Honeymoon on Mars? <i> Nyet!</i> : Our Space Effort Could Be Hostage to Soviet Whim

The idea of going hand-in-hand to Mars with the Soviets is enjoying a certain vogue in Washington circles these days. We are told that this is a way to “build trust” between the nations, a means of establishing a Utopian “international extra-terrestrial civilization” free of friction and conflict.

Some members of Congress have even fallen for this bombastic hype, peddled most prominently by the director of the Soviet Space Research Institute, Roald Sagdeyev, amid one of the most intense public-relations blitzes ever mounted in this country. Rep. Robert G. Torricelli (D-N.J.) and several others have pushed a bill through Congress authorizing the establishment of a Mars commission.

There is only one thing wrong with the idea of going to Mars with the Soviets: It completely and utterly ignores reality.

Proponents of the jointly manned mission to Mars should not be allowed to “snow job” their way past the very serious issues surrounding this project: the potential for spying, for technology transfer, for interference in our political system, for the “hostage-holding” effect it would have on our space program and our future.

Congress and the President should instead set aside the hype and look at this proposed project with the cold eye of reason.

The whole idea of going to Mars together has a fishy origin: It was an anti-”Star Wars” propaganda ploy. “Give up your Star Wars and let’s go to Mars together,” Gorbachev’s people told us throughout the mid-1980s. The Soviets refused even the smallest request for information, saying that first we had to give up Star Wars, the President’s Strategic Defense Initiative. There is still a linkage between the Star Wars proposal and the U.S.-Soviet Mars mission, although it has been less shrill since Gorbachev confessed to having his own Star Wars program.

The trust that is implicit in joint agreements has, so far, been unilaterally American. Although there has been loud pre-summit fanfare over the resumption of “scientific information exchanges” between the two nations, the reality of Soviet cooperation has been quite different. Americans in the space medicine field still do not know basic information that could someday save the lives of astronauts. For instance, we still do not know the exact nature of the two medical emergencies that caused the evacuation of cosmonauts from the space station, or what drugs were used to treat the cosmonauts in space, and why they didn’t work. And just a few months ago, the top veteran cosmonaut Aleksey Leonov said that his country would never disclose the nature of the drugs cosmonauts use to offset severe bone loss in space, the most serious problem of long-duration spaceflight.

Worse yet, Americans participating in some of these exchanges--especially in the life-sciences area--are not sharing Soviet data with their colleagues in NASA or university space research programs. Instead, they are playing “Moscow rules” in the information game, restricting data circulation to a small group of high-level bureaucrats ill-equipped to test and evaluate the information. This practice runs contrary to all the open-information policies NASA has promoted for many years, but these few bureaucrats are anxious not to rock the diplomatic boat. As a result, these exchanges--and all future projects--are held hostage to Soviet displeasure and whims.

Clearly, the Soviets have much to gain and Americans have much to lose in a joint space endeavor, if free speech can be quashed so easily and protests silenced so quickly. If the projects and exchanges were very large and expensive, like a Mars mission, the entire American space program would be subjected on a larger scale to what a few scientists have already been subjected to--suppression of information, programs held hostage by Soviet displeasure.

Then there is the whole question of technology transfer. If the Soviets were given a front seat to American technological development, as they would if they had greater access to our space program, there is a good chance some of that advanced technology would wind up in Soviet weapon systems. For instance, technology the Soviets purchased from Toshiba wound up in Soviet submarines--not on Soviet department store shelves.

The Soviets should be put through several “tests of sincerity” before we go beyond the current superficial “scientific exchanges.”

--The Soviets can provide us with a complete, fully detailed record of their space experiences, including all in-flight illnesses and treatments, failed launches, and so on.

--The Soviets can agree to allow full real-time news coverage of their space program by American journalists, including access to launches, a good look at current and future projects, and full briefings on setbacks and failures.

--The Soviets can agree to an exchange of cosmonauts and astronauts to familiarize themselves with each other’s procedures and prepare for space rescue flights.

--The Soviets can agree to full disclosure of scientific information, so our scientists can fully scrutinize, evaluate, and verify their data. It would help for them to define their future science programs too, to tell us what hypotheses they are testing and what results they expect to get.

In the meantime, if Torricelli and other members of Congress wish to go to Mars, they should vote a more robust budget for space research in this country rather than hitch us to the diplomatically premature joint mission.

A complex, expensive, 25-year long joint research program is like marriage: It should be entered into soberly, advisedly, for better or for worse--and only after a very long engagement during which trust is built and loyalty tested.