THE LESSONS OF MIR: WHAT'S NEXT?

When the Mir space station was put in Earth's orbit 12 year's ago, it was operated by the Soviet Union's space program. Since then, the Soviet Union has dissolved, and now the Russian government is responsible for the project, which picked up NASA as a partner along the way.

If all goes according to plan, Mir will fall back into the atmosphere sometime in the next year, disintegrating in the heat of its own friction and putting an end to an era of space milestones and near-disasters.

The point of Mir all along has been to test the reality of human existence in orbit. During the dozen years cosmonauts and astronauts have lived on the space station for extended periods of time, many valuable lessons have been learned -- and not always under the happiest of circumstances.

Repeatedly, human ingenuity has had to overcome mechanical and computer flaws. The ability of space shuttles to take people and supplies back and forth from Mir has provided practical information about space travel.

Now the question is simple: What, if anything, comes next? The Russian government is so financially strapped that it isn't likely to jump into another space venture anytime soon. And NASA must pick and choose its priorities carefully. Perhaps a comprehensive assessment of the lessons learned on Mir will provide some guideposts to the future.