Word: station
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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Federal dollars have already been committed to the Industrial Space Facility, an unmanned mini-space station designed by Houston's Space Industries, Inc. The Reagan initiative calls on NASA to become the primary tenant aboard such a facility to the tune of some $140 million a year -- the major complaint of NASA's Fletcher. The agency recently has been fighting ISF for fear that ax-wielding Government budgeteers will see the laboratory as an alternative to its own expensive space lab. Says one Commerce Department source bluntly: "NASA fears it's an effort to kill the space station...
NASA's concern was understandable. Last fall Congress slashed $342 million from the agency's $767 million space-station funding request, then voted $25 million in start-up money for ISF. NASA resistance to the mini-station had prompted a group of Senators led by Wisconsin Democrat William Proxmire to hold up some $97 million in funding until the space agency would go along with the smaller project...
NASA's opposition was probably foredoomed. At $700 million, ISF not only is much cheaper than the big station but could go into orbit by 1991 -- five years after the successful Mir orbiter was launched by the Soviets, but six years before NASA's maxi-station becomes operational. Besides, say ISF proponents, it poses no threat to NASA. Designed primarily for materials research and automated manufacturing, it will use little new technology and carry no life-support systems for visiting astronauts. Explains Space Industries CEO Maxime Faget, an ex-NASA engineer: "We're an interim step toward the space station...
DESCRIPTION: Diagrams of United States' industrial space facility and proposed space station and Soviet space station...
...trouble began when soldiers rounded up several dozen youths accused of evading the military draft. Some 20 protesters, mostly relatives of the young men taken into custody, surged through the streets chanting "Join us." The mob swelled to about 1,000, stoned a police station and torched several government-owned vehicles. To quell the disturbances, Interior Minister Tomas Borge personally led a force of paramilitary units from the capital of Managua. Authorities detained 16 antigovernment activists...