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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Oct. 18, 1978)
THE BATTALION Page 13 WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 18, 1978 II reduction icates od economy United Press International WASHINGTON - Industrial uction, a key indication of over- conomic health, rose 0 5 per- n September. But production Insumer goods remained slug- l Federal Reserve Board J Tuesday. fte increase, identical to than in rust, was consistent with the ad- itration’s projection that the )my will expand between 3^5 4 percent for the rest of the Tht' biggest problem area con- id to be the consumer sector ere output increased by just 0.1 K nt, the slowest since June, the Luction of consumer durable [fell by 0.7 percent because of lationwide strike by railroad i which hindered automobile iction, the board said. Produc- lecreased 0.5 million from Au- :o September. lustrial production gains, a ure of factory, mine and utility ut, have remained steady in the " 0.7 percent range since last e — mostly due to strength in lusiness equipment and con- ion sectors. is pattern held true in Sep- ber. the board said, as business iment output rose 0.6 percent instruction increased by 0.4 at. aid its industrial production »stood at 147.5 percent of the [average of 100. It was 6.5 per- ■higher than in September ke idredsd 365 dan the resi No life on Mars for earth bugs United Press Internationa] WASHmCTON — Concluding there is little or no chance for earth hie to survive on Mars, a National Research Council committee says there is no need to sterilize future spacecraft landing between the planet s polar ice caps. A NRC committee on planetary biology took a fresh look at the eontamination risk posed to Mars by an unsterilized spacecraft from earth and said the environment is too harsh for growth of terrestrial bugs on frigid Martian deserts. And the panel said the likelihood that an earth organism could survive at the poles, where less is known about the conditions, "is extremely low.” But the committee said this does not rule out the possibility that indigenous life forms may exist on Mars, or may have lived there sometime in the past. The limiting conditions for terrestrial life are not the limits for conceivable life elsewhere,” the NRC panel said. The study was made at the request of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration which has a present quarantine policy that calls for sterilization of any spacecraft designed to land on Mars. NASA’s Viking spacecraft which landed on Mars in 1976 provided the first information on the surface environment. None of this riew information suggests that the Martian surface is less harsh to terrestrial micro-organisms than was thought prior to Viking, the committee said in a report to the space agency. On the other hand, the report said, two pieces of information supplied by the Vikings indicate the Martian environment is more severe than previously believed: a lack of detectable organic com pounds in the soil and the presence of strong oxidizing compounds. In addition, the Mars environment is very cold, very dry and sub jected to deadly doses of solar radiation. Our conclusion is that no terrestrial organism could grow under the conditions found by Viking to prevail on sub-polar surfaces at the landing sites and none could grow under the conditions that are highly likely to prevail throughout the entire sub-polar regions,” the report said. “Few, if any, terrestrial organisms could grow in contact with even one of the adverse conditions cited, much less grow when exposed to all of them simultaneously,” the panel said. What this all means, the committee told NASA, is that heat sterili zation is no longer required for spacecraft landing gently in the areas between the polar caps. The scientists said they would have no objec tion to sterilization as long as it did not harm scientific equipment. Architect drawing ‘errors’ costly United Press International NEW YORK — If one of an ar chitect’s drawings of a valuable building shrinks a quarter of an inch or stretches that much, there could be a $480,000 error in a 20-year lease. That could mean lost rent in the case of shrinkage or a big overcharge and perhaps an expensive lawsuit — in the case of stretch. Computer graphics can do much to eliminate this hazard and also save money and time in measuring expense over the years in the man agement of valuable properties, says Lawrence Lerner, president of SLS Environetics, Inc., of New York. SLS Environetics is an architectural firm that specializes in interior planning and design by means of computer graphics. The quarter-inch shrinkage or stretch of the paper on which plans are drawn can produce an error of two feet in 100 feet in each direction if the drawing’s actual dimensions are taken as a basis for space plan ning and fixing the rent and costs, Lerner said. The possible $480,000 error in charges either way caused by the drawing distortion is based on a yearly rental cost of $15 a square foot. But dimensions