Space Station Costs Spark Wrangle : Congress: Estimates range as high as $180 billion over 36 years. The conflict involves expense of shuttle missions to build, service the platform.

WASHINGTON — The cost of building and operating space station Freedom over the next 36 years could reach $180 billion--more than double the $84 billion price tag that NASA has put on the project, according to a congressional staff report released Wednesday.

But a separate study by the General Accounting Office, the investigative arm of Congress, estimates the cost at $118 billion, and the head of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said both figures are far too high.

The wildly divergent estimates for the manned space station fueled an acrimonious debate over cost-accounting during a hearing before a House Government Operations subcommittee chaired by Rep. Barbara Boxer (D-Greenbrae).

Boxer accused NASA officials of concealing the real cost of long-term operations of the space station, slated to be permanently manned by the turn of the century.

“The space station’s cost has been vastly under-reported to Congress,” she said. “Its long list of promised capabilities (has) dwindled down to a pair of missions that renowned scientists say have little merit in relation to the cost.”

However, Rep. Christopher Cox (R-Newport Beach), ranking Republican on the transportation subcommittee, criticized the accounting methods that congressional staffers used to come up with their $180-billion estimate.

“I think what we’re talking about here is apples and oranges,” said the Orange County conservative, whose district borders Huntington Beach, home to McDonnell Douglas Space Systems Co., a major space station contractor.

NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly told Boxer: “It is a question of accounting responsibility, not a question of hiding costs.”

Boxer, meanwhile, has called on NASA to pay for an independent audit of space station costs, a request that NASA says could cost up to $400,000. The agency has not yet acted on the request.

The dispute over long-term space station costs centers largely on the question of how to account for the cost of space shuttle missions needed to build and service the space platform.

The questions have arisen as Congress begins consideration of a new, scaled-back plan for the beleaguered program, which officials say represents NASA’s last chance to launch space station Freedom.

Last year, congressional appropriations committees, citing acute budget problems, ordered NASA to trim spending on the station by nearly $6 billion over the next six years.

In response, NASA in March unveiled a new design for the station that dramatically reduced its capabilities. For example, the date for permanently manning the station was rescheduled from 1996 to 1999 or 2000; the power supply was cut from 75 to 57.5 kilowatts, and the size of the permanent crew was reduced from eight to four astronauts.

The new design was immediately attacked by prominent scientific groups, including the Space Studies Board of the prestigious National Research Council. The board, which was represented at Wednesday’s hearing, concluded that the new design “does not meet the basic research requirements of the two principal scientific disciplines for which it is intended”: life sciences and microgravity research.

Nevertheless, the Bush Administration, through the National Space Council, vowed to press forward with the project and is seeking the $2.1-billion appropriation for fiscal 1992 that Congress last year informally promised to provide. If NASA does not get that money, officials have said the station program could be in serious jeopardy.

At Wednesday’s hearing, Truly called on Congress to provide continued, stable funding for the project.

NASA has said it will cost $30 billion to build the space station--three huge solar power arrays and two, 27-foot-long laboratory and living modules hung from a giant metal truss--to the point where it can be permanently occupied by a four-member crew. The $30 billion includes $4.5 billion already spent on development, and will comprise total station costs through the year 2000.

In addition, Truly said NASA roughly estimates that the cost of operating the station will be $2 billion a year. Using NASA’s figures, building the station and operating it for 30 years, beginning with a crew-tended capability in 1997, would cost a total of $84 billion.

The subcommittee staff, however, concluded that it will cost $51.8 billion to build the station, and another $130 billion to operate it through the year 2027, for a total cost of nearly $182 billion.

The GAO, on the other hand, said NASA will spend $118 billion--$40 billion to build the station, and another $78 billion to operate it between the years 2000 and 2027.

The major difference in the figures involves the way that NASA, the GAO and the subcommittee staff calculated the cost of the shuttle missions needed to build and resupply the space station.