Senate Approves Space Budget, Assigns Research Center to Hub

The U.S. Senate passed the Administrations space authorization bill Friday by a voice vote, making it virtually certain that Boston will get the National Aeronautics and Space Agency's controversial Electronic Research Center.

Both Houses of Congress have now passed space legislation assigning the Center to Boston on a conditional basis. The House bill, passed two weeks ago, provides for an initial expenditure of $3.9 million for land purchase and design. The Senate version grants the $5 million NASA originally requested for the first year's work on the Center, which is expected eventually to cost about $50 million.

The Senate approved the bill after rejecting a move by Sen. Carl T. Curtis (R.Neb.) to strike the Research Center item from the space budget. The 45-21 vote followed party lines, although two Democrats, Sens. Frank Lausche of Ohio and William Proxmire of Wisconsin, voted against the Center.

A joint conference committee of the House and Senate will soon begin work on reconciling the differences between the two bills. Bost involve sums of over $5 billion, though the House version made deep cuts into the Administration's original $5.7 billion space budget.

The Boston space center is bound to be included in the final bill. The site of the center, however, will be subject to reconsideration by the Senate and House space committees.

Satellite Research Wrangle

Although the Boston project excited some controversy, most of the two-day debate on the space authorization bill was taken up by a wrangle over communications satellite research. Fifteen liberal Democratic Senators, led by the late Sen. Estes Kefauver of Tennessee, sponsored a resolution to require the privately-owned Communications Satellite Corporation to reimburse the government for any "advice or information" provided to the corporation.

The liberals attacked a $44 million item in the space budget for research and development of communications satellites. While conceding the need for such research, they termed total government financing of the research a "gives way" to the corporation.

Sen. Clinton P. Anderson (D.N.M.), floor leader for the bill, offered a substitute amendment which was passed, 62-11. Anderson's amendment, a restatement of Administration policy, forbids the space agency to provide services "for the exclusive benefit" of non-governmental agencies except when given on a reimbursable basis.