Posted: Sat, Nov 22, 2003, 10:39 AM ET (1539 GMT)
NASA administrator Sean O'eefe criticized Friday Congressional plans to slice $200 million from the 2004 budget for the International Space Station. O'Keefe, speaking Friday morning with reporters, said the planned cut will put a "severe crimp" in reserve funds for the project. The Senate passed an appropriations bill that cut $200 million from the ISS, citing reduced operations in the wake of the shuttle Columbia accident. O'Keefe said that current project reserves of $250 million would cover the cut, but that it left little room for error if other problems with the project arose. A House-Senate appropriations conference committee is currently working through the differences between their two versions of the budget — the House version did not cut the ISS budget — but Aerospace Daily reported Friday that conferees had agreed to make the cut in the final version of the budget.
