In Japan, They’re on a Real ‘Fantastic Voyage’ : Technology: Researchers are trying to create micromachines capable of going where no man has gone before, at least not without a scalpel.

A nuclear submarine with five crew members shrinks to the size of a tiny dot and is injected into the artery of a scientist. Despite a series of dangers, including an attack by white blood cells, they cruise to his brain to repair a cerebral hemorrhage.

The story is from “Fantastic Voyage,” the 1966 Academy Award-winning science fiction classic that carried a medical team through the human body. Now Japanese researchers, who have miniaturized the most common of machines, are following a similar path.

While people the size of a pinhead remain the stuff of fiction, Japanese scientists say it may be possible to build miniature machines that could travel inside the body and make surgical repairs.

The Ministry of International Trade and Industry, which often backs such projects, said last month that it would launch a major research drive to develop basic technologies to make the goal possible.

One day, perhaps in the early 21st Century, there will be tiny machines that travel through the body, zapping cancer cells or repairing damaged tissue and recording observations along the way. Micromachines could also burrow into crevices to check or repair cracks or other problems in nuclear power plants or jet engine turbines.

“We will be laying the groundwork for commercialization in the early 21st Century,” said Naomasa Nakajima, a Tokyo University professor of mechanical engineering who helped plan the project.

MITI’s goals for its 10-year, $171-million effort are more modest--a prototype micromachine, one cubic centimeter (1/16 of an inch) in volume, that can sense and respond to its environment. It also foresees a smart catheter that could enter organs beyond the reach of today’s probes.

“If we realize the promise of this technology, we can help satisfy industrial and medical needs,” said Masahiko Kobayashi, a deputy director of MITI’s Agency of Industrial Science and Technology.

Projects of this sort bring together researchers from Japan’s private and public sectors and have been credited with helping domestic industry advance in semiconductors, optics and other fields. Responding to criticism that such projects are selfishly motivated, MITI last year opened them to all foreign companies.

Giant electrical firms--including Hitachi Ltd., NEC Corp. and Toshiba Corp.--as well as precision machinery makers, such as Nikon Corp., are likely candidates.

The micromachines theme was selected from dozens of others, in part because it is compatible with MITI’s goal of making an international contribution by supporting basic research.

But it also won out because early work in the field is promising. Moreover, Japan’s aging population will place new demands on medicine.

Micromachines were pioneered in the United States. Researchers at the University of California in Berkeley developed one of the most advanced, if still impractical, devices--an electric micromotor with a central rotor smaller than a red blood cell.

Research is heating up. In addition to some $2 million that the National Science Foundation put up for U.S. research in 1989, West Germany this year began paying $258 million for a four-year project.

MITI’s Kobayashi said the project could not be classified as an irritant to trade friction.

“The United States is ahead, but it’s only one step from the starting line. The goal is still way in the distance.”