High Hopes Ride on Shuttle-Mir Hookup : Science: U.S., Russian craft to link for 5 days. ‘New NASA’ symbolized.

Twenty years ago next month, a Russian Soyuz and U.S. Apollo spacecraft passed each other in Earth orbit, pausing only to connect briefly and exchange symbolic greetings.

This week, the two space powers cross the threshold of what promises to be a far more lasting relationship. If all goes well, the U.S. space shuttle Atlantis will blast off Thursday, glide toward the already orbiting Russian Mir space station and mate for a full five days--exchanging food, scientific equipment, crew members and huge amounts of goodwill.

“It’s a lot more than just a science experiment,” said John Logsdon, director of the Space Policy Institute at Georgetown University. “In effect, it’s a merger of the Russian and U.S. space programs.”

It should be quite a show. Weighing more than 100 tons each, the two crafts will make an odd couple indeed: Mir, decked out like a dragonfly with gilded solar panels sprouting from its tubular body like gossamer wings; Atlantis, compact, hard-nosed and businesslike.

Traveling at 17,500 m.p.h. while the Earth spins underneath, they will meet at a rendezvous point over eastern Russia with an allowed margin of error of only two minutes and three inches. The mating, as NASA officially describes the docking, will call for some impressive technical acrobatics. But just as impressive are the mission’s political implications, said astronaut Vance Brand, who flew on the Apollo that docked briefly with Soyuz during the height of the Cold War.

“Our mission did its part in opening the door [between East and West] a crack,” said Brand. “Now it’s wide open. I’m surprised that it took so long.”

Even some of NASA’s most persistent critics are enthusiastic about what Bruce Murray of Caltech calls “the symbol of the new NASA.” Murray testified in Congress against the space station, but describes this mission as “just great.”

“Before, we had manned flight as a symbol of U.S. national superiority,” he said. “Now, it’s a symbol of international cooperation.”

Appropriately, this signal event is also the 100th manned U.S. mission--an honor that was meant for the space shuttle Discovery before woodpeckers poked holes in its fuel tank earlier this month and delayed its flight.

The docking itself marks just one small step in a four-year, $400-million joint program with the Russians that already has U.S. astronaut/physician Norm Thagard orbiting on Mir. Thagard, who joined the Mir 18 crew in March, recently broke the duration record for a U.S. astronaut in space. Along with his Mir 18 crew mates Vladimir Dezhurov and Gennadiy Strekalovg, Thagard will return to Earth aboard Atlantis.

Meanwhile, two Russian cosmonauts traveling to Mir on Atlantis--Anatoly Solovyev and Nikolai Budarin--will remain in space for several months as the Mir 19 crew.

There are a total of 10 astronauts and cosmonauts involved in the mission--so many that it was a real challenge to design a crew patch that would fit all the names. Other Atlantis crew members include pilot Charlie Precourt and mission specialists Bonnie Dunbar, Ellen Baker and Greg Harbaugh.

The purpose of this complex game of musical astronauts is to learn how to get along with the Russians well enough to have the International Space Station up and running by the year 2002. Japan, Canada and the European Space Agency are also partners.

So far, NASA says the biggest problem is language. While both Russian and U.S. crews have been struggling to speak each other’s tongues, it’s a complex, four-way translation: from NASA-speak to English to Russian to Russian-technospeak.

In addition, both Russia and the United States carry a hefty load of baggage--good and bad--into the new relationship.

From Russia comes experience in long-duration space flight and a reputation for reliability. While its rockets are old and its facilities at Baikoner Cosmodrome dilapidated (recent visitors described lack of heat and hot water, and expensive equipment crusted with bird droppings), they still have a way of getting things off the ground. A report by the congressional Office of Technology Assessment on Russian-U.S. missions made the point that “the Russian civil and military space programs continue to lead the world in annual numbers of launches and active satellites.”

Although some observers also worry about the stability of Russia’s present political, economic and military situation, NASA Chief Daniel Goldin says, “The Russians are far more worried about us.” Twenty years ago, during the docking of Apollo-Soyuz, “we almost had a disaster; we rammed into them,” Goldin said in a recent interview with The Times.

More recently, during the planned close encounter between Mir and the shuttle Discovery in March, the Russians ordered the shuttle to keep its distance when leaky thrusters compromised its maneuverability. “The Russians said to us: ‘You’re not coming within 400 feet, much less 40 feet!’ ” joked Goldin.

With faxes and phone calls flying back and forth between mission controls in Kaliningrad and Houston, things got patched up, and the two craft faced off at about 37 feet.

The incident was a sobering reminder of the built-in uncertainties of space flight. It’s generally acknowledged, for example, that the chance of another shuttle blowing up is a chilling 1 in 70. Unlike his stone-faced predecessors, Goldin is refreshingly frank about the hazards. “When you go into space, you risk your life,” he said.

