Will Share Friday’s Oft-Delayed Flight With Wind-up Mouse : Garn Finally Making Voyage Into Space

After four delays, the space shuttle Discovery is scheduled to blast off here Friday, carrying Sen. Jake Garn (R-Utah), a crew of six and a wind-up mouse named Rat Stuff.

The mouse will be the star of a film on weightlessness, but it is Garn’s role that has overshadowed all other aspects of this 16th shuttle mission. The 53-year-old senator will be making history of sorts: There are several astronauts who have gone on to become politicians, Sen. John Glenn (D-Ohio) among them; but, until this flight, there has never been a politician who became an astronaut.

Heads Oversight Panel

Garn campaigned hard for the honor and concedes that he held something of an advantage over his colleagues: He is chairman of the Senate subcommittee that oversees the budget of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

The former Navy pilot, who keeps fit by running 25 miles a week, has taken in good humor the suggestions that his ride in the shuttle amounts to the ultimate congressional junket. He portrays the journey as an important part of his senatorial duties, which he describes as “oversight responsibility” for catching glitches in the space program and its $7.8-billion annual budget.

But, for Garn, the flight is clearly more than that. In his Washington office hang the models of about 25 different aircraft that he has piloted, and he is known as one of a handful of senators who compete enthusiastically to fly new military jet fighters first.

Beating Goldwater

“One of the first times I met Garn, he told me he wanted to beat Goldwater to the shuttle,” said a NASA official, referring to Sen. Barry Goldwater (R-Ariz.), who has been known to fly a couple of jet fighters himself.

At NASA, the decision to invite Garn to go on a shuttle mission represents something of a political experiment--and a gamble. For decades, the Defense Department has wooed key politicians with its rides in jet fighters and submarines; and the National Science Foundation has lured congressmen on trips to Antarctica. Now, NASA is betting that it can do the same thing with the space shuttle.

However, there is a chance that the experiment will backfire. Each year NASA receives thousands of letters from individuals asking for the chance to journey into space, and the agency’s issuing an invitation to Garn, rather than to an ordinary citizen, could be seen as a blatant act of favormongering. NASA officials concede that since Garn’s trip was announced last November they have received far more critical letters about the flight than positive ones.

“Some of the letters have been pretty adamant,” said Jack Murphy, NASA’s assistant administrator for congressional affairs. “They say it is shameful that NASA has caved in to someone who controls the purse strings. But we feel Sen. Garn has the right to see the inside of a space flight. He will see the warts as well as the glories.”

Mission Lacks Drama

Whether or not the choice was intentional, NASA invited Garn on a shuttle mission that lacks the drama of earlier flights. The primary task on this flight will be the orbiting of two communications satellites, one for Hughes Communications Services Inc. and the other for Telesat Canada.

The Hughes satellite, known as Leasat 3, will be leased by the Defense Department for its communications system; the Canadian satellite will operate as a commercial relay station.

The mission, led by Air Force Col. Karol J. Bobko, is scheduled to lift off at 5:04 a.m. PST Friday from the Kennedy Space Center. The landing, five days later, also is scheduled for Kennedy, but Edwards Air Force Base in California will be the primary back-up site.

Other crew members are Cmdr. Donald E. Williams and Capt. S. David Griggs of the Navy and civilian astronauts M. Rhea Seddon and Jeffrey A. Hoffman. Charles D. Walker, an engineer with the McDonnell Douglas Corp., who became the first civilian to fly on a shuttle in 1983, also will be on the flight.

Previous attempts to launch the shuttle mission, which was originally scheduled for last February, have been frustrated by a series of mechanical failures ranging from trouble with the satellites to the collapse of a maintenance crane that damaged the shuttle’s payload compartment.

Developing New Drug

In addition to satellite deployment, the crew will conduct tests for a pharmaceutical company and attempt to monitor the physical deterioration that takes place in an environment lacking gravity. The exact nature of the pharmaceutical experiment has been kept secret for commercial reasons but is known to involve the development of a new drug for the Ortho Pharmaceutical Co.

Probably the most interesting project will be the production of the film featuring Rat Stuff, the wind-up mouse, and other children’s toys operating in weightlessness. The film will be shown in schools as a demonstration of the physics involved in weightless environments.

Perhaps because of the lackluster schedule, Garn’s own duties on the flight have received an unusual amount of attention and have become the subject of much national merriment. From the moment of launching, the senator will be studied intimately for any signs of space sickness, which has caused vomiting and varying degrees of disorientation among about half of the astronauts during space flights.

There has been serious criticism of the flight. Rep. Don Fuqua (D-Fla.), chairman of the House Science and Technology Committee, wrote to NASA saying that the invitation was “wrong” because of the “perceived obsequious nature of the announcement.”

“The cavalier manner in which the episode was handled is almost insulting to the many men and women of NASA who have . . . trained under rigid disciplines for hundreds of hours to assure their competency and mission success,” the congressman wrote.

Garn’s flight has underscored in the public mind what NASA officials have realized for some time: There will be extra seats on many shuttle flights and those seats can be put to a number of uses.

Teachers in Space

Civilians making flights almost certainly will extend far beyond the program, announced last year by President Reagan, to choose a teacher for a mission later this year or early in 1986. Thus far, that program has attracted 10,690 applications.

Among those who have asked to be considered for flights are journalist Walter Cronkite, author Tom Wolfe, who wrote “The Right Stuff,” movie director Steven Spielberg and about a dozen other congressmen.

NASA officials say that they are not sure just how the selection process will work for future flights. Garn was chosen first, NASA officials say, because of his position on the space subcommittee and his extraordinary persistence. In a 1981 hearing of the committee, for example, this exchange took place between Garn and Alan M. Lovelace, then acting director of NASA:

Garn: My first question is: When do I get to go on the space shuttle? I do have 10,000 hours of flight time, I have the background and qualifications, so this is a very serious question. When is the chairman of your appropriations subcommittee going to get to ride in the space shuttle?

Lovelace: I think, senator, if I may be permitted, you sound to me like the 800-pound gorilla. Any time you are ready to go, senator.

Garn: I am ready.