when President Reagan announced plans for the space station Freedom. After $10 billion in development, the project was scrapped in favor of the ISS and expanded into a multinational project. The first ISS launch
was supposed to occur in November 1997, then in June 1998, but the troubled Russian economy has slowed progress. A 50 percent budget shortfall for the Russian space program has played havoc with the schedule and has forced NASA to ask Congress to send tens of millions to the Russian Space Agency to keep production going on critical components.
In March, Congress blasted NASA after it disclosed that the space station will cost $3.6 billion more than the original $17.4 billion ceiling (not counting the $10 billion already spent on Freedom), promised by President Clinton in 1993.
Some critics have thought all along that the space station will be an orbiting white elephant.
James Van Allen, a University of Iowa professor who discovered Earth's radiation belts, told Aviation Week and Space Technology in late 1997 that the scientific impact of the station will be marginal at best.
"The cost of the space station is far beyond any justifiable scientific purpose or any justifiable practical purpose," Dr. Van Allen said.
Other critics, such as Mars expert Dr. Brian O'Leary, say the station siphons too much money away from what he considers more valuable missions, such as unmanned planetary probes and a manned mission to Mars.
Still, the space station project proceeds. Several components are already complete and awaiting launch. Others are nearly complete. Earlier this year, the wingless, engineless X-38 passed its first glide test, when it was dropped from a B-52 bomber and landed in the Mojave Desert.
The six-person craft is designed to be the space station's emergency "crew return vehicle."
Even before the ISS gets built, the aging Russian space station Mir, launched in 1986, will be coming down. To avoid a re-entry over populated areas, Mir will be crashed on purpose into the Pacific Ocean sometime in late 1999, possibly sooner.
The first and only American space station, Skylab, was launched in 1973. During three manned sessions, crews spent 171 days in the station. The deactivated craft crashed to Earth in July 1979. Most of it burned in atmosphere, but some debris hit the Indian Ocean and Australia.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
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