"The people who are interested in going to Mars have the money to pay for it, provided they could be rallied," Dr. Robert Zubrin, an astronautical engineer and the founder of the Mars Society, said by telephone from his Denver office.

If it comes to that, the implications for the future of the space shuttles and the International Space Station could be profound, astronautical engineers and policy analysts say.

RICHARD MARX, a 34-year-old astronautical and aeronautical engineer, has been spending a lot of time lately pretending to be Harry Potter.

The sad fact remains (though it is seldom mentioned by astronautical engineers) that it takes a good ten minutes to rotate a spaceship through 180 degrees, with gyros of any reasonable size.

A pair of British astronautical engineers, Mark Hempsell and Alan Bond, argue that the bolide inspired the Greek myth of Phaeton-who lost control of his father's sun chariot and plunged to Earth.

Dr. Robert Zubrin, 47, an astronautical engineer and founder of the Mars Society, a group advocating travel there, was having coffee in Manhattan on a recent morning.

The astronautical engineers still had a long, long way to go, before they could match the achievements of Nature.

A teen - age boy, tied to a wheelchair, who wrote to ask me whether or not he could become an astronautical engineer - some 'friend' had told him that it was a silly ambition for a cripple.

Phil Jackson, who is neither an astronautical engineer or a physiologist, has another theory.

Hydrates are immeasurably valuable to astronautical engineers, as well.