Former Senator-Astronaut Criticizes Space Plan
By WARREN E. LEARY

Published: March 5, 2004

[W]ASHINGTON, March 4   John Glenn, the former senator who was
the first American to orbit the Earth, said Thursday that he
opposed cutting money from the International Space Station and
basic scientific research to pay for President Bush's goal of
sending astronauts to the Moon and Mars.

Testifying at a hearing of the new presidential commission on
space exploration at the Air Force Museum in Dayton, Ohio, Mr.
Glenn said it would be wrong to redirect space station research
to make it applicable to human spaceflight to the Moon and Mars
and to abandon the more expansive studies previously planned.

"We have projects that are planned or in the queue now, projects
that people, academics and laboratories and companies, have spent
millions of dollars to get ready," said Mr. Glenn, a Democrat who
represented Ohio in the Senate for 24 years before retiring in
1998. "That pulls the rug out from under our scientists who
placed their faith in NASA, and our scientists within NASA who
devoted years and years to their work."

Instead of terminating the station project, in which the nation
has invested more than $30 billion, he said, "we should be
looking for ways to stretch it out."

The Bush plan calls for completing the space station in 2010 and
stopping American research there by 2016. Mr. Glenn said that
amounted to "breaking the promises" to the other 15 nations that
take part in the project, endangering international participation
in future programs.

The nine-member presidential commission is holding five meetings
around the country to get ideas about Mr. Bush's plan, announced
in January, to return humans to the Moon by the end of the next
decade and to go from there to Mars. Thursday's meeting was its
second; it is to present a report in June.

Dr. Lennard A. Fisk of the University of Michigan, who is
chairman of the Space Studies Board of the National Academy of
Sciences, also questioned the new program's effects on NASA
science programs. The Bush initiative calls for delaying or
trimming some NASA space science programs to free up some of the
$12 billion allotted for the new program.

The initiative could result in "major collateral damage" to
NASA's science program, he said, and damage the balance the
agency has traditionally maintained between human space flight
and fundamental science. "NASA has responsibilities beyond
exploration on which it should not default," Dr. Fisk said.

Edward C. Aldridge, the former Air Force secretary who is the
commission's chairman, said it might consider stretching out the
president's initiative so it has less impact on other programs.

Dr. Paul D. Spudis of Johns Hopkins University, a member of the
commission, said the Bush plan would not necessarily damage space
science in general because it would generate new science and
technology as it progressed.

Copyright 2004, The New York Times Company