When the Planetary Congress convenes in October, they plan to pool their knowledge through a series of technical sessions and seminars. They also want to spread the excitement to Utahns with a community outreach day that they hope will see an astronaut or cosmonaut visit every school district in the state.

Educating kids about space flight will instill "a wonder of the greatness of engineering and science," said American Bo Bobko, who has been on three space flights and commanded the flight that took Garn to space. "They will look at technology in a different way."

The eye-opening effect of space travel alone is a tremendous benefit to mankind, he said.

"We'll get a lot of questions if we go to Mars. And our society does not progress without questions."

Governments across the country should be looking, right now, for the team of young people who will one day visit Mars, Leonov said.

"This needs to be special people. . . . They need to be aware of all corners of our Earth," he said.

It is this international awareness that the Association of Space Explorers' astronauts and cosmonauts touted not only as an important trait for would-be space travelers but also an invaluable benefit of space travel itself.

"The relationships, the friendships that are built up, we don't have problems with each other," Garn said of his international friends in the field of space. "Politicians need to start understanding that. We're all human beings traveling on Spaceship Earth together. . . . How much we admire each other, that spreads" to the general public, fostering international understanding and peace.

From space, there are no borders. The space travelers on Saturday said they wish more people on Earth could see it that way.

They said a climate exists on Earth where cooperative, multinational space exploration can be a reality.

"Thirty years ago, the situation in the world, there was a lot of tension. Then there appeared some very smart people. . . . They were the first to understand the catastrophe that was happening in the world. We need to show everybody in the world that we have a bigger task at hand," Leonov said through his translator.

Then, in English: "Together, we are better."

---

E-mail: dsmeath@desnews.com