A Giant Leap, But a Shaky Foothold

HOUSTON —  Every 90 minutes, a multibillion-dollar monument to human ingenuity orbits Earth: a 206-ton behemoth that can outshine the brightest star at night.

The twinkling speck is the International Space Station. It was conceived decades ago as an advanced research platform that would one day become a launchpad to distant planets.

Instead, the half-completed station is a two-person outpost in low Earth orbit. Construction has been frozen by the grounding of the space shuttle fleet. Costs have mounted from an original estimate of $8 billion to $53 billion. A once-ambitious agenda of industrial and medical research has been cut to less than an hour a day.

Unable to complete the station because of the shuttle groundings and now facing a shift in NASA priorities toward a manned mission to Mars, the station -- once a centerpiece of exploration -- has become something of a space orphan.

It has begun to lose its reason for being. Consequently, support for the project, which has always been controversial, has begun to waver again.

Hoping to salvage its investment, NASA has given the station a new mission: testing the effects of long-term spaceflight on human beings to prepare for missions to the moon and Mars, proposed in January by President Bush.

But many lawmakers and scientists are skeptical that a mission to Mars is even possible given the enormous cost -- possibly hundreds of billions of dollars -- and huge technical difficulties of the journey.

After so many years and so much money, even the faithful have begun to question the wisdom of completing a project that will play at best a secondary role in space exploration.

“We have simply wallowed with this and spent so much money for so long without any significant return,” said Roger Launius, former NASA chief historian. “Maybe we should cut our losses and quit.”

NASA said it had no such intention. Michael Kostelnik, the agency’s administrator for the space station, said astronauts were conducting experiments on calcium loss, muscle atrophy and space construction to prepare for the long trip to Mars.

He said the amount and quality of the research would improve when the shuttle fleet returned to service next year. Science modules can be added and, NASA hopes, crew members can too.

John McElroy, former head of the National Academies’ Space Studies Board and a past NASA advisor, is not convinced.

“It is just a large vessel out there with very little capacity and too small a crew,” he said. “I don’t see how it can live up to any of NASA’s desires.”

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Since the first module was heaved into space by a Russian Proton rocket in 1998, the space station has grown into a sprawling celestial schooner, stretching 240 feet at its widest point.

An array of solar panels supplies its power. Beneath is a line of cylindrical modules that hold the laboratories and living quarters. The working space in the station is about the size of a two-bedroom house.

Most of the station’s components have been built by Boeing Corp., although major contributions have come from other countries, including a robotic arm from Canada, a Russian control center and escape craft, and an Italian cargo container.

So far, 20 flights, including 16 by the space shuttle, have ferried pieces of the station into orbit 250 miles above Earth. NASA estimates it will take at least 20 more flights to finish the project with a variety of labs and other pieces by about 2010.

Eventually, the station’s hull, wiring, bolts and seals will deteriorate to the point that it will have to be abandoned. That is expected to occur sometime between 2020 and 2030. NASA plans to dispose of the craft by maneuvering it into a fiery descent into the Pacific Ocean.

The station was inspired by a 1952 article in Collier’s magazine by Wernher von Braun, the German scientist who designed the Nazis’ V-2 rockets and later led the U.S. space program.

Von Braun saw the station as a first step in space exploration, and promoted its strategic value for surveillance, communications and weather prediction. He envisioned a spinning 250-foot-diameter wheel, providing artificial gravity for a crew of 80. He said it could be built for $4 billion ($28 billion in today).

The space agency commissioned numerous plans for a space station, including a 50-person, nuclear-powered base, a “space hotel” for 400, and “Space Colony Taurus” -- a mile-wide wheel with artificial rivers, 100 acres of cropland and 10,000 inhabitants to colonize space.

But after spending tens of billions of dollars to win the race to the moon in 1969, Congress balked at funding grand new ventures. Only Skylab, a small station that operated for nine months in 1973 and 1974, got off the ground. (It plunged back to Earth in 1979.)

NASA lobbied relentlessly, arguing that only a permanently occupied station could serve as a major research lab and platform for far-flung expeditions.

Leading scientists and members of Congress castigated NASA’s plans as overly expensive and technically deficient. President Reagan’s budget director, David Stockman, criticized the project as “high-tech socialism” to bolster ailing aerospace companies.

But Reagan and the project’s supporters depicted the station as a social and economic boon. In 1983, he approved a large station to be built in 10 years at an initial cost of $8 billion. It was later named Freedom.

“We could manufacture in 30 days lifesaving medicines it would take 30 years to make on Earth. We can make crystals of exceptional purity to produce supercomputers, creating jobs, technologies and medical breakthroughs,” Reagan said in his 1985 State of the Union address.

Congress later expanded the program into a $38-billion project to be completed in 1999. Contracts distributed to companies in 37 states created a base of political support that withstood numerous efforts to kill the station’s funding.

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More than 100,000 workers in the U.S. and 15 foreign nations are dedicated to the station.

In addition to the $53 billion to build the station, the General Accounting Office projected a cost of more than $42 billion to operate it for 10 years. Other nations would contribute about another $14 billion to the project.

NASA ended up with a shadow of Von Braun’s project at several times the cost because building a structure the size of two football fields in the weightlessness of space proved more complex than expected.

