Planning New Probes : Soviets Seek Spark to Fire Space Goals

MOSCOW — Soviet scientist Sergei Linkin elbowed his way into a crowded laboratory at the Space Research Institute here and began rearranging the furniture.

He pushed aside the instruments and tools that had been used to assemble a spacecraft that had just been launched to Mars in a mission on which scientists from 13 nations had worked. From one corner of the room, where a desk-sized probe that the Soviets sent to Venus had been assembled a few years earlier, he cleared off an old wooden table and dragged it across the room.

A handful of scientists from around the world, involved in an increasingly international Soviet space program, slowly filtered into the room as Linkin pushed two other tables together. He motioned for his guests to sit down. It was time to do business.

2 American Reporters Present

As Linkin began the extraordinary meeting, he looked hesitatingly at two reporters who had seated themselves at the table--one from The Times, and the other from New Yorker magazine. In these days of glasnost, Soviet officials seem uncertain how to deal with the press. If Linkin had known that the two American writers would have been banished from such a strategy session in the United States, he might have acted differently.

Instead, he nodded to the reporters and, in flawless English, went on with the meeting, conceding openly that he, like many other leaders in the Soviet scientific community, is struggling with the future.

The meeting provided a rare glimpse of a space program that is growing in confidence but desperately searching for the kind of dash and excitement that will convince others that the cost will be worth it, particularly at a time when the Soviet Union, according to some experts, is taking money from its defense budget and putting it into its civilian space program.

Bewilderment of Scientists

The program is subject to change so quickly that American scientists who are involved in it at times seemed bewildered during a series of meetings here designed to plan future Soviet space exploits. The Americans, some of whom have worked with the Soviets for years as individual scientists, were trying to figure out which instruments to put on an ambitious mission to Mars in 1994, just six years away. Yet they were unsure of such fundamental details as how much room they will have on the spacecraft for their instruments.

Or indeed which spacecraft will be used. The Soviet Union has a powerful new rocket, and Linkin had called the meeting in part to plan the strategy for using the most powerful flying machine now on Earth, the mighty Energia. The rocket was fired once successfully last year but has not been used since. It is so potent that it rivals the Saturn rockets that the United States used to put men on the moon, a feat last accomplished 16 years ago.

The decision-making process in the Soviet Union today stands in stark contrast to the way space research is planned and executed in the United States. No reporters are present when executives with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration fumble around for new directions in the agency’s executive suites in Washington. It takes at least a decade for NASA to move a program from the conceptual stage to execution, a long, methodical process in which politicians and scientists and engineers and image makers wage war in various arenas from Washington to Florida to California.

And on a warm July morning, as more and more scientists crowded into the small laboratory here, Linkin eloquently underscored the difference between the two systems. Linkin, who is director of the atmospheric laboratory here and one of the lead scientists in the Soviet space program, explained that in the Soviet Union, a broad consensus is not necessary.

In one simple statement, he cut through to the fundamental difference between the U.S. and the Soviet systems. Unlike the long process that involves many persons in the United States, in the Soviet Union, the decision whether or not to move ahead with a major new program will be made by only one or two men.

Man With the Last Word

The man who will probably have the last word is Roald S. Kremnev, who runs the government’s giant manufacturing institute that built the Energia. Any plan the scientists develop must meet with his approval, reflecting the fact that in the Soviet Union, the key decisions are made by a very small group of leaders.

“If Kremnev doesn’t like it,” Linkin said simply, “he will do something else.”

Linkin’s statement startled several scientists sitting around the table, including Lou Friedman, executive director of the Pasadena-based Planetary Society, who has been intimately involved in the Soviet program for years. Friedman has been pushing for a joint U.S.-Soviet manned mission to Mars.

“Then tell us what we have to do to make him like it,” Friedman asked Linkin.

The task for the scientists, Linkin said, is to come up with something that only a rocket as powerful as the Energia can do. What the Soviets are searching for, several who were present at the meeting agreed later, is an exciting mission that would capture global attention, thus establishing the worldwide leadership of the Soviet space program.

Automated Mars Rover

The 1994 mission to Mars, which will include an automated rover that will roam over the surface of the planet, could be accomplished with a series of Proton rockets, the workhorses of the Soviet space program, or with the Energia if a unique function for that powerhouse can be demonstrated.

Linkin made it clear that if the scientists want to use the giant rocket, they will have to come up with something really special.

