Feb 22 1993
From The Space Library
Space News for this day. (1MB PDF)
NASA announced that NASA and industry engineers had designed and built a new measuring device that would save American taxpayers more than $1 million on a NASA project. The device, an improved "inlet rake," measures the air flowing into one of the engines on the F/AS-18 High Alpha Research Vehicle (HARV), based at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Facility, Edwards, California. Engineers would be able to use the air flow data to help give fighter-type aircraft more power and better handling qualities. (NASA Release 93-035; Antelope Valley Press, Mar 19/93)
NASA managers and industry contractors blamed Space Station cost over-runs on the rush to redesign the effort in 1990 and 1991. Congress directed NASA in October 1990 to shave $6 billion from the Space Station over five years. NASA settled on a plan in early 1991 to shorten the pressurized modules and reduce the number of solar arrays. The Agency also pushed back the date when the crew could occupy the Space Station by two years-to 1999-and reduced the crew size by half. In addition, NASA redid plans for the latticework structure that forms the Space Station's backbone and the Johnson Space Center's major responsibility in the program. According to Jack Boykin, Johnson's acting Project Director, the plan was too optimistic in its estimates of cost and technical complexity.
Robert Moorehead, NASA's Deputy Program Director for the Space Station, warned his superior in writing on March 13, 1992, that the Center's work was veering out of control. His concerns suggested that the Space Station's problems were recognized within the Agency well before they became public. (Space News, Feb 22-28)
An editorial in Aviation Week and Space Technology, praised President Bill Clinton as generally being "on track" with his space and aeronautics program. However, the author suggested that President Clinton needed to clarify his vision for the Space Station; decisive action was needed in a project that already had consumed $8 billion over nearly a decade. An editorial in the Orlando Sentinel urged President Clinton to keep his commitment to the Space Station but to do so with an "eye toward greater efficiency." (Av Wk, Feb 22, 1993; 0 Sen Star, Feb 22/93)
Space News praised President Bill Clinton's space plan as a "rational, sound approach that will keep the station alive, head NASA in the right direction, and keep NASA Administrator Dan Goldin around."(Space News, Feb 22-28/93)
Writing in the Wall Street Journal, Allan H. Meltzer, professor of economics at Carnegie-Mellon and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, said that if the Clinton administration were serious about reducing spending it would eliminate the $30 billion Space Station, reduce entitlements, and cut wasteful projects. (WSJ, Feb 22/93)
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