DELAYS PLAGUE INTERNATIONAL SPACE STATION, ADD EXPENSES.

Byline: Marcia Dunn Assciated Press

It's slipped from 1992 to 1994 to 1995 to 1996 to 1997 to 1998, and now it looks like NASA's space station will be delayed again.

Not only that, the stalled space station will cost more than promised because of all the setbacks and changes - at least $3.6 billion more, a whopping 21 percent increase.

``Of course, it disturbs me. It's an embarrassment,'' said Rep. F. James Sensenbrenner Jr., chairman of the House Science Committee.

In 1993, the Clinton administration set a $17.4 billion cost cap for the international space station through assembly. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration now estimates the U.S. share at $21 billion.

Neither figure includes the cost of some 30 shuttle flights to assemble the gigantic complex, or the $10 billion sunk into the program in the 1980s and early 1990s.

NASA and Congress have asked independent appraisers to determine the true cost.

``You ask 15 people who are familiar with the program and you'll get 15 answers,'' said Sensenbrenner, a Republican from Wisconsin. ``I'm not even going to venture a guess.''

No one's willing to guess when orbital construction will begin and end, either.

When President Reagan directed NASA in 1984 to build a space station, NASA promised to have one flying for $8 billion by 1992. The only thing soaring by then, though, was the price. Russia signed on in 1993; NASA insisted that Russian participation would save the United States money and speed construction.

But once again, NASA faces a delay because of the Russians.

Instead of hauling up the initial pieces of the international space station early this summer, NASA is considering bumping the start of assembly to summer's end, possibly even later if work continues to lag on a key Russian part.

NASA is quick to note that it shares the blame this time with the cash-strapped Russian Space Agency, which was responsible for last year's delay of seven months.

``It wouldn't be fair to say that it's just the Russians at this point,'' said NASA's Gretchen McClain, deputy associate administrator for the space station. ``We've got some problems in our own back yard.''

The space shuttle flight schedule is in disarray because of a three-month delay in launching an X-ray telescope, now targeted for a December liftoff.

To spread out the missions and reorganize the work, shuttle managers have proposed hoisting the second space station component - a connecting passageway - in September instead of July. If that happens, the first station part would be launched by the Russians in August instead of June.

Also factoring into this potential two-month delay is the fact that the Russian Space Agency still is not getting enough money from its government to complete piece No. 3, a space station module housing life support and other critical systems. It's the same component that forced NASA last year to postpone the start of station construction from November 1997 to June 1998.

This so-called service module, needed before astronauts and cosmonauts can move into the international space station, is supposed to be launched by the Russians in December. But they're more than two months behind in work.

NASA officials doubt that the Russians can catch up; they anticipate a February 1999 launch at the earliest. That means the first permanent crew, commanded by American astronaut William Shepherd, would arrive in March 1999 at the earliest, two months late.

There's more.

NASA is 1-1/2 months behind on its own lab module, which is supposed to fly in mid-1999 but likely will be delayed along with everything else.

If it sounds complicated, it is.

Everything is so intertwined - the U.S. shuttle schedule, the Russian money crunch, manufacturing snags in both countries - that some analysts wonder how the space station will be finished in the promised five to six years. It's the largest cooperative technological project ever undertaken in peacetime, involving 16 countries and 1 million pounds of flight hardware.

``If all it takes is one late telescope to throw the whole thing into chaos, what else might go wrong?'' asked Marcia Smith, a specialist in space policy for the Congressional Research Service in Washington. ``The whole assembly sequence is success-oriented, and it assumes there aren't going to be any failures.''

As of now, the international space station is supposed to be completed by the end of 2003.