Science / Medicine : A Weekly Roundup of News, Features and Commentary : Analysis : NASA Cool to Mars Venture With Soviets

Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev’s recent suggestion that the United States and the Soviet Union consider a joint unmanned mission to Mars was about as welcome within the top ranks of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration as a jammed toilet on the space shuttle.

For although scientists on the working level throughout NASA have joined with their Soviet counterparts in many endeavors, it is no secret that theagency’s brass is cool to the idea of sharing their triumphs and technology with the Soviet Union.

Gorbachev told representatives of peace organizations at the end of the summit last week that he sees a joint venture to Mars as “an alternative to SDI (the Strategic Defense Initiative), to the militarization of space.”

The so-called “Star Wars” program has been a major stumbling block in negotiations between the two powers.

“And we say: Let us prepare joint flights to Mars and the Moon and divert the new substances and the new technology resulting from these flights into civilian spheres,” Gorbachev said.

But the problems in such a joint venture are many-faceted. There is much concern among NASA leaders over the likelihood that Soviet scientists would profit far more than U.S. scientists, mainly because NASA space technology--despite the recent string of launch failures--is widely viewed as vastly superior to the Soviets’. Major space programs also require many years of preparation, and that would mean both countries would have to maintain openness and cooperation through changes of leadership and inevitable international confrontations, something they have not been able to do in the past.

The Apollo-Soyuz rendezvous in 1975, for instance, was possible because it could be done quickly and without the need for close cooperation over many years.

That celebrated encounter, carried out because of its political rather than scientific rewards, seems like a long time ago.

Today, the most formidable obstacle in the path of U.S.-Soviet cooperation has more to do with nationalism than anything else. Space programs around the world are intensely nationalistic, and NASA is certainly no exception. NASA executives, struggling through the darkest hours in the agency’s history as they work to overcome the Challenger disaster, are clearly annoyed over what they view as Soviet efforts to boast of their successes, including plans for an ambitious program to send an armada of spacecraft to Mars over the next decade.

NASA is so cool to the Soviets that many scientists within the agency who were invited by Moscow to a space forum there last year were prohibited from going unless they took vacation time and paid their own way. The agency sent a small group of about half a dozen as its official delegation, but literally scores of scientists with intense interest in the Soviet space program were unable to attend.

During a recent briefing for science writers at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, NASA chief James Fletcher brushed off questions about the chances of joining forces with the Soviets. Fletcher, who spoke with reporters via satellite from Washington, said he was having so much trouble getting adequate funding for the agency that he is considering killing the program to build a permanently manned U.S. space station.

If there is not enough money for U.S. programs like that, he said, there is not enough to even consider a major mission with the Soviets.

Other top officials are also known to be cool to the idea. Lennard Fisk, NASA’s chief scientist, said he doubts that the United States will take a major role in any Soviet missions in the near future. Some scientists had hoped that NASA would agree to a joint “sample return” mission to bring back rocks from Mars, but Fisk labeled that “too ambitious.”

Even scientists within the agency who are supportive of joint U.S.-Soviet programs doubt that it would be wise to aim for a highly interdependent project because of potential disruptions over the lifetime of the program. Lew Allen, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has argued over the years that a more practical approach would be mutually supportive--though independent--missions. NASA has performed such a role in the past, using its deep space tracking network to aid Soviet spacecraft in their encounter with Halley’s comet, for example.

Still, scientists are not willing to dismiss Gorbachev’s proposal lightly. During the Moscow summit, the two superpowers agreed to at least explore cooperation in moon and Mars missions, according to a spokesman for the U.S. State Department.

“It’s a little helpful,” said Louis Friedman, executive director of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society who has pushed for greater international cooperation in space. “It moves us forward, but slowly.”