The decisions that will be made over the next few weeks--including which rocket to use--will be formed against a backdrop of radical change in the Soviet space program, which some experts believe reflects a dramatic shift in priorities. Several experts attending the meetings here said the Soviet space program is becoming less militaristic, reflecting a desire by top Soviet officials to divert more funds from such things as the intercontinental ballistic missile program to civilian space research.

The superpowers must find ways to “decrease those great expenditures on armaments and use just a little bit more of that (money) on space research,” said Roald Sagdeev, director of the sprawling Space Research Institute here and a close associate of Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev.

Some experts said that Sagdeev, who accompanied Gorbachev to the United States for the summit conference with President Reagan last December, was simply describing a change in policy that is already taking place in the Soviet Union.

Money From Weapons Budget

“What has changed is they are taking money out of their strategic weapons budget and putting it into their civilian space program,” John Pike, associate director for space policy of the Federation of American Scientists, said during an interview here. Pike had come to Moscow for the launching of two spacecraft toward the tiny Martian moon of Phobos. He was one of a handful of foreigners who watched the launch at the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Central Asia. Others watched on giant television monitors at Mission Control here.

The change in policy, Pike and others said, is due partly to the fact that Soviet leaders see no need to add to their ballistic stockpile. Several experts here said that change coincided with a study conducted by Sagdeev, who will leave his post as director of the institute this fall, possibly to take a major role in the Soviet arms reduction program.

According to sources here, Sagdeev was asked some time ago by Gorbachev to find out how much of the current nuclear arsenal is really necessary for Soviet defense. Sagdeev, according to close associates, determined that the Soviet Union needed no more than 5% of its stockpile.

In addition, according to Pike, who is widely respected for his expertise on both the Soviet and U.S. space programs, Soviet leaders see their civilian space program as a bridge to better relationships with the rest of the world.

“I think they want to break out of the Cold War and be a normal country,” Pike said. “They wanted to rejoin the family of nations.”

Dramatic Space Ventures

Pike and others attending the meetings here see space exploration as one avenue through which the Soviet Union can continue as a world power, supplanting military prowess with dramatic ventures in space.

Time will tell whether they are right, but what emerged quite clearly in the meeting held by Linkin is that the Soviets are searching for ways to use their powerful new rocket that will pay rich dividends in the international space arena. The rocket was designed as the primary launch vehicle for the Soviet space shuttle, which has yet to make its first flight, but it could also be used for a wide range of other purposes, including sending multi-ton payloads to Mars.

That has led some scientists to urge the Soviets to use the Energia for their 1994 mission to Mars, and that remains a clear possibility. But Linkin indicated that Soviet scientists are more comfortable with the Proton rocket system, which has been used successfully for more than two decades.

And as sometimes happens when people of vastly different persuasions sit around a table, Linkin’s point was followed by something extraordinary--the birth of a grand idea.

Thomas F. Heinsheimer, one of the few Americans attending the meeting, noted that one of the problems everybody will face on future Mars missions will be in the area of communications. Heinsheimer, a world class balloonist from Los Angeles, is assisting the Soviet Union and the French space agency in developing plans to explore Mars with balloons that would settle on the surface during the cool of the night, and then lift off as the sun warms the atmosphere the next day. But one major problem will be in transmitting data back to Earth from the balloons.

Balloonist’s Question

What if, Heinsheimer asked, the Soviets used their powerful new rocket to send sophisticated communications satellites to Mars?

“We don’t need the Energia to launch satellites,” Linkin said briskly.

But Heinsheimer pushed ahead. Not just ordinary satellites, he argued, but a complete communications grid of sophisticated, high-data relay satellites that would encircle the entire planet, providing total coverage for the transmission of scientific data and electronic images.

The room grew silent.

Heinsheimer had suggested that if the Soviets want to make a unique contribution, they could provide a network of Soviet satellites that would be available to any nation that wanted to send any kind of spacecraft to Mars. The satellites could provide a vital communications link with planet Earth. The Soviet Union, he noted, could serve humanity for decades through an unselfish program that would allow all scientists, everywhere, to share in the exploration of another planet.

Soviet Access to Data

It would, of course, also mean the Soviet Union would have access to data collected by other nations on Mars.

And it could all be done with a single launch of a single Energia.

In an electrifying moment, scientists around the room exchanged glances. The tiny laboratory had gradually filled with scientists, many of whom had wandered in because they had heard that an unusual meeting was taking place in which persons from several countries were talking among themselves about a great new rocket, and about the future.

Linkin sat at the head of the table, jotting down a few notes. Finally, he closed his notebook, rose to his feet and thanked everybody for coming.

Will anything ever come of it?

Maybe. Maybe not.

Still, it was a grand moment.