THE chief tangible benefit of missions that put people in space, however, is the publicity they attract. The sense of danger and excitement they create--however unnecessary--makes people feel good about them-selves and their country.

Inevitably, some of the credit falls not upon the astronauts who make the trip or the engineers who make it possible, but on the politicians who give a green light to the whole thing.

Which comes in pretty handy if you're a first-term president following in the steps of the most popular leader in decades and you're widely perceived as being ineffective and overcautious.

Furthermore, it is probably no accident that the president's chief rah-rah boy, Vice President J. Danforth Quayle himself, is reportedly the driving force urging Bush to return to space. Quayle, whose scientific background is questionable at best, has in the last year raised to new heights the dominance of image over substance in American politics.

In his account of the Challenger investigation, Nobel Laureate Richard P. Feynman described a curious battle that occurred as the presidential commission was compiling its final report. The commission agreed on nine recommendations to the president, but the chair, William P. Rogers, decided to add a tenth, praising NASA and urging continued government support. His motive? To add balance to the report's generally critical findings.

Bush's plan sounds suspiciously similar: a gung-ho attempt to capitalize on a sense of national pride without careful consideration of the practical benefits or the alternatives.

A program that puts people in space may indeed have an important role to play in expanding our knowledge of the universe, one that warrants the huge expenditure it will require. But as it stands now, the United States and President Bush appear to be taking the wrong path and for all the wrong reasons.