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By FRED WEIR

The tragic destruction of Challenger before the very
eyes of the world has, the big media informs us, touched
the American ‘“‘soul’’ more deeply than any event since
the assassination of John F. Kennedy. Putting ona brave
face, and posturing as only he can, President Reagan has
averred that, despite the agonizing setback, ““Man will
continue his conquest of space’

There is something troubling in n all this, although the
problem is not immediately apparent from the reams of
media coverage. Americans, it seems, are being told that
the occasional failure of high technology is acceptable,
perhaps inevitable, and that the victims are heroic pion-
eers of the high frontier.

However, the U.S. has two space programs, the civi-
lian and the military; the space-shuttle has been, from
the beginning, an uneasy marriage of both, with the
Pentagon as the dominant partner. The ill-fated shuttle’s
crew reflected this dichotomy. There was the school-
teacher, Christa McAuliffe, object of an enormous
amount of attention, whose intention it was to broadcast
the wonders of space flight to America’s youth. There
was also ‘‘laser specialist’’ Ronald McNair, whose exact
mission aboard the shuttle has not been made clear.

Military Workhorse

The Shuttle has become the workhorse of space militar-
ization, a process that has increasingly eclipsed its civi-
lian functions. The Reagan administration’s determina-
tion to build Star Wars will ultimately rest the peace and
security of the U.S. and the entire world on precisely the
same high technology that failed with such spectacular
and devastating results aboard the Challenger.

Star Wars, scientists say, will be a complex network of
space-borne laser battle-stations, controlled by a com-
puter program so intricate that only another computer

will be able to write it. One day, if Ronald Reagan has his _

way, we Shall all know what it feels like to be nuclear
astronauts, ““strapped on top of an enormous roman
candle ... waiting for the fuse to be lit’’.

It is unlikely that military programs will be set back
significantly by the Challenger fiasco. The U.S. Airforce
has thoughtfully reserved ten Titan rockets to boost its
payloads into space the old fashioned way, if need be.
And when shuttle flights resume, the Pentagon has abso-
lute priority, including the right to bump scientific or
commercial projects in favor of military ones.

Very soon, in fact, the Pentagon may have no need for
the civilian space agency, NASA, at all. The Airforce is
now putting the finishing touches to its own military
*‘spaceport”’ at Vandenburg Air Force Base, California,
and expects to be operating a fleet of military shuttles out
of there, in complete secrecy, by the end of the decade.

Voyager Dividends

Ironically, the Challenger catastrophe came at the
same time the world was marvelling over the extra-
ordinary photographs of the planet Uranus, beamed to
Earth by the robot Voyager spacecraft. The two Voya-
gers were launched eight years ago, at a cost of well
under a billion dollars; they have paid for themselves
thousands of times over in scientific dividends. We have
had the first close encounters with Jupiter, Saturn, and
Uranus. Voyager still active, is now headed for
Neptune.

In the near-decade since Voyager, NASA has had
very few projects of peaceful space exploration. Most
resources have gone into the space shuttle program, with
its predominantly military focus.

In recent years, however, powertul scientific lobbying
groups — particularly astronomer Carl Sagan’s Planet-
ary Society — have succeeded in having some of NA-
SA’s budget for peaceful space exploration restored. A
few such projects were slated to be carried aloft by the
space shuttle this year, including Ulysses, a joint
European-U.S. project to study the Sun, and Galileo, a
robot probe to the moons of Jupiter. also, the Hubble

panos Telescope, eons to see to the far zeoches of

shuttle disaster

It is projects of this type that are bound to suffer inthe .

aftermath of the Challenger tragedy. Military programs
and Star Wars testing will continue — much of it com-
pletely out of the public eye.

Carl Sagan, and a good many of his old-time NASA
colleagues have been making a point that Americans
need to hear, particularly now. That is that the survival
of our planet dictates placing technology at the service of
human goals in space. If-we don’t want to see our Earth
consumed in a fireball, much as Challenger was, we had
better change direction, and soon.

_ Joint Trip to Mars

Sagan and the Planetary Society have proposed a co-
operative venture that might symbolize that new direc-
tion: A joint Soviet-U.S. voyage to Mars by the turn of
the century.

