-Caveat Lector- WJPBR Email News List [EMAIL PROTECTED] Peace at any cost is a Prelude to War! US shares secrets to stop Mir disaster Tony Allen-Mills, Cheyenne Mountain, Colorado Scientists raise star wars doubts INSIDE a granite bunker 2,000ft deep in the Rocky Mountains, Major Scott Edwards and his number-crunching crew of military rocket scientists are preparing for a Russian funeral. In a startling epilogue to four decades of cold-war space-racing, some of America's most sophisticated and sensitive military expertise is being placed in the hands of Russian scientists struggling to control the death throes of the Mir space station, which is about to become the largest man-made orbiter ever to fall back to Earth. In the bomb-proof, quake-proof underground complex that houses the American military's high-tech missile warning and space command centres, American computers are maintaining a round-the-clock watch on a 140-tonne lump of Russian space junk that could plunge through the atmosphere towards the South Pacific as early as next Sunday. The long-delayed demise of a 15-year-old prestige Russian project is posing unusual problems for the hard-pressed Moscow scientists fighting to steer their notoriously unstable craft to a safe re-entry position. It also represents a dilemma for American military observers, who are keen to help in a unique technological challenge, but who are also wary of the legal and political fallout should Mir's de-orbit go horribly wrong. "This isn't an exact science, it's very much an art form," said Colonel Norm Black of the US Space Command, as he described the intricate process of controlling Mir's final fiery plunge from an orbit 155 miles above Earth. Moscow's mission control is hoping for a trouble-free Pacific splashdown somewhere between Australia and Chile - but it took out a $200m (£136m) insurance policy in case Mir lives up to its reputation for disastrous malfunction. Edwards likened the re-entry process to skimming a pebble on a pond: "You can't predict exactly where it is going to land." Complicating what has become an otherwise familiar space routine is the sheer volume of Russian debris that is likely to survive the heat of Mir's re-entry: up to 25 tonnes of nuts, bolts, canisters and assorted metal parts of the dilapidated space station are likely to enter the atmosphere. The need to manage a controlled descent that reduces the risk of human populations being pelted with dented hardware has produced the rare spectacle of America's most formidable cold-war-era defence citadel lending its global surveillance abilities to a project run by the former enemy. In one bunker module buried in Cheyenne Mountain last week, Norad air defence controllers were monitoring the global network of satellites and radars that warn of ballistic missile attack. A short walk away through the heavily insulated command complex, the same defensive network - including input from the Fylingdales radar site in Britain - was providing Edwards's crew with tracking and other scientific data on the 8,300 man-made objects now orbiting Earth. Anything relevant to Mir's re-entry - from potentially disruptive solar activity and electro-magnetic fluctuation to other bits of junk that may turn up in the dying space station's path - was being forwarded to Nasa, the American space agency that deals directly with Moscow, to be passed on to Mir controllers. "We are filling in the gaps of their own coverage," Black said. "The preponderance of their [radar] sensors is on Russian soil, and not spread across the world like ours." While collaboration between Russian and American space agencies has been going on for decades, the US military's willingness to publicise the involvement of its most heavily protected command facility in a Russian space project signals a fast-changing role for a nuclear bunker that became a monument to cold-war hostility. When the so-called "hardened" facilities at Cheyenne Mountain were conceived in the 1950s, they were designed to withstand a direct hit by an atomic bomb of between one and 30 megatons. American officials admit that direct hits by much more powerful modern ballistic missiles would nowadays "turn Cheyenne Mountain into Cheyenne valley". Yet such is the threat of a lower-scale terrorist assault that Cheyenne's tunnels have retained their value as America's most secure military stronghold. Inside the mountain last week there was a quiet satisfaction that American technology was being employed in "making the Russians' process easier for them", as one officer put it. Officers were also keen to emphasise that "Russia has accepted sole legal responsibility" for Mir's descent. "Everyone here has the highest confidence the Russians will do what they say they can do," Black said carefully. Any lawsuits arising from Mir damage should not be sent to Colorado. Whether lawsuits will be necessary remains a question as murky as Mir's final flight path. Last Wednesday Russian officials announced that the space station would crash on March 20; by Friday they were saying it was more likely to be March 18. Australian officials estimated last week there was a one in 5,000 chance that a lump the size of a car might hit their country. In Colorado, Black said it would be easier to win the California lottery than be hit by a piece of space junk. *COPYRIGHT NOTICE** In accordance with Title 17 U. S. C. 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