Science / Medicine : Soviets Forge Ahead With Manned Space Program, U.S. Delegation Reports : Flight: Despite their country’s economic troubles, officials expect to dock shuttle with orbiting station as early as 1991. American observers urge cooperation.

U.S. scientists who recently toured key space facilities in the Soviet Union have concluded that, despite widespread problems throughout that troubled country, the Soviet space program is alive and well and will feature a major space feat as early as next year.

Louis Friedman, director of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, said Soviet officials told the U.S. delegation that they expect to dock their space shuttle with their orbiting space station as early as next year despite speculation in the West that the Soviet program could atrophy because of more pressing problems on the Soviet agenda.

“There’s a real active program over there,” Friedman said at a briefing last week. “The manned program is alive.”

Nothing would prove that more than a successful docking of the Soviet shuttle, called Buran, with the centerpiece of the Soviet program, the manned space station called Mir.

The Soviet shuttle has flown only once, and no shuttle has ever docked with an orbiting space station. In fact, no other nation even has that capability since only the Soviet Union has both a permanent orbiting station and a reusable space plane, although the latter is not yet considered “operational.”

During its first test flight the Buran was unmanned, and the Soviets have not yet decided whether it will be manned during the daring attempt to dock with the Mir, Friedman said.

Thomas Heinsheimer, vice president of Titan Systems Inc. of Los Angeles and an adviser to the Soviet Union on its 1994 Mars mission, said he “would guess” that the Buran will fly unmanned to Mir and return with cosmonauts from the space station because that is the safest part of the journey for a relatively untested vehicle.

During the recent tour of Soviet facilities, Heinsheimer suggested to his Soviet counterparts that, as part of an increasing desire for international partners, they consider inviting the National Aeronautics and Space Administration to land a U.S. shuttle at the Baikonaur Cosmodrome in central Asia. The landing would be more ceremonial than anything else, but it would at least demonstrate a willingness to work together.

The Planetary Society, which has been pushing for greater cooperation in U.S. and Soviet space programs for several years, will present the idea to the National Space Council soon, Friedman said.

“It can be done,” he added.

The purpose of the tour of Soviet facilities was to promote international cooperation in space, which both men described as essential for future efforts to explore the solar system. For individual nations to seek to explore the planets on their own would be simply too costly and unpopular, Friedman said.

In addition, a joint program could draw from the differing strengths of both countries.

“We have an operational shuttle program. They do not,” Friedman said. “They have an operational space station. We do not. There are things we can learn from each other.”

The U.S. team saw the docking mechanism that the Soviets will use to link Buran and Mir, and Heinsheimer, an aeronautical engineer, said he believes the same hardware could be used to dock the U.S. shuttle with the Soviet space station. Some minor modifications would have to be made, he said, but it could be done.

The Soviet space program is of particular interest to the Planetary Society because the society is heavily involved in the 1994 Soviet mission to Mars. Heinsheimer, a world-class balloonist, and other society members have been working with the French space agency in the development of balloons that the Soviet craft is to release into the Martian atmosphere.

The balloons are designed to drop down to the surface during the cool of the night, and then lift off and drift over various areas during the heat of the day, snapping electronic images as they go. Heinsheimer said he expects the cameras to provide 10,000 close-up photos of the surface of the Red Planet each day.

NASA is also involved in the 1994 Soviet mission. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s Mars Observer spacecraft is to be launched two years before the Soviet effort and it will carry electronic relay equipment to help the Soviets retrieve as much data from their mission as possible.

The 1994 mission is “fully funded,” Friedman said, and it is one more indication of the vitality of the Soviet space program.

The Soviets hope to be able to market their space program internationally, he added, and they are actively seeking partners on a governmental level as well as at institutional and academic levels. He conceded that some potential Western partners were somewhat discouraged when twin Soviet spacecraft failed to land small packages on the Martian moon of Phobos two years ago. But in the long run, he added, the Soviet program has been quite successful.

There is much debate within the Soviet Union over the direction that the program should take in the years ahead, but it is unquestionably moving forward, Friedman insisted.

The U.S. delegation saw two Energias--the largest rockets in the world--in an advanced stage of construction, he said. A third space shuttle is also under construction, and Soviet scientists are aggressively studying problems associated with long-duration space flight, an essential precursor to manned flights to Mars.

And the best way to get there, Friedman and Heinsheimer insisted, is to go together.