IDEAS / SPACE STATION : Man on the Street Is NASA Adviser : Public encouraged to submit concepts.

Oliver Harwood will finally get his day in court.

Harwood, a retired Huntington Beach engineer who pioneered in the design of various U.S. space ventures, has been telling the National Aeronautics and Space Administration for years that he has designed a better space station than the one NASA plans to build later this decade. But he never felt that anyone was listening.

BACKGROUND: Now, Harwood and thousands of others who think they have a better idea are participating in NASA’s search for innovative ways of getting to Mars and setting up a permanent base on the moon. It is all part of Project Outreach, and, according to NASA Administrator Richard H. Truly, the program grew out of a determination “to draw on America’s creative potential to ensure that we are benefiting from a broad range of ideas.”

So Harwood and a spectrum of people ranging from former astronauts to schoolchildren have submitted their ideas to the RAND Corp., the Santa Monica think tank, in the hope of sharing in the design of the future of the U.S. space program.

It is an ambitious undertaking, under the overall direction of Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Stafford, a former astronaut.

The program is divided into three categories, with industry submitting its ideas directly to NASA and members of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics submitting to their organization. All the rest, ranging from those who know very little about the space business to experts in engineering and science, are placing their faith in RAND.

IDEAS ABOUND: Results are to be delivered to Stafford next month. “It’s a difficult study,” conceded John Friel, a rocket engineer who spent 26 years in the Air Force and is head of the RAND project.

“The important thing is to keep as many options open as possible,” allowing a wide range of ideas to reach the space agency, he added.

Now, Friel and a team of experts from various disciplines are sorting through more than 1,600 entries, trying to weigh them according to their usefulness, feasibility, innovation, safety and cost.

In the interest of fairness, judges do not know the names of the persons who submitted the proposals, in order to give unbiased consideration to all ideas.

“The principle was not to have more weight given to some guy at MIT than someone in Des Moines,” he said.

Some ideas can be quickly discarded because they violate the laws of physics, but many require careful examination by experts, Friel said. The responses have not been made available to the public yet, but The Times obtained copies of some entries from the participants themselves.

Some have been submitted by pioneers in the U.S. space program.

Edwin E. (Buzz) Aldrin Jr. is best known to Americans as the second man to set foot on the moon. But Aldrin is also an engineer, and he has proposed an ambitious program centered on “cyclers”--spacecraft that would orbit around the solar system, looping past Mars and Earth so they could be used to haul freight between the planets. That would reduce the need to launch an enormous spacecraft every time there was a need to ship a lot of material to Mars.

Harwood’s proposal is considerably less grand, and that is exactly what he had in mind. Harwood would radically simplify the proposed U.S. space station. His design would consist of a series of habitation and work modules that would be connected at “spheres,” which would also serve as attachment points for scientific instruments outside the station.

Harwood believes his station could be up and operating with four flights of the space shuttle, compared to at least 28 envisioned by NASA.

It’s an old idea that Harwood has been pushing for years, and, although other engineers who have reviewed the design have praised it, Harwood believes it has never been taken seriously by NASA.

OUTLOOK: “Something may come out of it,” Harwood said. But, like the battle-worn veteran that he is, he’s not holding his breath.

Friel insists there is no basis for such pessimism.

“(We’ll select) what we think are the best ideas,” he said. “Then it’s up to (NASA).”