Space Station Freedom and Perceptions of NASA’s inefficiency

After nearly a decade of development and $9 billion in tax expenditures, NASA had no hardware, nor a singular plan to show for the Space Station Freedom project. On March 9, 1993, the newly elected president Clinton ordered NASA to begin a “rapid and far-reaching redesign of the Station,” with the intention of “significantly reducing development, operations, and utilization costs.”57 Clinton wanted to reduce the planned cost from $14.4 billion to $9 billion and directed NASA to submit options to a redesign committee.

In the spring and summer of 1993 Charles Vest, vice presidential appointee and MIT president led a committee assessing three new possible space station configurations, all of which still averaged $10 billion over the Clinton admin­istration’s prospective costs of $5 billion, $7 billion, or $9 billion. Option A was estimated to cost $17 billion and required 16 Shuttle flights for assembly. Option B was larger than Space Station Freedom, required 20 Shuttle flights, and cost $19.7 billion. Option C cost $15.5 billion, was the least like Space Station Freedom, and required 8 Shuttle flights to place in orbit one US module and seven internationally contributed modules.58

While weighing Options A, B, and C for station redesign, the Vest Committee considered the ramifications of cooperating with Russia in space station con­struction. It eventually endorsed the notion of consolidating design plans and hardware from Mir-1 (still in orbit), Mir-2 (still on the drawing board), and Space Station Freedom, in spite of the fact that it would demand a higher inclina­tion orbit—moving the space station from a 28-degree orbit to one that extended 51.6 degrees from the equator (and therefore necessitate expensive upgrades to the Shuttle).

NASA staff took the Vest Committee recommendations and ran with them. One year later, a number of former committee members and NASA staff alike agreed that they had successfully implemented a “single core NASA manage­ment team to optimize efficiency, accountability, expertise and cost effective­ness.” Changes included setting up a single host center, identifying a single prime contractor, following the new Integrated Product Team approach to concurrent engineering, and refining Program Office-line organization.59

Thus, within a brief period of time NASA administrators, staff, and contrac­tors weathered several interconnected changes. They completely overhauled SSF management, “co-locating” Boeing and NASA in one International Space Station Program Office. At the same time, NASA prepared itself for the possibil­ity of cooperating with Russia, reviewing Russian space technologies and their possible contributions to the space station.

Why were all these changes necessary? Critics of NASA management includ­ing Dan Goldin himself believed that in order for an initiative as expensive and complicated as the space station to survive, it must operate more smoothly and inexpensively. One Clinton official demanded in 1993 that NASA would have to go through organizational reengineering similar to most major companies of the time, observing, “[I]ts decision structure is cluttered, it’s circular, it’s labyrinthine.”60

It is important to note that these changes were implemented on the assumption that Russia would be integrated into the new space station, either as a contractor or partner, and that NASA made these initial decisions inde­pendent of the original Space Station Freedom partners. The (then hope of) political and financial benefits of Russian cooperation paired with drastic changes in NASA management to build a new coalition of supporters that was just barely strong enough to defend the International Space Station from a hostile Congress: the project survived by just one vote in the House in sum­mer 1993.61 Russian-American cooperation on the space station was finalized later that year.

Administrator Daniel Goldin used the ISS’s redesign as evidence of greater changes taking place in NASA. Pointing out that his staff had reduced the SSF’s projected annual operating costs from $3.5 billion to the International Space Station’s $2.1 billion, Goldin explained, “The problem we had was we had 4 prime contractors and 4 NASA Centers. Now, that’s an oxymoron in itself—4 prime contractors.”62 Not only was management hopelessly decen­tralized, but the four NASA Centers tended to compete for jobs, dollars, and autonomy. Observed Goldin, “And each prime contractor reported to a cen­ter Director and every so often, Center Directors would get together. . . And NASA Johnson didn’t trust NASA Marshall. They did the pressurized mod­ules, and NASA Lewis did the power system. NASA Kennedy did the launch integration. But who was responsible? Each Center Director was responsible for their budget.”6 3 Centralizing management accompanied drastic budget cuts at NASA (estimated at 30 percent).64 At the same time, SSF’s former Tier 1 subcontractors trimmed staff and budgets. McDonnell Douglas downsized from 1,800 to 1,000, Rocketdyne from 1,000 to 800, and Boeing from 1,230 to 1,100.65

Rarely did Goldin miss an opportunity to tout the estimated $2 billion sav­ings that resulted from cooperation with the Russians. “We get a space station that has almost double the power,” he raved.

We go from 60 kilowatts to 110. We get a space station over a year sooner. And we get a space station that costs America $2 billion less. We get a [space station] that has dual access from Cape Kennedy and Baikonur, which gives us tremendous flexibility. We get a tremendous knowledge base from the Russians, who have had astronauts in space since 1986 almost continuously.

Goldin continued, stating, “They have helped us solve some reliability prob­lems already. So we have a more robust station earlier for less money,” plus, he added, “we have a coming together of the scientific community in Russia with America.”66