Says Sagan, sucha mission “‘if undertaken by the U.S.
and the Soviet Union, would represent a readily grasped
intent to work on behalf of the entire human species...
both countries could redirect some of their most ad-
vanced capabilities and energies from military competi-

tion to peaceful cooperation’.
The alternative was put starkly and eloquently by

NASA monitor show demise of spaceship Challenger. Will the disaster give the military an added edge in sp

Mary Bateson, an anthropologist, in a moving le
the New York Times:

‘*Accidents do happen, the President tells us, a
must go on. What he does not tell us is that
progressively setting the stage for accidents from
there will be no going on. We live in a state of incre:
ly complex nuclear confrontation that exposes
people of this planet to a risk they have not volunte
to accept. Discussions of deterrence and of the St
Defence Initiative are saturated with self-decepti
with the belief that technology can be made infal i q
under circumstances in which no risk is acceptable)
we mourn Christa McAuliffe, we should remembert
every teacher, every schoolchild, every parent mi
lose her or his life in a massive, all-consuming accide

‘““We should draw two morals from the shuttle t
One moral will renew our resolve to send men
women who volunteer and are trained for the
brave the risks of space exploration. The other
convince us that the present state of armed confr
tion, in which we are all vulnerable to human andt
logical error, is not acceptable. The two morals
actly the same: Accidents do happen.”

MOSCOW — While expressing condolences to
the American people on the loss of the seven astro-
nauts who perished in the Challenger tragedy,
Soviet press comments are questioning some of its
implications for the American space program.

‘The tragedy at Cape Canaveral has shed light
on the difficult situation in and around NASA,”
writes Vladimir Gusarov in Pravda, Jan. 31. “‘Not
one of the previous Challenger missions went
without a hitch ... the crews were on the brink of

_ disaster on.two other occasions.”

Gusarov links the haste of the mission with the
‘U.S. space exploration program’s involvement in
the arms race, and more specifically, with the Stra-
tegic Defence Initiative. Quoting an ABC broad-
cast ‘‘that the Challenger tragedy thwarted the
plans of the Pentagon to use the space shuttle for
two secret missions,’ and an American space ex-
pert’s opinion that the main victim is Reagan’s
Strategic Defence Initiative (Star Wars) “‘which
relied precisely on those missiles,’’ the Soviet
commentator says it brings out the lesson that Star
Wars is ‘‘inadmissable’’.

‘*Challenger is a sophisticated space system but
it blew up because of a technical fault. The SDI
system is a complex array of satellites, battle sta-
tions and craft — a triumph of technology. But do

its proponents ever think that the slightest mal-
function in that technology would trigger world
catastrophe ?’’ Gusarov asks.
Accidental Nuclear War?
Posing a situation in whicha spaceship blows up
in orbit at a future time when SDI is deployed, he
~ continues: ‘*Who will decide whether the cause is a
systems malfunction or destruction by anti-satel-
lite weapons? . . Computers controlling space

Tragedy a warning, Soviets Say

Challenger exposes SDI risk

weapons would react instantaneously ; they will -

systems. This is one of the very probably accide
which can lead to nuclear war.”’
Gusarov says the Challenger tragedy gives m
kind ‘‘a better idea”’ of the risk of space weapo
‘‘The best tribute to the memory of the courage:
and brave people who died on board is to j
together to make ‘mighty and ruthless space’ se
people’s good, and not their destruction’.
Well-known Soviet commentator, Spartak B
lov, makes much the same point in a Jan.
-analysis. “‘Space is a new sphere of human
deavor,”’ he writes, ‘‘and no new sphere has e
been explored without victims ... in space.
ploration, people are taking risks all the time. They)
will continue doing so because progress cannot t be
stopped.” 4
He says that those shocked by the fate of th
Challenger mission might think what would hap
if Star Wars were a fact, and “‘one of its devi
stuffed with deadly weapons exploded by
chance?”’ He charges that Star War advocates
have tried to lull-Americans into believing it “*100
per cent reliable’’, but that the, Challenger c
shows that even with state of the art technolog
mission or space system can fail. ‘
“Directors of the American space shuttle pi
gram,”’ writes Beglov, ‘“have announced that th
- will be no new launchings until the reasons forthe
catastrophe are established. The only difference
between operation Challenger and operation St
Wars is that after an SDI mishap, there may be
one left to establish the reasons.”

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