EDITORIAL : TITANIC 2000; EXPLORATION OF MARS SO FAR HAS BEEN A COSTLY DISASTER, AND WOULDN'T YOU KNOW DIRECTOR JAMES CAMERON WAS THERE TO FILM IT.

FILM director James Cameron, who dramatically brought to life the sinking of the Titanic, seems to have found a new disaster of epic proportions to bring to the silver screen.

Cameron was at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena on Saturday with a hand-held video camera, shooting the anxious moments as NASA scientists awaited the electronic signals from the Mars Polar Lander.

When he viewed the dailies, Cameron must have noticed the high drama as NASA's unmanned space probe program sank in the Martian dust.

It was just a few months ago that JPL scientists contributed to the demise of the Mars Climate Orbiter. (A little math error apparently caused the spacecraft to enter the Martian atmosphere too soon, and that was all she wrote for the $125 million project.)

And six years before that, the $1 billion Mars Observer disappeared before going into Mars orbit.

Those failures must have been weighing heavily on the minds of official sat JPL and the National Aeronautical and Space Administration even before the probe was expected to land and send messages back home.

But the news hasn't been all bad for the space scientists. In July 1997,the spunky Sojourner rover transmitted back to Earth spectacular views ofthe Red Planet.

There was also the successful launching of the Mars Global Surveyor.

So when the Lander was supposed to make contact with its controllers, no one had an inkling of whether Cameron's video camera would capture scientists at the height of elation or in the pits of despair.

Sadly, no champagne bottles were popped or beer drunk. Just worried brows stroked by powerless hands.

The space scientists believe their best chance to find out if the space vehicle is ``alive'' will occur during a brief communication window beginning at 12:20 p.m. today.

It ought to be a sleepless night for everyone who has been a part of the Mars exploration team. It will be the day they learn if their space project can be rescued or turn into a $165 million fiasco.

What's really at stake here is when NASA should send another probe to Mars. Should the space agency just give up its hope of ever learning more about our neighbor 157 million miles away?

If we've learned anything from this, we've learned at great expense how difficult interplanetary travel is.

The lunar program had its high-profile failings before NASA got it right. It may be only a matter of time, but it would be hard to support without assurances that public funding would not be wasted on this particular space race. Even Hollywood studio executives would agree with that.