GAO Warns Space Station May Be a Bust

The Government Accountability Office has some somber words for U.S. taxpayers: After 25 years of work and billions of dollars, we may not get our money’s worth out of the International Space Station.

There are several reasons for the situation, the GAO said in a new report, including the fact that there currently is no money to keep the station operational past 2015. NASA and its international partners in the program -- Russia, Europe, Canada and Japan -- are just beginning to ramp up research after a 12-year construction effort ends next year.

"The uncertainty of the ISS program beyond its 2015 retirement date has deterred members of the scientific community from considering the station as a platform for fundamental research," the GAO wrote.

Money aside, there also are concerns about how experiments will reach the space station after the shuttles are retired next year. NASA is counting on commercial U.S. companies Space Exploration Technologies and Orbital Sciences Corp. to come through with plans to develop capsules and launchers to fly cargo -- and perhaps eventually people -- to the station.

Delays in the new systems or significant technical problems will leave NASA with no choice but to pursue what it called a "graceful degradation" of the space station until conditions improve or until the program ends.

"In such conditions, the ISS would only conduct minimal science experiments," the GAO said.

NASA told the GAO it thought the main problem was a lack of funds to develop station experiments. NASA's budget for station research dropped from about $700 million in 2002 to about $150 million a year presently.

NASA says its own program account for about half the research space available on the station, opening the rest of the facilities for use under the National Laboratory program. The U.S. is looking at options to turn over management of the station to an outside entity in hopes of cutting costs and opening the lab to more users.

Here's a summary of the GAO's findings  and recommendations, as well as a link to download the full report.