Station Program Placed On Hold
Underestimates by NASA of the station program's cost and unwillingness by the U.S. Congress to appropriate funding for the space station resulted in delays of Freedom's design and construction; it was regularly redesigned and rescoped. Between 1984 and 1993 it went through seven major re-designs, losing capacity and capabilities each time. Rather than being completed in a decade, as Reagan had predicted, Freedom was never built, and no Shuttle launches were made as part of the program.
By 1993, Freedom was politically unviable; the administration had changed, and Congress was tiring of throwing yet more money into the station program. In addition, there were open questions over the need for the station. Redesigns had cut most of the science capacity by this point, and the Space Race had ended with the fall of the Soviet Union. NASA presented several options to President Clinton, but even the most limited of these was still seen as too expensive. In June 1993, a bill to cancel the Station program failed by one vote in the House of Representatives. That October, a meeting between NASA and the Russian Space Agency agreed to the merger of the projects into what would become the International Space Station.
Some historians record Freedom as being a failed project that lacked direction. However, by the time it was replaced by Alpha—derisively dubbed "Space Station Fred" playing on a truncation of "Freedom"—(later the International Space Station), the program had a firm plan, design of most components (with the notable exception of the Crew Return Vehicle) was finalized, and a large amount of flight hardware had been constructed. Had political support remained, it is likely that Freedom would have been launched in the same timeframe as the ISS, and reached a complete (four-man) configuration around 2003–2005.
Read more about this topic: Space Station Freedom
Famous quotes containing the words station, program and/or hold:
“Say first, of God above, or Man below,
What can we reason, but from what we know?
Of Man what see we, but his station here,
From which to reason, or to which refer?
Thro’ worlds unnumber’d tho’ the God be known,
‘Tis ours to trace him only in our own.
”
—Alexander Pope (1688–1744)
“He believes without reservation that Kentucky is the garden spot of the world, and is ready to dispute with anyone who questions his claim. In his enthusiasm for his State he compares with the Methodist preacher whom Timothy Flint heard tell a congregation that “Heaven is a Kentucky of a place.””
—For the State of Kentucky, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)
“I thought a minute, and says to myself, hold on,—s’pose you’d a done right and give Jim up; would you felt better than what you do now? No, says I, I’d feel bad—I’d feel just the same way I do now. Well, then, says I, what’s the use you learning to do right, when it’s troublesome to do right and ain’t no trouble to do wrong, and the wages is just the same?”
—Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)