Business Notes GOVERNMENT

For aerospace contractors, it is the prize of the decade: a $17 billion U.S. space station the size of a football field. Thus when the bids for four major parts of the project arrived at NASA offices last week, the competition was weighty indeed. A typical bid package ran to nearly 20,000 pages, weighed three tons and filled scores of boxes. In one competition a consortium headed by Rockwell International and another led by McDonnell Douglas are battling for a $2 billion to $3 billion contract to build the space station's framework, air locks and guidance and communications systems.

NASA will study the bids for months before winners are announced, probably in November. The space station, which will require some 30 shuttle flights to haul its pieces into orbit, is scheduled to be completed in the mid-1990s.