An audit of Boeing's work for the International Space Station, commissioned by a longtime foe of the project, shows the aerospace company is nearly $300 million over budget and behind schedule on their aspects of the project.
     The report by the General Accounting Office was released on June 12. It shows that Boeing is $291 million over budget, triple the cost overruns of a year ago. The report also states that Boeing has fallen behind by up to several weeks on some aspects of their station work.
     While concerned about the cost overruns, many analysts and members of Congress believe that the overruns will not have a negative impact on the station in Congress. "We need to let Dan Goldin and Boeing try to work through these problems," Rep. Dave Weldon (R-FL), told Florida Today. "This is something I'm sure NASA is going to be able to work through."
     Reports of cost overruns at Boeing is not new. Earlier this year NASA administrator Dan Goldin criticized Boeing for problems with the space station assembly, and denied them a multi-million dollar performance bonus.
     The author of the GAO report, Thomas Schulz, said Congressional action might be needed if problems continue. "If further problems do materialize, we believe a congressional review of the entire program would be needed," he said.
     The report was commissioned by Sen. Dale Bumpers (D-AR), a longtime opponent of the space station. After the report was published, Bumpers used it to push for cancellation of the space station.
     "NASA's decision in 1993 to make Russia a partner was a cynical ploy to gin up political support for a project that was heading toward a richly deserved cancellation," he said in a press release.
     He added that money spent on the space station should be transferred to the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation, and be used towards reducing the federal budget deficit.

The House Science Committee's Space and Aeronautics subcommittee unanimously approved on June 12 H.R. 1702, the Commercial Space Act of 1997, setting the stage for a vote by the full committee later this week and possibly the full House before the July 4 recess.
     "I am pleased that H.R. 1702 was reported out of the Subcommittee with such broad bipartisan support," Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-CA), chairman of the subcommittee, said in a statement after the session.
     "Today we took the first step towards sending this legislation to the President for his signature later this year, which will be a great advancement for U.S. leadership in international development of the space frontier," Rohrabacher said.
     The approval came one day after a final set of hearings on the legislation by the subcommittee. Much of the discussion focused on provisions of the legislation that would allow the commercial sale of high-resolution images and other remote-sensing data.
     A similar provision in commercial space legislation last year caught the attention of the State Department after the legislation was approved by the House of Representatives. The Senate failed to take up action on the bill at the end of the legislative session last year in large part because of the State Department's concerns.
     Rohrabacher berated the State Department for not sending a representative to the June 11 hearing, as requested. Rohrabacher said that since the State Department sent no one to the hearing, then he will "assume they have no objections."
     Space activists, such as the Space Frontier Foundation, are pushing for approval of the bill in the House and Senate, since it would reform the regulation of reusable launch vehicles.
     "We're on the brink of an incredible revolution in the way we get to and from space," SFF president Rick Tumlinson said in a press release. "But the revolution won't happen unless Congress passes this legislation. We can't afford for the Senate to take its time on this bill."

Plans to balance the U.S. federal budget by the year 2002 may mean NASA's space science programs will be significantly cut, Congressional analysts warned in early June.
     A bipartisan but nonbinding resolution was passed overwhelmingly by the House of Representatives and the Senate on June 5 calling for tax cuts and a balanced federal budget by the year 2002. More than half of the more than $60 billion in budget cuts necessary to balance the budget will come from "discretionary spending" programs, including NASA, Space News reported.
     The new agreement cuts basic science research funding, which includes funds for research at NASA, the National Science Foundation, and the Department of Energy, by $200 million in 1998 and nearly $2 billion by 2002.
     Analysts working for the minority party staff of the House Science Committee warned NASA will bear the brunt of those cuts. "Although reductions in the NSF and the Department of Energy are possible, NASA is likely to absorb most of the reductions," the analysts warned in a June 3 report.
     The cuts reverse funds that were added largely due to interest in Mars after last August's announcement of possible past life on Mars. "It is conceivable that the funding was added to the space program over the next five years as a result of the reinvigoration of Mars-related research may be in jeopardy," the analysts reported.
     The earlier proposal for NASA funding unveiled by the Clinton Administration in February called for "stable" funding for the space agency through 2002, with an annual budget of $13.2 billion by 2002. While not the increase in funding many space activists desired, it was an improvement over earlier estimates which called for as much as a 36 percent decrease in NASA funding over the same period.