From: ZAC (elston@ACAVAX.LYNCHBURG.EDU)

Space station making progress, NASA says

By Robert Green

WASHINGTON, May 23 (Reuter) - The proposed U.S. space station Alpha is on schedule for operation by the year 2002, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said Tuesday, as opponents launched new efforts to kill it.

``I am very proud to say that we have made significant progress since last year,'' NASA Associate Administrator J. Wayne Littles told a Senate Science Subcommittee hearing.

``We are prepared to commit to you once again that we will meet or exceed all of our major programme milestones this year. The international space station is on schedule and on-budget,'' Littles added. The station is to be built with help from Russia and the European Space Agency.

But Reps. Dick Zimmer, R-N.J., and Tim Roemer, D-Ind., said at a separate news conference they would try again this year to cut all funding for the space station from the NASA budget after falling short the last two years.

``America cannot afford such a risky and expensive venture at a time when we are faced with the challenge of eliminating our massive federal deficits,'' Zimmer said.

NASA says the orbiting laboratory will cost $30 billion but Zimmer and Roemer say it may be more than twice as much.

Littles said more than 75,000 pounds of equipment for the station will be built by the end of 1995. The first element of the station is scheduled for launch in December, 1997.

He said the rendezvous of the U.S. Space Shuttle Discovery with the Russian space station Mir this February showed the two countries could work together in space. U.S. astronaut Norm Thagard is spending three months aboard Mir.

But Marcia Smith, a science specialist at the Library of Congress' Congressional Research Service, said there were still many problems to overcome.

``For every step of progress in the past year, at least one challenge remains. Real questions exist about whether this space station can be built on the schedule and for the cost that NASA currently claims,'' Smith said at the hearing.

Littles said NASA was making contingency plans in case Russia dropped out of the programme. But he said the Russian Space Agency had received full assurances from its government that it would have all the resources it needed and he was confident Russia would remain fully involved.