Features
THE BATTALION Page 11
TUESDAY, SEPTEMBER 22, 1981
I
Could benefit future space program
kL* «sL* si* "kL* vl-' vL» <JU «JL> «JL* , *T»» «X« ^L* •slf* **sS^' vL^ +&* vL* •JL* <s^ i
#jv -T* ^r* -t* ^r* ‘^t'’ -, t > * * , t % *X'* *•'* *x*
| China offers U.S. strategic metals
■Tik
United Press International
HONG KONG — The United
States is looking to China for
strategic and rare metals vital to
President Reagan’s defense buil-
Idup plans and the long-term fu
ture of the space program.
China is thought to be rich in
many metals needed by the Un
ited States and has been moving
boldly to expand exports to the
West, Western analysts in Hong
Kong and in the United States
[said.
The Chinese have a double ob-
[jective: to earn foreign exchange
land to draw a closer strategic re-
llationship with Western nations,
[said one Hong Kong-based
analyst, a leading expert on Chi-
I na s economic development.
China signed contracts worth
close to $300 million in the first
half of this year alone for strategic
and rare metal deliveries to the
United States and western
Europe, said the analyst, an esti
mate U.S. industry sources con
firmed.
“They’re in the market,” Elliot
J. Smith, president of Bache
Halsey Stuart Metal Co., said in
New York. “From time to time we
do business directly with the
Chinese government.”
Smith said Bache has purchased
quantities of titanium and indium
from China for cash or forward
contracts for industrial com
panies. Titanium is used in the
manufacture of aircraft and satel
lites, Indium in the manufacture
of electrical components and air
craft bearings.
The United States traditionally
has filled most of its strategic met
al import requirements from the
Soviet Union and politically unst
able nations in southern Africa.
U.S. purchases from China are
expected to double this year com
pared with 1980, one estimate
said.
China offers a desirable diversi
fication of supply sources, analysts
said, but possibly most important
for President Reagan is that pur
chases of Chinese metals like tita
nium could brighten a tight supply
picture for his defense program.
Although analysts express
optimism about China becoming a
“major” metals supplier, they cau
tion over too heavy a reliance be
cause of the always looming possi-
Jupiter's gravity will help
satellite see poles of sun
bility of political change. Further
there is question over China’s
ability to develop transportation
systems and processing industries
to meet the demand for raw mate
rials and ores.
The Hong Kong analyst said the
Chinese “have yet to demonstrate
to the U.S. government that they
have the kind of supply we need. ”
“China has great long-term
potential in strategic minerals, but
it takes a hell of a lot of capital to
exploit them,” said Robert Kil-
marx, a Washington-based mining
industry expert and senior vice
president of Fraser Associates, an
international public affairs firm.
“It may be a question of decades
if not centuries,” said Kilmarx, a
minerals consultant to George
town University’s Center for
Strategic International Studies,
said.
Building a single major open pit
mine, he said, takes eight years
and $1 billion to $2 billion dollars.
Another U.S. analyst wonders
whether China will have sufficient
supplies in the future to export as
well as meet its own growing
domestic requirements as China’s
industrial capacity develops.
Metals which the United States
must import and which Chinese
are moving quickly to develop in
clude bauxite, used to make
toughened aluminum; titanium
sponge, essential for alloys used in
airplanes, spaceships and sub
marines; vanadium in the form of
vanadium pentoxide, used in va
rious nuclear applications to
strengthen steel; chromium for
making metal alloys and essential
for the manufacture of steel, and
germanium, an ingredient in
sophisticated military electronics.
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
■jf
*
*
*
*
*
TIRED OF COOKING
6*
WASHING DISHES?
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
*
little *
*
Then dine at the MSC each
evening. How can anyone
prepare a meal for as
as $2.19 plus tax? You will *
find the answer at the MSC t
from 4 p.m. to 7 p.m.
evening.
“QUALITY FIRST
each *
*
*
*
” t
*
•X* xL* xl* xL» xL» -I- xt" xL* vL* xL» «£« vL» xL* xL* xL» xL* xLf vLf xLf Stf xL» i
«T % •'T' 1 •'T'* -T* Sf* ✓Jx ✓JX ✓JX *JX ✓yx #jx vyx »yx ✓yx *>yx ^yx «ryx «»yx ^yx \
Jbreiwymgr... MYTADS
s
United Press International
CHICAGO — The scientists
have nicknamed it “Solar Polar”
but a better tag might be the
Wrong-Way Satellite.”
When a 1,100-pound solar re
search satellite is launched from a
space shuttle in 1986, it will head
— not for the sun — but for Jupi
ter, more than 390 million miles in
the wrong direction.
Scientists gathered at the Uni
versity of Chicago recently to test
equipment for the mission.
They said the indirect approach
necessary to get the spacecraft
eut of “plane of the ecliptic” — the
lisc-shaped volume of space in
hich all the planets travel — and
ift it above the sun.
“The reason there has never
seen a mission out of the plane of
he ecliptic is that you have to
lave a spacecraft more powerful
an has ever been designed or
uiltorwill be built, ” said Univer
ity of Chicago physicist John
impson, the head of the six-
ation research team. “You have
:o supply enough push to get up
here.
So the International Solar Polar
Satellite will take a two-year de
tour to Jupiter, where it will swing
around the southern hemisphere,
use the planet’s gravity to pick up
momentum, and race back above
the sun.
By 1989, the satellite will be in
orbit about as far out from the sun
as the Earth, but circling from
North Pole to South Pole, rather
than around the equator.
That will give scientists a
chance to make some unpre
cedented observations, Simpson
said.
“With this probe you can look
down at the sun and see all its
phenomena going on simul
taneously, whereas from earth you
can only see one side at a time,”
Simpson said. “Things (like solar
flares) could be going on on the
backside which eventually could
affect the earth.”
An observation post above the
sun’s magnetic poles will allow “a
whole new range of interstellar
observation,” Simpson said. The
sun ’s strong magnetic field attracts
cosmic rays, charged particles and
even interstellar dust. Analysis of
all this will give scientists a better
3
N
8
understanding ofthe solar systems ^
from which it originated, perhaps
millions of years ago.
“It’s a funnel to interstellar
space,” Simpson said.
The Solar Polar, a European
Space Agency project, was to have
been accompanied by a U.S.
probe.
But, Simpson said, the Reagan N
administration has eliminated the C
American satellite from the Na- ^
tional Aeronautics and Space ^
Administration budget.
Some of us have been fighting ^
to get it back in the budget,
Simpson said. “The Europeans
are rightfully furious, because
there were European experi
ments on the American satellite
just as there are American experi
ments on the European craft. Cer
tain Europeans are defining
NASA as an unreliable partner.
Firewater
Dancing
Country Music
People Watching
Billiards (By the Hour)
Electronic Games
.4
HOURS:
Mon.-Fri. 5-12 p
Sat. 5 p.m.-l a.m.
COWBOY
HAPPY HOUR!
Monday-Saturday 5 p.m. # til 7 p.m.
ALL DRINKS Va PRICE!
ADIES!
No Cover Charge
Nonday-Thursday
Plus One Free Bar
Drink or Beer!
Texas Office of Traffic Safety
2820 Pinfeather in Biyan • 775-0494
(Where Bryan and College Station Come Together)
"THE MOST FUN YOU CAN HAVE TONIGHT!"
)
MSC FREE UNIVERSITY
REG !STRA TION
WEDNESDAY
10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
Second
Floor
MSC
Juggling
Human Sexuality
Slimnastics
Judo
Guitar
Dancercise
Yoga
C&W Dance
Jitterbug
Dorm & Apt.
Security