- America's space agency Nasa - once a synonym for US
high-tech
supremacy - is struggling for survival. In the last few days, it has lost
its chief, been revealed to have a staggering $5 billion debt, and been
blasted by a committee, which includes several Nobel laureates, for its
utterly inept management.
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- Rudderless, and crippled with debt, the agency that put
Americans on the Moon is wobbling like a stricken spacecraft in orbit.
Few observers can now see the National Aeronautics and Space Administration
surviving - at least not in its current form.
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- The agency's main hopes lie with persuading Congress
to bail it out. It is estimated it needs $8bn to fulfil its commitments,
a vastly improbable sum given that America is on a war footing and has
priorities far removed from space travel. Instead, a desperate slashing
back of costs and missions seems the agency's likely future.
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- It will be 'like throwing children to the wolves', chief
administrator Daniel Goldin admitted last week, shortly before he handed
in his notice. Most blame the agency's woes on Goldin's philosophy of
pushing
through 'faster, cheaper' unmanned science missions while promoting the
vastly expensive construction of the manned International Space Station.
In the former category, most projects were so underfunded and ineptly
managed
they failed.
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- For example, in one 10-week period in 1999, Nasa lost
a Mars orbiter; a spacecraft intended to land on the Red Planet; and two
robot probes designed to burrow into Martian soil to search for
water.
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- In one case - the Mars orbiter - the mission failed
because
engineers simply mistook metric measurements for those in imperial units.
The debacle was blamed on lack of resources. By contrast, the space station
- which is now being put together 250 miles above Earth - has sucked in
cash like a giant black hole. Originally touted as costing an exorbitant
$17bn, its pricetag has spiralled to an even more staggering $22bn, and
is expected to reach $30bn.
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- And for this, America will get little more than an
orbiting
Portakabin. The ISS requires a crew of three to operate its solar panels,
power supplies and other services, while a further three were expected
to run zero-gravity experiments in biology and material sciences, as well
as astronomical and other research.
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- But now Nasa can afford to supply only the first of these
astronautical trios, so that for the foreseeable future - at least five
years - the station will simply have no one on board to carry out the
research.
At best, its skeleton crew will be able to carry out 20 hours of
experiments
a week.
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- For an edifice touted as the acme of high frontier
science,
a pathetic output to say the least which has led to the agency being
subjected
to waves of withering abuse.
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- On Wednesday, the criticism will reach a peak when the
US Congress's science committee will debate a newly published report about
the agency's space station activities. The study - by the Independent
Management
and Cost Evaluation Task Force - blasts the agency for 'deficiencies in
management structure, institutional culture, cost estimating and programme
control' and concludes Nasa cannot now move forward 'without radical
reform'.
Massive cuts in space station and shuttle missions are now seen as
inevitable.
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- One favoured plan would be to strip the agency of running
its space shuttle, and to give it to a private operator. Nasa would simply
pay a fee to run missions on the spaceship it had developed.
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- As one senior official at the European Space Agency -
which has become increasingly irate about Nasa's inability to meet its
international obligations - pointed out last week, the idea is hideously
reminiscent of the Railtrack fiasco in Britain.
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- 'In fact, Nasa is just like Railtrack, except it operates
spaceships not trains,' he said. 'Like Railtrack it is expected to run
a service and at the same time to develop new technologies. It cannot do
both.' This inability may tempt the US government to follow the path of
privatisation, though the omens are far from good.
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- Stripped of its shuttle-launching activities, and running
a denuded space station, would leave Nasa looking a sad, feeble reflection
of the once great agency that hoisted Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin on
their way to the Sea of Tranquillity. The administration will still have
major science missions - space telescopes and planetary probes - to run,
but the future of its manned spaceflight must now seem uncertain.
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- One possible role for Nasa might be for it to develop
replacements for its fleet of space shuttles which were first launched
in 1982 and which are now coming to the end of their predicted useful
lives.
However, at present, the agency is stymied by the basic problem that even
if it did build a replacement, it currently lacks any cash to launch them.
Nor, indeed, does it have any goals at which it could aim them.
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- Guardian Unlimited © Guardian Newspapers Limited
2001
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