stored in a com puter memory, once entered accu rately, don’t shrink or stretch. They can be retrieved at will and used to plot new drawings and new plans on the cathode screen that can be printed out automatically. Lerner said one of the big prob lems in real estate management is that often the original architectural drawings of big buildings get lost. As a result, either costly new physi cal measurements must lie made loat expenses, says yacht builder ded aspl in thret e in N on be nd Floi investii jplace: ly ash coal cTTI better United Press International !W YORK — Nothing seems to pd like a policy of “hang the se” if you’ve got a superior let and the kind of personality Titover, says Filippo Theodoli, itb his wife, Katrin, makes boats at Miami. Magnum was developed orig- |by Don Aronouw, the famous i racing champion. Theodoli the business from Aronouw ars ago. Magnums sell for 0 to $780,000 and are re- as the world’s most spectacu- ] speed boats. They are noted pir strong hulls, fast engines treat stability and maneu- flity. pously enough, Theodoli was personally interested in rac ing even though powerboat racing first developed in his native Italy. It was Italian racer-designers who built the fastest hydroplanes, and in the heyday of wooden boats, Italian triple hull construction was the epitome of quality. Magnums are made of fiberglass and DuPont’s Kevlar fiber. Theodoli’s interest in the Mag num grew out of his interest in naval patrol craft. Scion of a Roman family that traces its ancestry back to the early Caesars, he graduated from Italy’s naval academy and served in patrol boats towards the end of World War II Since he is half American — his mother was a member of the weal thy Thaw family of Pittsburgh; Harry K. Thaw, central figure of one of the country’s most celebrated jealousy murder cases, was his great uncle — Theodoli got in the Ameri can OSS service at the end of the war and then came to the United States. “I worked at a variety of jobs but gravitated into advertising and did well at it,” he says. “In those days it was hard for an Italian to get a per manent visa to stay in this country and become a citizen, but I finally managed.” Theodoli says he basically is a businessman, leaving engineering and design questions to specialists. But his purpose is the same as Aronouw’s, to build the finest offshore power boats possible and to the devil with expenses. Magnums still are sold for racing but Katrin and Filippo regard more importantly the utilitarian users and those who want Magnums for luxury yachts. Magnums are capable of speeds of 70 to 80 mph in a fairly rough sea. That’s similar to 175 mph on land. Of the 760 Magnums now in use, a handful are $780,000 53-footers. These are owned by the royalty of Spain, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and Panama and a few ex tremely rich European commoners. The Magnums that are sold to navies, coast guards and to indus trial and scientific customers and some racing enthusiasts can cost anywhere from $40,000 to $500,000. “The whole secret,’’ Theodoli says, “is that quality pays, no matter how much it costs. every time a long-term lease of sub stantial space or a sale of the build ing is negotiated or undependable piece-meal drawings and calcula tions must be relied on. “It is amazing to discover to what a great degree even the more sophisticated real estate operators and companies renting space or buy ing buildings fail to employ fool proof methods of measurement and calculation,” Lerner said. “Often the deal actually is based on an in exact compromise between two sets of measurements provided by buyer and seller or landlord and prospec tive tenant.” The magnitude of the possibility tor error was impressed on Lerner when his company recently ob tained a contract to prepare a pro totype of a foolproof set of rental plans for a huge building at 2 Broadway in Manhattan for Olympia & York, the Toronto firm that bought the $100 million holdings of the Uris real estate empire. “The structure is about as compli cated as old-fashioned fancy Ger man wedding cake and was built under the pre-1960 Manhattan zon ing code,” Lerner said. SLS Environetics’ first task is to use computer graphics and some physical measurements to get an ab solutely exact computation of the total space, the rentable space and the space devoted to elevator shafts, stairways and other facilities which must be prorated to the tenants. A basic master plan for each floor must be plotted on the screen and stored in the computer. SLS Environetics has developed software that will enable a draftsman using the cathode screen and these new basic drawings, made automat ically, to pinpoint any spot on the floor to the thousandth of a foot. This means computer graphics can be used to plan re-assignments of space and remodeling of floors at great savings compared with con ventional methods, Lerner said. Laced and zippered leather in bramble or brown Very Special At la ^foc/c MANOR EAST MALL 39.99 :eways j [les i )r. 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