Sky High Spending
Cost Overruns Nearly Triple Original Price Tag for Space Station

Listen to Dan Charles' report on the congressional testimony over space station funding .

Artist's rendering of completed International Space Station. Photo: NASA

Nov. 7, 2001 -- The head of an independent task force reviewing plans for the International Space Station told Congress Wednesday that NASA needs to dramatically revise the project to stop huge cost overruns.

Task force chairman Thomas Young, the former president of aerospace manufacturer Martin Marietta Corp., recommended building a less ambitious version of the station, one that would carry just three astronauts. But European nations say the United States isn't allowed to make such decisions unilaterally, because the space station is an international partnership.

The space station exists right now as a high-tech construction site and dorm room, spinning around the earth every hour and a half. But getting the station to the point where it becomes fully operational, NPR's Dan Charles reports for All Things Considered, could be the biggest challenge yet to the program.

Space Station Facts • If fully completed, the International Space Station will be the largest man-made object ever put into orbit. It will have a mass of about 900,000 pounds when completely assembled. • Sixteen nations -- the U.S., Canada, Japan, Russia, Brazil, Belgium, Denmark, France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the United Kingdom -- are helping to build the station, making it one of the largest non-military joint efforts in history. • The program employs more than 100,000 people in space agencies aerospace companies around the world.

Initially, the station was going to cost $8 billion, but that estimate ballooned to $12 billion. The most recent estimates put the price tag at $30 billion and Young said even that number is not credible.

If you were building a house, Young said, you'd want to have architectural plans in hand, and a good idea how much it would cost to make those plans a physical reality. But NASA doesn't have that kind of information. And until it does, Young said, the space agency should drastically reduce its ambitions.

Young told Congress that NASA should concentrate on building the core of the station and should not worry right now about adding the new modules required for a full seven-person crew. If NASA can prove within two years that it can build the proposed scaled-back version, he said, maybe it will earn the right -- and the money -- to build the whole thing.

Other Resources

• International Space Station information from NASA

• Current space station status from Spaceflightnow.com