PERSPECTIVE ON THE SPACE PROGRAM : Catch a Lift on Energia : We can save it by exploring cooperative opportunities with the adversary that propelled us to the moon.

This year is the 20th anniversary of the last American moon landing and the end of the Apollo program. After nine manned journeys to the moon, we left and we have yet to return. Meanwhile, the Cold War, which provided the political fuel that made the Apollo program possible, has ended. Paradoxically, the end of that conflict may now be NASA Administrator Daniel S. Goldin’s golden opportunity to recapture the spirit and drive that propelled our nation to the moon.

Competition with the Soviets propelled us into space. Cooperating with the Russians may now be our opportunity to regain the lost momentum that extended the boundaries of human existence to Earth’s nearest neighbor. Not surprisingly, this idea still causes unease in many quarters. But we cannot afford to pass up this historic opportunity because our manned space program is facing a crisis that can hamstring it for years to come.

The space station Freedom stands at the center of this crisis. It narrowly escaped sudden death in Congress last year and was saved only after an all-out floor flight in the House of Representatives. But it may not survive this year’s budget battle.

If it does, financing may well be cut so badly that it will have to be redesigned and its capability reduced--again--to fit under an ever-lower funding ceiling. This has happened about half a dozen times now. One more round may very well spell the station’s de facto death. That could mean the waste of billions of dollars and years of sophisticated design effort already invested by the United States and its international space station partners--the European Space Agency, Canada and Japan.

The way to save the station is to make it cheaper without reducing its capability. History has provided us with a completely unexpected chance to do this by exploring cooperative, mutually beneficial opportunities with the space power that was once our deadliest adversary. We could begin by flying some of our astronauts on the Russian space station Mir, and some Russian cosmonauts on the shuttle, a fitting renewal of what was briefly started with the Apollo-Soyuz joint flight of July, 1975. As we gained experience and confidence, we could explore more direct relationships.

For example, the design of the Freedom is radically hampered by its dependence on the shuttle, whose 40,000-pound payload capacity dictates the need for about 30 flawless launches to bring all the station’s pieces up to low Earth orbit. Meanwhile, the Russians have developed the Energia, a launcher as powerful as the rockets that sent us to the moon and capable of lifting station components in larger installments and therefore less time.

The Russians also have the Mir. But it has been in orbit for about 10 years and is beginning to show its age. The Freedom’s currently planned modules might find a more assured future if they became part of a refurbished and renovated internationally manned complex, whose core was the Mir, rejuvenated and partially supported by the shuttle. Eventually, the Energia could add a much larger permanently manned habitat to co-orbit with this complex.

The irony is that the United States does in fact have a heavy-lift vehicle: the shuttle. The trouble is that the bulk of what it lifts comes back down in the form of the orbiter and its life-support systems. We have talked about developing a cargo version of the shuttle that would substitute a cargo module or a larger-volume habitat for the orbiter. This deserves closer attention as a reserve option against the possibility of instability in Russia.

Undeniably, there are problems with all of these ideas. The Mir orbits at a higher inclination than the shuttle typically does. It would be a challenge to reconfigure modules intended for the Freedom for launch and docking with the Russian spacecraft and platforms. And who can predict future international economies and budgetary prospects of space programs?

But that only means we need to look at our situation more creatively. Simply saying that it’s “too hard” will only ensure that it gets worse. The point is that we are both in the same boat--or spacecraft. It may, therefore, be worth remembering Ben Franklin’s wise remark in another context: “We must indeed all hang together, or, most assuredly, we shall all hang separately.”