Even the Office of Technology Assessment report noted that relying on the shuttle to build a space station (without the trusty Soyuz as a backup) would be foolhardy: “The risk of losing a shuttle orbiter . . . is sufficiently high to raise concerns about the wisdom of using only the space shuttle to support the system [the space station].”

From the United States’ side of the partnership, the Russians will gain a lot in addition to badly needed cash. U.S. technology is widely acknowledged to be more modern, more thoroughly tested and more sophisticated. The docking mechanism, for example, was made in Moscow but brought up to speed in the U.S.

Some observers say the biggest risk Russia faces from the U.S. is not technology but politics. Ever since Congress pulled the plug on the superconducting super collider, big science in America has had international egg on its face. “We’re not the world’s most stable partner,” said Logsdon.

Goldin concurs: “People say they’re worried about the Russians. I’m a lot more worried about the Congress canceling the space station and having to tell our allies. This is a litmus test for America’s willingness to be a real international partner. [If it’s canceled,] it will have a chilling effect not just on space science, but on science across the board.”

The stakes all around are high, but worth it, according to even vocal NASA naysayers such as John Pike, head of the Federation of American Scientists. “As a piece of metal, I’m indifferent to it [the space station],” he said. “As a scientific laboratory, it’s worthless. But in terms of defense, it costs 1% of what we’re spending at the Defense Department. And in terms of making sure the Cold War doesn’t come back, that does a lot more than [the Defense Department] does.”

Pike praised the foreign policy value of keeping Russian missile scientists employed on space projects rather than selling missiles to countries hostile to the United States.

Goldin himself was originally skeptical of the space station idea. A self-described “bombs and bullets man” when he was at TRW, “I went into NASA with the intention of canceling it.”

But now he’s pleased that both he and his Russian counterpart--two men who once literally aimed missiles at each other--are working as partners.

“When nations don’t communicate with each other, they build these monsters in their heads,” he said. “What are we risking? We’re only risking money. The worst thing that happens is, we tried.”

That’s a small price, he says, for an investment in world peace.

Indeed, according to Logsdon, the idea of a joint program with the Russians has intrigued every U.S. President since John Kennedy. Two weeks after JFK’s challenge to shoot the moon in a decade, he met with Russian Premier Nikita Khruschev to discuss joint missions. Even Richard Nixon envisioned joint journeys to Mars, and it was George Bush who signed the 1992 accord with Boris Yeltsin that set off this current round of cooperation in space.

The specifics include $400 million from the United States in exchange for Russian equipment and expertise, plus time on Mir for seven U.S. astronauts (Thagard is the first).

With space flight so expensive, the partnership well may be the only way to keep astronauts or cosmonauts aloft. “The world doesn’t need two programs in human space flight,” said Logsdon. “The logic of trying to do this [jointly] is undeniable.”

The mission requires extensive preparations on almost every front. Over the past few months, Mir crew members have been moving its solar panels and docking ports around, getting into the right configuration to embrace Atlantis when it comes, rather like lovers tilting noses out of the way before closing in for the kiss.

In more ways than one, the mission is already on its way. Thagard and his backup for the Mir flight, U.S. Astronaut Bonnie Dunbar, spent almost a year training in Russia. Russian cosmonauts have been training in the United States for more than a year. And Cmdr. Robert (Hoot) Gibson has put in hundreds of hours on a simulator practicing for the docking; NASA sources say he’s “never missed once.”

Once the crews change places and settle in to their respective “home” vehicles, Dunbar and Baker will begin a series of medical studies into the effects of long-duration space flight on the Mir 18 crew.

Once on the ground, the long-termers can expect muscle weakness, loss of bone mass, anemia, disorientation and difficulty standing upright--to name a few of the usual effects. They will be carried off Atlantis on stretchers.

Understanding how humans adapt to space--and then readapt to Earth after a long visit--is essential for missions to Mars and beyond. And “the whole purpose of the space station,” Goldin said, “is so we can get on to Mars and to the asteroids.”

Mir 19 commander Solovyev, a space veteran, thinks his friend Thagard will handle the transition well. “This should be a great rediscovery of the world,” he said. “After a few months on board, a human being is missing the smells that he is used to, missing the fresh air and flowers and trees, and of course the people. To feel this again for a human being is a great pleasure.”

For Goldin, the mission means doing what comes naturally. “You can trace the origins of life to Africa. But the human species wasn’t content to stay in their nice warm villages. . . . They went up across to North and South America. They crossed the Pacific in canoes. They went to the North and South poles.

“Exploration is written into the genetic code.”