Subject: End may be near for Russia's space station Mir Three cosmonauts are ready to blast off next week on another odyssey to Russia's aged space station Mir. Their main task likely will be to bury it. Senior Russian space officials said Thursday that efforts to find private investors to keep Mir aloft are failing, and the station might be dumped into a watery grave in the Pacific Ocean by late summer. Spearheaded by RSC Energia - the aerospace company that operates Mir for the government - the bid to save Mir "was just wishful thinking," Russian Space Agency director Yuri Koptev said in Moscow. "They have indeed carried out serious work with an investor who had the money. But the investor has some problems. If no investor is found, we will be forced to make the tough decision to discard Mir in August or September." The comments came after what may have been the last hope for Mir, which will celebrate its 13th anniversary in orbit Feb. 20. Last month, Russian Prime Minister Yevgeny Primakov gave conditional approval to keep the station in orbit through 2002. In a decree signed Jan. 21, he granted RSC Energia the right to run Mir on a commercial basis after the Russian government stops paying for station operations in June. But the decree also had several caveats, including an April 30 deadline to find private investors to pay the $250 million a year it takes to keep Mir flying. RSC Energia officials as recently as Monday had been in negotiations with an unnamed foreign firm, but Koptev said the deal had fallen through. He also denied Russian media reports that Mir's mysterious benefactor was the Chinese government. "China has been energetically developing its own space program and promised to put its first astronaut in orbit by Oct. 1 this year," Koptev said. "If they had been interested in flying on our station, they would have done it a long time ago." Two Chinese pilots trained at the Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Star City outside Moscow, but the cooperation ended there. "We haven't heard from them since," Koptev said. With Mir's fate bleak, Russian cosmonaut Viktor Afanasyev and two crewmates - Jean-Pierre Heignere of France and Ivan Bella of Slovakia - are to rocket there Feb. 20 from Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakstan. Bella, the first Slovakian to fly in space, is to return to Earth in early March with Mir's current commander, Gennady Padalka. Cosmonaut Sergei Avdeyev, the station's current flight engineer, is to remain onboard with Afanasyev and Heignere until August. Those three could find themselves on Mir's burial detail. Here's how they would do it. First, a pair of Progress space freighters would be used to gradually lower the station from its current orbit 250 miles above Earth to one about 100 miles above the planet. Second, a new, advanced Progress freighter that can carry twice the fuel of earlier models would be launched to Mir. Once the new ship docked at Mir, the crew would shut down most station systems before returning to Earth aboard a Soyuz spacecraft. Ground controllers then would fire the new Progress's powerful engines, sending Mir on a destructive plunge through the atmosphere. Most the 130-ton outpost would burn up in the atmosphere. Any remaining pieces would fall harmlessly into a remote area of the Pacific Ocean. "The plan is in place," said Mikhail Sinelschikov, RSA's chief of piloted space programs. "The crew would be onboard the station all the way through the docking of the new Progress. The final (deorbit) burn would take place when the Mir station is unmanned." Mir's death would be a hard blow to the Russians. Considered the sole remaining jewel of the former Soviet Union's space program, it is a source of deep national pride and a symbol of Russian achievements in space. A T-shaped cluster of cylindrical labs, the station has been staffed almost continuously since its core module was launched Feb. 20, 1986. Sixty cosmonauts and astronauts from around the world have conducted research there, including seven Americans that visited the station between 1995 and 1998. Nine U.S. shuttle flights also were flown to Mir as a precursor to construction of NASA's new International Space Station, the first two pieces of which were launched late last year. Independent aerospace analysts say the push to keep Mir flying could have jeopardized an intricate series of flights still required to raise the new $50 billion international station. The reason: Russia would have to triple its production rate and build 32 rockets, cargo ships and crew transport vehicles to keep Mir aloft and build the new station - a feat many consider impossible. "Even if the Russians are able to find money from private investors, they don't have the manufacturing capability to support both the Mir and the international station," said James Oberg, a Russian space program expert. "If Mir lives on for even another year, it will just sink NASA's station construction plans." Russian officials, however, clearly don't want to abandon Mir before the new station's first fulltime crew arrives at the outpost in February 2000. "You never get rid of an old pair of shoes before you buy a new pair of shoes, especially in the winter time," said veteran cosmonaut Valery Ryumin, who now heads RSC Energia's International Space Station program office. "So why get rid of an old space station when we don't have a new one." Throughout the Mir debate, NASA and its other partners in the international station - Europe, Canada, Japan and Brazil - have been saying little about the station's fate. "Russia is a sovereign nation, and Russia makes decisions about its own assets," said NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin. "We in the United States, and our partners, ask only that Russia live within its commitments to the International Space Station." But if Mir's days indeed are numbered, one thing is certain. Those who toiled aboard the outpost during its 74,000 spins around Earth soon may be in mourning. "I spent more than a year on Mir," said veteran cosmonaut Sergei Krikalev. "And of course it would be a kind of a sad feeling to see your old home destroyed." ----------------------------------------------------------------------------