For each of the last several years, the Congress has debated whether to go forward with the NASA Space Station first proposed in 1984. Critics have often suggested that better options exist that could provide similar capabilities sooner or at a lower cost. Such options have included the Russian Space Station Mir, "free-flyers" that would be only occasionally visited by astronauts, and space stations that could be based on an augmented, extended-duration, Space Shuttle orbiter. The Committee seeks to provide information relevant to these questions by preparing an unbiased technical study of the characteristics and resultant capabilities of the proposed [near-term] space station options for the U.S.

The emphasis of the Committee's study and the resulting report will be on compiling and comparing technical parameters associated with the space stations in question, and on determining their significance with regard to the types of research most appropriate for a space station. The Committee will:

1. Review the basic technical characteristics of the Space Station Freedom and its proposed alternatives. This will include parameters such as overall power, pressurized volume, the quality of the microgravity environment, and the maximum crew supportable by the life support system.
2. Characterize the overall ability of each space station to accommodate experiment facilities by outlining the basic categories of flight hardware that can be supported by each design. The characterization of each design's capabilities will be based on two sets of data:
   
   a) information regarding resources such as power, volume, and crew time that will remain for research and other activities after essential operations and maintenance are performed; and
   b) existing technical specifications of flight hardware that has been flown on the Space Shuttle or other missions, and general technical requirements to support research on a space station.