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                                                                                SCIENCE, Page 54

Space Program for Sale


Top Russian scientists and hardware that NASA covets are available
at bargain-basement prices, but the U.S. government is dragging
its heels

By MICHAEL D. LEMONICK -- Reported by Dick Thompson/Washington
and Yuri Zarakhovich/Moscow


    Sergei Krikalev got more than he bargained for when he
rocketed into space last May from the Baikonur Cosmodrome,
located in what was then still known as the Kazakh Soviet
Socialist Republic. Krikalev was scheduled for a five-month
stint as flight engineer aboard the Mir space station; his
replacement was slated to arrive in October. Who could have
foreseen that Krikalev's country would disintegrate before his
mission was over? By the time October rolled around, the
Baikonur facility was on the verge of belonging to Kazakhstan
rather than the Soviet Union. As a public relations measure,
space-program authorities decreed that instead of a sending a
replacement for the cosmonaut, a native Kazakh should go up for
a short and politically expedient visit. Poor Krikalev got some
fresh supplies but no relief. Ten months after his sojourn
began, he's still circling the earth every 90 minutes, day and
night, stranded 350 km above the planet. He may finally come
down next week.

    Krikalev's troubles are symbolic of what has happened to
the Soviet space program. As recently as last year, 34 years
after Sputnik, the U.S.S.R. was basking in its reputation as the
premier spacefaring nation in the world. Now political
fragmentation and economic upheaval are raising questions about
whether the successor states will be able to support a viable
space program at all. In the U.S., even as officials debate the
larger question of whether the West should provide economic aid
to these states, a more specific debate is under way over the
wisdom of striking commercial deals involving their rockets and
other scientific assets.

    Looking for ways to keep working, Russian space-industry
officials, as well as scientists of all sorts, have begun to
market their most useful skills and services to the U.S and
other nations. Last week Boris Babayan, who created powerful
super computers for the former Soviet Union's space and
nuclear-weapons programs, hired his entire Moscow lab out to Sun
Microsystems of Mountain View, Calif., to develop computers and
software. Also last week, the U.S. Department of Energy signed
a one-year contract with scientists at Moscow's Kurchatov
Institute of Atomic Energy to do research on thermonuclear
fusion, a potentially limitless energy source that American
physicists have been struggling with for decades. Both deals are
tremendous bargains for the U.S. Sun is paying Babayan's 50 or
so crack computer scientists just a few hundred dollars a year
apiece. And the entire 116-member Kurchatov team is being hired
for $90,000 a year -- roughly the salary of one high-level U.S.
physicist.

    But space scientists are having a tougher time marketing
themselves to the U.S. Though officials at NASA have expressed
interest in Russian space technology, a lingering cold war
mentality, especially in the Defense Department, has kept any
major deals from going through. Deputy Secretary of Defense
Donald Atwood and other hard-line officials have argued that it
would be a mistake to keep Russia's missile factories and space
reactor plants in business. "We don't want to encourage them,"
Atwood told a congressional panel recently. After all, missiles
can be used to launch nuclear warheads as well as satellites,
and reactors could power space weapons.

    Other American officials, however, look upon the Russian
space program as an emporium holding an irresistible bankruptcy
sale. It is perhaps the most desirable technological treasure
trove the former Soviet Union has to offer. Says a senior Bush
Administration official: "We wanted to steal some of this stuff
a few years ago." The erstwhile Soviets are world leaders in
rocket propulsion and space power plants. "They are way ahead
of us in materials and nuclear power, and there is eagerness to
do business over there," says Joe Wetch, the president of
International Scientific Products, a San Jose firm attempting
to market Soviet space technology in the U.S. To miss the
opportunity, he adds, "is insane."

    Several big-ticket items on NASA's wish list are currently
available from the Russians at rock-bottom prices. Among them:
the Energia rocket, which can lift more than three times the
space shuttle's 30-ton payload; the most advanced liquid-fueled
rocket motors in existence; and a space-ready nuclear reactor
that could extend the life and lower the cost of communication
and weather satellites. In addition, the Russians are offering
the services of a Soyuz spacecraft for use as a rescue vehicle
for U.S. shuttle crews, plus a superior system for enabling
space ships to rendezvous and dock. Also tempting to U.S. space
scientists is an impressive data base -- gathered by Soviet
physiologists -- on human responses to low gravity.

    Making deals on these and other space technologies not
only could save the U.S. research money and provide hard
currency for the struggling republics but might also stave off
disaster for a space program that has fragmented along with its
country. Russia owns the rockets and spacecraft, but the main
launch center is in Kazakhstan. Crucial aerospace plants and
satellite tracking facilities are now the property of Ukraine,
Georgia and Uzbekistan. Says Nikolai Semyenov, a spokesman for
Glavkosmos, once the central Soviet space agency: "With
Kazakhstan we don't have problems. But we don't have any
cooperation agreements with the others, and those facilities are
lost to us."

    Financing the agency's operations has become an enormous
problem. Russia still retains about 80% of the program's assets
but, says Semyenov, "there is no financing for the 1992 space
program. We have barely enough just to pay wages to the
personnel." Ground controllers in Moscow went on a brief,
symbolic strike in January to protest low salaries, and
construction workers at Baikonur recently rioted in protest of
their salaries and inhuman working conditions. The Russian space
shuttle, Buran, which was in the final stages of development,
has been shelved indefinitely and Mir is nearing the end of its
useful lifetime, with no replacement available. Even the
long-suffering Krikalev has had to do without one of his few
luxuries: fresh honey.

    For the moment, the program is lumbering along. There were
59 launches last year, compared with 29 for the rest of the
world, and plans are still afoot for a series of unmanned Mars
visits in 1994 and 1996 -- at least on paper. "The key test will
come at the end of this year, when they've used up all their
supplies," says a U.S. government analyst. One promising sign:
a new Russian Space Agency was created two weeks ago. Insiders
hope it will be able to halt the decline.

    But that will require money, which will be hard to squeeze
from the anemic Russian budget. Clearly, foreign capital is
needed. For several years Moscow has been raising funds by
selling visits to Mir, at $10 million to $15 million a pop, to
countries such as Japan and England. Several nations, including
India, have paid to launch satellites on Russian rockets. Now
virtually every branch of the space infrastructure, once
financed by the Soviet military, has trade representatives in
the U.S.

    But their frustration is growing at America's failure to
conclude any deals. Last year, for example, Pentagon officials
said they were ready to spend $10 million on a Topaz-2 space
reactor, but Deputy Defense Secretary Atwood is said to have
blocked the sale. He has also reportedly forbidden Pentagon
officials to travel to Russia without approval from him or
Defense Secretary Dick Cheney. NASA's attempts to approach the
Russians, meanwhile, have been stalled by the State Department.

    Officially the