Houston Chronicle
HOUSTON — NASA’s advisory council Thursday formally endorsed recommendations to rein in a projected cost overrun of nearly $5 billion for the international space station by scaling the project back.
The scaleback, recommended earlier by a White House task force, would restrict the station to three full-time residents rather than the seven astronauts and cosmonauts originally envisioned. It also will restrict research plans aboard the orbital base and limit opportunities for NASA’s European, Japanese and Canadian partners to visit the station.
The council comprises 18 experts in engineering, science and management who advise the NASA administrator on a range of issues.
The scope of the station’s financial problems surfaced earlier this year when NASA announced that the project would exceed the $25 billion cap Congress had mandated by about $4.8 billion.
A task force the White House appointed to assess the problems behind the overrun concluded that the agency lacked the financial controls and management skills needed to complete the space station.
The task force urged NASA to cut personnel, adopt management and accounting reforms, reassess its research objectives and reduce shuttle flights as part of a strategy to keep costs in check.
Sean O’Keefe, the Bush administration’s nominee to head NASA, has endorsed the task force findings. As deputy director of the White House Office of Management and Budget, O’Keefe was instrumental in uncovering the magnitude of the cost issue and chartering the task force report.
"The viability of the entire human spaceflight enterprise is being undermined by a loss in confidence in NASA’s ability to exercise adequate management and cost discipline in the international space station program," Charles Kennel, NASA Advisory Council chairman, wrote in Thursday’s letter of endorsement.
"The deficiencies in NASA’s management and financial control of the international space station program identified in the (task force) report cannot be excused and must not be ignored," Kennel wrote in a letter forwarded to Daniel Mulville, who is serving as NASA’s acting administrator.
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