Friday, 3 May 1991 Washington, DC
1. YOU PROBABLY THOUGHT THE SPACE STATION WAS OVERPRICED AT
$30B.
The US Comptroller General, Charles Bowsher, testified Wednesday
that NASA under-reported the cost by $88B--and Rep. Barbara Boxer
(D-CA) says the staff of the Government Activities Subcommittee,
which she chairs, puts the full cost at $180B! Operating costs
over the projected 30-year life of the station, which NASA does
not include in the $30B figure, account for much of the gap but,
Rep. Boxer charged that $30B buys an "empty garage." Omitted are
the costs of the crew return vehicle, shuttle transportation and
all the research equipment, including the centrifuge. Boxer said
the taxpayers deserve to know the full cost of the project.
2. THE SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY LINED UP AGAINST THE SPACE
STATION.
Testifying at the same hearing, a panel of
scientific leaders, including Nicolaas Bloembergen, President of
the APS, President-Elect Brent Dalrymple of the American
Geophysical Union, and Lou Lanzerotti, Chair of the Space Studies
Board of the NRC, declared that the space station is ill-suited
to scientific research. The lone advocate for the station was a
NASA grantee from Vanderbilt, who said scientists could make good
use of the station, but even he admitted that the science would
not justify its construction. Bloembergen characterized Vice-
President Quayle's belief that human exploration of space is our
"destiny," as "quasi-religious" and noted that "the divine
timetable is patient, the stars will be there for millenia."
Meanwhile, the American Chemical Society also went on record
opposing the redesigned space station. In a letter to the
Appropriations Subcommittees, ACS President Allen Heininger
endorsed the Space Studies Group report (WN
15 Mar 91).
3. BUT WHO'S GOING TO VOTE AGAINST JOBS PROGRAMS IN THIS
ECONOMY? With the scientific community solidly opposed to a
space station and the General Accounting Office warning that the
cost has been seriously under-reported by NASA, the House
yesterday voted by ten-to-one to authorize the full $2B dollars
requested for the space station in FY 92. The House did agree to
a watered-down amendment calling on the National Academy of
Sciences to examine alternatives to the space station. During
the floor debate, Jim Sensenbrenner (R-WI) dismissed the space
station's science critics: "If it funds my research, I am for
it," he said. "If it funds somebody else's research, I am against
it." But the space station is different--it's not likely to fund
anybody's research.
4. MIT FUSION FLAKE FLACKS NEW BOOK! TINY LITTLE HYDROGEN
ATOMS,
called "hydrons," explain cold fusion, according to
two Ann Arbor physicists who held a press conference in Boston
last week (WN 26 Apr 91). Why was the
press conference in Boston--and why was the MIT press office
helping? The answer seems to be that an MIT science writer is
promoting his new book, which contends that the evidence for
cold fusion is persuasive. He predicts that in the history of
science Pons and Fleischmann will be viewed as heroes.
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