ASTRONAUT OPTS TO PUT NEWS ON HOLD.

Byline: Marcia Dunn Associated Press 

With a pregnant wife, a 1-year-old son and a big extended family, astronaut Jerry Linenger has made it clear to NASA: Hold the bad news during the 4-1/2 months he will be in space.

``If I can't do anything about it, it's probably better to wait until I return,'' he said.

With spaceflights getting longer and longer and space fliers and their families getting younger and younger, this is a new area for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration - whether and how to break bad news from home to astronauts in orbit.

The concern is that a depressed, angry or distracted astronaut might do something foolish or desperate that could endanger the entire crew.

Linenger, 41, is scheduled to leave for the Russian space station Mir aboard shuttle Atlantis today. He is supposed to return home in late May.

With Kathryn, his wife of nearly six years, due to give birth at the end of June, Linenger has more to worry about than his three American predecessors on Mir, who were a decade older and had grown or nearly grown children when they rocketed away to the orbiting outpost.

Linenger said he sees no sense in hearing about a relative or friend's illness, injury or death. As for fender-benders and the usual household fiascos, it's up to his wife what news to share via e-mail, radio linkups and video conferences.

``I won't feel betrayed or I won't feel like people are hiding things from me because I told them this is how I want to handle this,'' he said.

Kathryn Linenger, 31, an epidemiologist who also works in the space program, said: ``I think it will be difficult deciding which news to tell him.''

By contrast, the NASA astronaut whom Linenger is replacing on Mir - John Blaha - has insisted on knowing everything. Before heading to the station in September, the 54-year-old pilot urged his wife to notify him if anything happened to his elderly mother. Nothing has.

NASA officials could not recall any instance in which they had to decide whether to break tragic news to an astronaut in space. In 1995, though, Russia's Mission Control promptly radioed up the news when the mother of cosmonaut Vladimir Dezhurov died unexpectedly three months into his four-month Mir mission.

NASA would hesitate to shorten a mission because of a family emergency unless the astronaut became seriously depressed. (Likewise, Linenger has been warned that if his shuttle flight home is delayed, the space agency won't take any extraordinary measures to bring him back in time for the birth of his child.)

No one prepared Skylab commander Gerald Carr or his family for the psychological stresses of what was, in 1973-74, a record 84-day flight.

``There was a staff psychiatrist who was available, but my impression was he was like the Maytag repairman. Nobody would go to him,'' Carr said. ``Neither husbands nor wives would admit they needed to go see a psychiatrist because they were afraid it would affect their possibility for a flight. And so as a result, for years families never got much help on how to deal with the stress of having a father flying and a husband flying.''

Nowadays, psychiatrists are welcomed if not embraced at NASA, at least when it comes to Mir stints and planning for the eventual international space station.

And NASA now makes a practice of ensuring that the astronauts and their loved ones work out ahead of time what sorts of disturbing news their families ought to share with them, said Al Holland, chief of psychology at Johnson Space Center in Houston.

During training, astronauts are asked to think about such things as how they might react if a loved one were to die back on Earth.

``For many people, it's the first time they've thought of that,'' Holland said. ``So now for long-duration fliers, people are making arrangements ahead of time and considering it in a more serious way. That whole topic is how our mind-set, or the mind-set of the agency, isN having to shift over to accommodate long-duration flight.''

CAPTION(S):

2 Photos

Photo: (1) Kathryn Linenger, who holds her son, John, 1, will decide which news to send into space.

(2) Astronaut Jerry Linenger, who will be in space for 4-1/2 months, has asked NASA to take messages while he's away.

Associated Press