AIAA San Francisco Section Newsletter
July 1993

"Tiger By The Tail": The Space Station Dilemma

Brenda Forman

	At the end of this summer's inevitably bloody budget 
battle, Space Station Freedom will have been either 
1)canceled or 2) downsized and stretched out yet again, with 
an IOC receding ever further into the dim and distant future.

	So today I began wondering:  What happens to the civil 
space program if the Congress does in fact cancel the 
station?  And after I'd chewed on that awhile, I began 
wondering what happens to the civil space program if the 
Congress does not cancel the station?

	I am dismayed to report that neither prospect is very 
pretty.  What we got here is a tiger by the tail.

	Scenario 1:  Station cancellation -- The station's death 
would cascade throughout the whole civil space program.  
Ultimately, it could imperil the entire manned program.

	ASRM (Advanced Solid Rocket Motor) would probably be 
first in the cross-hairs.  ASRM is supposed to give the 
shuttle extra lift, enabling it to deploy the station more 
effectively.  But ASRM is already in trouble because after 
assorted budget battles and stretchouts, it won't be ready in 
time for launch of the first station components.  If there 
now ceases to be a station to deploy, ASRM begins to look 
uncomfortably like a subsystem looking for a mission.  Such 
systems have short life-expectancies in Washington.

	The shuttle would likely be the next target because its 
rationale is closely tied to the station.  Many of its on-
board experiments focus on questions associated with station 
deployment and maintenance plus the physiological challenges 
to astronaut health associated with prolonged periods in 
zero-g.  Meanwhile, its future role focuses heavily on actual 
station deployment and long-term support.  If there now is to 
be no station, then the shuttle's very existence could be 
questioned.

	Supporters of unmanned space efforts might view these 
possibilities with glee.  They have long argued that robotic 
probes perform more and better science for remarkably less 
money. Thus, in their innocence, they may think that the 
station's death would free up money for unmanned space.

	It won't.  "Small" science will not be "Big" science's 
residual legatee.  For starters, the space science community 
is too small to constitute and effective constituency.  Worse 
yet, it is fragmented, quarrelsome and fractious -- a 
constituency in name only.  With friends like this, the 
unmanned program may not need enemies.

	How about the NASA Field Centers?  JSC (Johnson Space 
Center) and MSFC (Marshall Space Flight Center) are 
particularly deeply involved with the station.  If it dies, 
it's hard to see where they would find replacement work to 
fill the gap since no big manned program is likely to take 
the station's place.  The result may be an increasingly 
bitter competition for survival among the NASA Centers in 
which each tries to take work away from others and survival 
will depend on being the meanest sumbitch in the valley.

	Then there are the station contractors. Space companies 
are defense companies too.  Station cancellation would result 
in the loss of several thousand more skilled jobs at a time 
when the defense companies are already laying off thousands 
each month.  Thus, the repercussions of station cancellation 
would spread well beyond the civil space program to raise yet 
further questions about our beleaguered defense industrial 
base.

	And what happens to manned space efforts in general?  
With space station gone, they would have little real 
rationale left.  A half-dozen shuttle flights a year with no 
organizing goal to justify them will not sustain the program.  
Meanwhile, nobody seems willing to think seriously about 
going back to the moon, let alone to Mars.

	I told you this wasn't pretty!

	Scenario 2:  Station survival -- weakened, stretched 
out, but still breathing É barely.  The trouble is that what 
OMB Director Leon Panetta called the "Pacman effect" is real:  
the existing station design's funding requirements 
(especially when combined with shuttle's) will increasingly 
devour the NASA budget -- unless by some miracle the budget 
is radically increased (a miracle I strongly advise you not 
to await).  This is precisely what has driven the White 
House's insistence on station redesign.

	But if the station isn't killed, it will only survive in 
a further diminished, weakened state, facing an ever-cloudier 
future.  Worse still, the while exercise may well not save a 
cent because while stretching it out won't add capability, it 
will add costs.

	If we do it at all, we really just ought to do it right.  
Having decided nine years ago to build this thing, we should 
face up to the fact that nothing is gained and a helluva lot 
can be lost by trying to do it on the cheap.  The dilemma 
lies in the fact that we can't -- or won't -- afford the 
money it takes to do it right, yet we can't readily accept 
the consequences of calling it quits.

	Like I said, a tiger by the tail.