NASA's future up in the air

By next year, the International Space Station, which 16 nations have been piecing together since 1998, is to be complete. At an estimated cost of $157 billion, the baseball-field-sized lab is the world's single most expensive object and a longtime target of debate about its value.

Thursday in Florida, President Barack Obama convenes a space summit on his plans for NASA, including the Constellation moon program, which he has killed, and the space shuttle fleet, which is to be mothballed in September.

The debate takes place as astronauts including Nebraska native Clayton Anderson approach the end of their stay at the space station as part of the fourth-to-last shuttle mission.

Anderson has made three spacewalks on this mission to install a new ammonia tank, replace a failed gyroscope and perform other station maintenance. The shuttle's return to Earth is set for Monday.

WHAT WILL BE ARGUED?

Critics wanting to extend the 30-year-old shuttle program say it's needed to keep the space station supplied and safe and jobs secure. Obama says it's time for the station to rely on Soyuz, Russia's workhorse rocket, and a coming generation of commercial spacecraft. He says NASA should be thinking bigger, inventing the “transformative” technologies, such as new propulsion systems, needed to explore deeper space the sort of work too complex for private enterprise.

NOT A CHEAP RIDE

Much debate has been over the shuttle program's cost “about $200 million a month,” says its manager and the priority the space station should have in NASA. Obama's budget envisions keeping the station going at least through 2020. With maintenance, it could orbit much longer, engineers say.

WHAT WILL IT DO?

Plans call for the space station (where Anderson spent five months in 2007):

>> To further knowledge about humans' ability to work in space.

>> To do more climate-change research.

>> To try out new technologies developed in NASA's other programs.

SPACE STATION ARGUMENTS

PRO

The orbiting lab does unique, valuable research.

CON

Its scientific work has been skimpy, especially for the cost.

Its research is essential to deeper-space exploration, and the coming retirement of the shuttles will widen opportunities for entrepreneurs.

It uses up money and engineering talent on close-to-Earth grunt work and hinders private firms from undertaking low-orbit enterprises.

The U.S. must keep up the station to honor promises made to its 15 international partners.

Those partners, with budget woes of their own, would negotiate cost cuts.

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