Space Station Woes Highlight Inherent Problems

July 16 -- A series of recent troubles have revealed signs of strain in the effort to build the world's largest orbiting space station.

Inspectors have reported finding one hair-fine crack after another in the fuel lines of each of the four space shuttles — the "work horses" that provide transportation between Earth and the fledgling station. And an independent panel recently concluded the space station program does not do enough science to be classified as a research program in its current scaled-down status.

Some argue the string of bad news only highlights inherent flaws that have plagued the multibillion-dollar program for years.

"The space station is a monster when it comes to its budget," says Robert Sekerka, a Carnegie Mellon University physicist who serves on independent science advisory councils. "The cracks are only going to put more pressure on the NASA budget — where will that come from?"

One likely source is the space station's dwindling research budget.

Whither the Science?

As originally planned, the space station was to include six laboratories and a habitation module designed to sleep a crew of seven or more. But working with international partners and setting up a laboratory in space has proven more costly than expected and money has been targeted mostly at just keeping a skeletal crew in orbit. NASA announced last year that the U.S. cost of the space station, already estimated at about $30 billion, was heading for overruns of up to $4.8 billion.

"The space station is simply a technology that lacks a mission commensurate with its costs," says Alex Roland, a former NASA historian who now teaches at Duke University.

The recent cracks detected in the space shuttle fleet are sure to wrack up more costs.

Bruce Buckingham at NASA's Kennedy Space Center says the agency is still uncertain how long the cracks, which are between one-tenth of an inch and three-tenths of an inch in length, have existed in the shuttles' fuel liners. The liners are used to smooth the flow of super-cooled liquid hydrogen or oxygen to the main engines.