COLUMN RIGHT : Down-Under Space Deal Shouldn’t Fly : Effort to use Soviet boosters will only undercut our own commercial launch business.

As the Soviets like to say, it was no accident that the Bush Administration chose the margins of the Houston economic summit to let it be known that the President had decided to allow U.S. satellites to be placed in orbit aboard Soviet launch vehicles.

After all, this initiative--which stands to contribute substantially to the Soviet Union’s potential to earn hard currency--was of a piece with the determination of many to make the summit the largest political fund-raiser in history: a bash designed to raise $15 billion to $20 billion from Western taxpayers for Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

In agreeing that American payloads could be launched from a yet-to-be-constructed Australian facility at Cape York aboard Soviet Zenit boosters, however, President Bush not only violated the spirit of his stance opposing financial assistance to the Soviet Union. He also set the stage for significant diversions of sensitive U.S. space technologies and for a serious erosion in this country’s fledgling commercial space-launcher industry. In so doing, the President is jeopardizing the progress made in the past few years toward reestablishing a robust American capacity to place payloads into orbit.

In the aftermath of the Challenger disaster, it became transparently obvious that the United States could ill-afford to depend entirely upon so fragile a system as the space shuttle. The United States found itself in this position largely because the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, in its single-minded--and shortsighted--effort to maximize the commercial viability of the shuttle, had succeeded in curtailing virtually all American production of alternative launch means (namely expendable boosters).

Not surprisingly, when at last the decision was made to reestablish production lines for such launchers, the government decided to entrust the task to the American private sector Several concerns responded. In particular, McDonnell Douglas, General Dynamics and Martin Marietta resumed production of three powerful launch vehicles--the Delta, Atlas and Titan rockets, respectively--recreating an array of options for getting vital national security satellites into space and establishing an active competition for both domestic and international civilian payloads. The result is the promise of a potentially significant contribution to the U.S. balance of trade and continued American preeminence in this aerospace field.

Unfortunately, the nation is unlikely to realize these benefits thanks to Bush’s decision to allow Soviet boosters to launch U.S. commercial payloads. As with his earlier approval of a Chinese proposal to loft three commercial satellites built by Hughes Aircraft, the President’s endorsement of the Cape York deal ensures that non-market systems--whose command economies permit them to set prices for goods and services at any level they choose, no matter how artificially low--can engage in unfair “dumping” practices for commercial satellite launches.

The Administration avers that the Soviets will be obliged to charge fair and reasonable prices for their launch services. This is, at best, wishful thinking; at worst, it is a canard. Just as the Chinese are now in the process of welshing on similar commitments to fair pricing of launches abroad their new booster, there is every reason to believe that Moscow will “buy in” to the commercial launch business with its Zenit boosters.

Should the American expendable launcher industry become sized and configured to meet just the needs of the government’s space program, would-be commercial customers will find themselves--as a practical matter--facing an inelastic U.S. launch supply situation. What is more, given the anticipated cutbacks in the defense budget, matters may get worse still.

The key question that must now be asked is: What’s in the Cape York deal for the United States? If, as it appears to be, the answer is nothing--with the dubious exception of short-run savings on launch costs for certain American satellite manufacturers who are willing to risk their future competitiveness by allowing foreign access to sensitive and proprietary information--then this venture simply cannot be judged compatible with U.S. national interests.

Unless and until the Administration can demonstrate that opening the U.S. commercial satellite market to Soviet launch services will not jeopardize a vital national capability (i.e., our own industrial base in this critical area) and does not pose a significant risk of ill-advised--and possibly dangerous--technology transfers, Congress should preclude American participation in the Cape York venture and similar deals with Moscow.