Word: iss
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Remarkable as the ISS may one day be, it's a ship that never should have set sail, critics say. Its cost is at least eight times the initial estimates, and the hardware is nearly a decade behind schedule. And after the ISS is built, there may be nothing for it to do. Many of the medical studies NASA hopes to conduct have been performed aboard Russia's Mir space station; other work on materials manufacturing could be performed by unmanned ships...
Despite all these problems, the ISS is probably here to stay. In the years the station has been in the works, it has become that rarest of Washington creations, the politically indestructible extravagance. How a project that has sparked so little interest and so much skepticism has taken on such an aura of inevitability is a case study in how good bureaucratic ideas turn bad--and bad ideas stick around. "The only way we're not going to have the station," says Chris Mehl, spokesman for Indiana Representative Tim Roemer, "is if pieces fall...
...ISS, like so many of Washington's big-ticket programs, was a creature of the cold war. In 1984, President Reagan, smarting from the Soviet Union's long line of successful space stations, announced that the U.S. was getting into the station game. The American entry would measure a whopping 500 ft., cost a frugal $8 billion and go online by 1992. Dreaming up so grand a machine turned out to be a lot easier than designing it, however, and over the next eight years, NASA spent a staggering $10 billion drawing and discarding blueprints, without a single piece...
...ISS supporters had not failed to notice that as close as the 1993 vote was, the delegations from Alabama, Florida and Texas were almost unanimous in their support, since it was in their states that much station work would be done. As early as 1992, NASA lobbyists had been descending on Washington with cheery charts and maps making the point that as the project grew, the money would seep out in countless directions. BUSINESS GETTING BUCK$, one map read, promising a "procurement constituency" of 40 states. After the 1993 vote, this hard sell only increased. "NASA approached this...
NASA administrator Daniel Goldin bristles at the idea that there is any cunning behind the selection of ISS contractors, insisting that the choices are dictated by economic realities--and his point has merit. With a project as big as the station, there's no such thing as one-stop shopping, and NASA must go where the companies are. "Under this administrator," Goldin says, "we actually streamlined the program...