Building an infrastructure to support the project was daunting in itself. A few miles from the main campus of Johnson Space Center in Houston is a building that houses a 202-foot-long, 40-foot-deep, 6.2-million-gallon tank -- by volume, the largest swimming pool on Earth.

Towering overhead, 10-ton cranes hoist full-scale models of station sections into the water for astronauts to practice assembling. More than 300 workers support the $74-million facility, which costs $13 million annually.

Among the biggest expenses are shuttle launches, at more than $400 million each. No other craft can ferry the station’s giant modules into orbit.

Assembling huge structures in space has required far more space walks than projected because of the unexpected complexity of the techniques and tools of space construction. In 1993, NASA planned 434 hours of space walks to build the station; it now estimates 1,900 hours.

Such miscalculations forced NASA to redesign the craft six times. Each change caused delays and cost overruns. The station lost research modules and crew capacity. Its projected life span, after completion, dropped from 30 years to 10.

By 1993 -- the year Reagan said the station would be completed -- it had cost $11.2 billion without a single module in orbit.

That year, President Clinton announced a plan to recruit Russia as a junior partner.

Freedom became the International Space Station. Clinton reasoned that the new station would save America money and occupy Russian scientists who might have been tempted to peddle their rocketry skills to the highest bidder.

The station needed yet another redesign to fit Russian control and escape modules. Its orbit also was altered to accommodate Russian launches, ending the possibility that it could launch missions to Mars or the moon because spacecraft would need too much fuel to achieve the right trajectories.

In November 1998, the first module, Russia’s Zarya, or “Dawn,” which provided propulsion, power and docking controls for the initial stages of construction, was finally lofted into orbit.

“The International Space Station is going to be a reality,” then-NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin proclaimed after the launch. “It’s a done deal.”

Five years later, the shuttle Columbia exploded as it returned to Earth, grounding the entire shuttle fleet. The only way to finish the station was gone.

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Inside the station, computers and other machinery hum at up to 85 decibels -- as loud as a downtown street at rush hour. Astronauts wear earplugs to prevent permanent hearing loss.

Most modules are completely lined with equipment. Pens and chopsticks drift about, at times lost in the station’s recesses. Sleeping rooms are “slightly larger than a coffin,” said Frank Culbertson, the station’s commander for 117 days in 2001.

The two astronauts aboard are constantly working to keep the craft aloft and themselves alive and well.

The crew capacity will grow to three when shuttle flights resume next year, but it’s capped at that number because the Russian Soyuz evacuation capsule holds only three people.

That capsule is paid for through 2006. NASA wants to extend the Soyuz contract and add a second craft, allowing the crew to grow to six. But payments to the Russian space agency are barred by Congress’ 1998 Iran Nonproliferation Act, which punishes Russia’s alleged transfer of advanced weapons technology to Iran.

There is no other alternative in sight.

In a typical day, the two astronauts spend about eight hours sleeping and another six eating, exercising (to stave off atrophy caused by weightlessness) and taking care of personal hygiene. Up to 2 1/2 hours are reserved to talk with students, celebrities and journalists.

Most of the remaining time is consumed by an endless round of checking safety gear, rebooting finicky computers and fixing broken equipment.

Routine tasks on Earth can be overwhelming in space because of a lack of tools and spare parts, cramped spaces and the clumsiness of life in zero gravity.

William Shepherd, the station’s first commander, complained in a mission log that installing a heat-exchange unit described by mission control as a “bolt it down” job was “more like changing out your transmission.” Recently, astronauts labored for three days to replace a bearing in an exercise treadmill.

Complicating matters is that the station has changed so much over the years that there is no complete set of blueprints. In January, the crew needed nearly three weeks to find and plug a leak in the craft.

“It’s a victim of the collision between technical vision and technical reality,” said Howard E. McCurdy, a space historian at American University. “This is a very large, complex, interactive structure. I don’t think anybody understands all the potential interactions.”

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A trip to Mars and back would take three years and pose three grave medical problems: radiation exposure, muscle and bone loss because of weightlessness, and the stress of confinement.

However, radiation effects can’t be studied effectively on the space station; it orbits within the protective embrace of Earth’s magnetic fields.

The station is well suited to examine weightlessness and stress -- if only NASA could get more people up there.

With three astronauts aboard after shuttle flights resume, 20 hours per week would be free for science. Agreements with international partners assign only 7.5 hours to U.S. studies.

“As long as the crew size stays at two or even three, there isn’t any way that I’m aware of that they can pursue [their] objectives,” said McElroy, the former NASA advisor. “You certainly can’t do scientific research.”

Mary E. Kicza, NASA’s associate administrator for biological and physical research, agreed a larger crew would be better. But she added that some experiments could only be done in the long-term weightless environment of the station. Even a small crew can still provide unique research on diets, drugs and psychological health in space.

NASA officials said that research would improve as modules were added. A Japanese lab, to be placed in orbit in a few years, could provide insight into the effects of weightlessness by using a centrifuge to create variable gravity for tests on cell cultures, plants and rodents. Also planned are a European lab for fluid and materials science and two Russian labs for as-yet unspecified experiments.

“We may do some really significant things with the station if we can get through this mess we’re in,” said Launius, the ex-NASA historian. “It takes faith in the ingenuity of humans.”