WASHINGTON (States News Service) - If Hurricane Floyd does its worst, NASA's budget woes may increase, according to a NASA spokesman.
If the hurricane, which is currently heading for Cape Canaveral packing wind speeds of up to 140 mph, does significant damage to the four shuttles at Kennedy Space Center, to any of the space station components there, or to the NASA facilities, the agency may need more funds. The hurricane is expected to make its closest approach to Canaveral early Wednesday morning.
"We've got an issue with next year's budget already," said NASA spokesman Brian Dunbar with resignation. "Small amounts of damage, we'd probably find the money from other budgets. "We're just going to have to see what the storm brings and what it leaves behind."
The last major disaster to affect the shuttle program was the Challenger explosion in 1986. "When we lost the Challenger orbiter, Congress voted more money in the budget specifically for that," Dunbar said.
Most NASA personnel have been evacuated from Kennedy Space Center, after doing their best to prepare the facility for the coming storm.
Although NASA Administrator Dan Goldin is not involved directly with NASA's preparations for the hurricane, he has been keeping close watch. "He's certainly been monitoring it and he's been getting updates without a doubt," spokesman Dwayne Brown said.
Besides each of the four shuttles, there is also risk to parts of the International Space Station, in storage at Kennedy's Space Station Processing Facility (SSPF). That facility can withstand winds up between 105 to 115 mph, NASA's Brown said.
"We have lots of hardware on the station 60 percent of the station is down there," Brown said. The SSPF currently houses the Canadian-built robot arm, parts of the Italian module, and the U.S.-built Destiny lab, one of the "cornerstones" of the station, Brown said.
The worst damage "is not so much the wind but the water that may come in," Brown said. "Once you get water in a system, you have to check it out again from top to bottom."
Both Dunbar and Brown said they were far more worried about NASA staff than about NASA equipment.
"The heck with the hardware, it's the people," Brown said, referring to the skeleton crew that has remained at Kennedy Space Center to ride out the storm. "With everything else, it's just in God's hands."
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