Is Space Station Worth America's Billions?

(Feb. 19) -- Circling overhead is a laboratory in space that has cost U.S. taxpayers nearly $50 billion over the past 16 years without producing any blockbuster scientific results.

Now the White House wants to extend the life of the International Space Station and spend billions more dollars to beef up its scientific capabilities.

Will the science be worth it?

It's hard to know, skeptics say, citing logistical obstacles and lack of interest by many scientists.

Among biochemists, the lab is "largely viewed as a colossal waste of money. My community has very little, if any, interest in using it for research," says Brandeis University's Gregory Petsko, president of the American Society for Biochemistry and Molecular Biology.

Yes, absolutely, say NASA officials, who point out that intensive research on the lab is only just beginning.

Thomson Reuters, a company that calculates the impact of scientific research, analyzed for AOL News a handful of the 206 papers NASA says were published in scientific journals as a result of work at the space station. It found one that ranked in the top 10 percent in its field, another in the top 20 percent.

But many of the studies cited by NASA were published in obscure journals, where they're less likely to be noticed by other scientists.

"I hope the space station becomes extraordinarily scientifically productive, but it is not today," David Leckrone, NASA's top scientist for the Hubble Space Telescope, said last year.

The crew of the space shuttle Endeavour said farewell today to those remaining at the lab and prepared to head home after dropping off two new rooms for the complex. The shuttle's delivery means the lab is 98 percent finished after 11 years of high-altitude construction.

The space station has been staffed by astronaut-scientists since 2000. But along the way, budget cuts forced NASA to cancel experimental facilities slated for the station, back away from scientific goals and even revoke research grants to scientists.

"As the station got scaled down, it seemed more and more to be a craft in search of a scientific mission," said David Goldston, a former Capitol Hill staffer who was deeply involved with NASA oversight.

The research record for the station over the past decade is mixed. For instance, a paper about salmonella that is often touted by NASA as an example of outstanding station science was among several that were based on experiments actually performed on the space shuttle when it was visiting the station.

NASA has one "integrated" research program, and sometimes it's convenient to stow an experiment on the shuttle rather than on the station, said Julie Robinson, NASA's top space-station scientist.

Robinson notes it has been difficult to do experiments on the station, because to date the lab has been mostly a construction zone. In addition, until last spring the station had only two or three residents, who spent the bulk of their time tending to the station's finicky machinery. Now the crew stands at six, allowing more time for lab work.

"There are some amazing things that can be accomplished with the space station, and we really haven't had the chance to start those," Robinson said. She also argues that by NASA's definition of station research, it has already produced some very prominent and influential findings.

President Barack Obama wants to give the station a chance to strut its stuff. His 2011 budget proposal includes an additional $2 billion in spending for the lab over the next four years and says the station should survive until 2020 rather than being abandoned in 2015, as the Bush administration had planned.

The extra funding may not be enough to crank up the station's science output, according to Cristina Chaplain, space analyst for the Government Accountability Office, a Congressional investigative agency

Chaplain also worries about what will happen when the space shuttle retires this year or next. The other spaceships that will make supply runs to the station are puny by comparison, and only one of them can bring big boxes of experimental samples back to Earth.

Robinson says the big pieces of scientific gear will fly to the station on the shuttle, and it won't be necessary to return lots of samples to labs on the ground.

If the money comes through, will the scientists?

"I haven't heard people screaming and shouting, 'Gee, we really need the space program!'" said Charles Westbrook of Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. He's an expert in combustion science, one of the fields NASA says could make big strides with station research.

"There might be very specific experiments" that could be done on the station, said Duke University's Stefan Zauscher, who studies colloid chemistry, another field NASA is highlighting on the station. "But there is not a breakthrough experiment that we need to do that would change the face of colloid chemistry."

One of the station's strengths is that it can aid scientists from every discipline, including biology, chemistry and engineering, Robinson says. Officials from NASA and the White House say the station also holds promise as a place to try out technologies that would help humans travel to the moon, Mars and other distant destinations.

Just because the station hasn't made a big splash in the scientific world doesn't mean it won't, according to Christopher King of Thomson Reuters, the company that calculates scientific impact.

Science "is slow and incremental," he said. "I would be hesitant to write (the station) off."