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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (Feb. 7, 1986)
Friday, February 7, 1986/The Battalion/Page 11 low temperatures not a problem' NASA officials testify before panel r$it| jppa A!- i d off the >ity cam- s Thun- [ ged rapt I edge an [ eswomar | fratem-1 adminit-1 Juld leac liverisitt ! said. ie frattr-1 ately ane | nition os disbanc j isking P: j al heac e charte: ty, whose rty atthe Nov. H doing a state afe nors ftor. ■ erages. ngs vserei Associated Press WASHINGTON — NASA told a presidential panel Thursday that an errant flame near Challenger’s right ■; rocket booster first appeared 59.8 I seconds after liftoff and “moved quite a bit” in the final instants be fore an explosion destroyed the space shuttle and killed its crew. But space agency officials said NASA has no reason to believe that sub-freezing launch-day tempera tures had affected the boosters or in I any other way contributed to the tra- I gedy. No matter what the cause, one of- |i licial said NASA has no “practical” ■ emergency procedure that could I have saved the five-man, two-women ■ crew so long as the boosters were ■ burning. Testifying at the first meeting of I the commission examining last I Tuesday’s accident, NASA’s Jesse 1 Moore said NASA had not yet lo- ■ cated the source of the flame nor were they sure it was responsible for the tragedy. “I can’t show you exactly where it is,” Moore said when asked to pin- E oint the origin of the plume on the ooster rocket, “because we don’t know exactly where it is.” He was not asked about data, ap parently not available to flight con trollers, that later revealed a 4 per cent loss in thrust from the right booster. Neither were the NASA officials asked to discuss whether any of the astronauts’ remains have been lo cated. Moore, NASA’s deputy adminis trator in charge of shuttle opera tions, said experts are “enhanching all of our photography . . . and we’re concentrating a lot of that photogra-- phy on the right-hand solid rocket Dooster.” The investigating panel, ap pointed by President Reagan and meeting Thursday for the first time in public, swore in NASA officials and questioned them on many items — especially involving freezing tem peratures and ice formation at the launch pad — that seemed to make the Challenger launch different from 24 successful launches that preceded it. Moore displayed enlarged photo graphs “that would indicate a plume on the right-hand solid rocket booster” 58.9 seconds into the flight. In the next 12 seconds, he said, the plume “moved quite a bit,” grow ing and merging with the orbiter’s huge fuel tank “just milliseconds be fore the tragedy,” he testified. The explosion occurred just after the Jan. 28 flight was 73 seconds old. Questioned closely by several members of the panel, NASA’s Ar nold D. Aldrich said he had “no con cern” about the impact of the tem peratures on the shuttle. Temperatures on the morning of the launch were “well within the specification design” for the shuttle, its main fuel tank and the two smaller solid rocket boosters, said Aldrich, head of shuttle operations at the Johnson Space Center in Houston. Asked by commission chairman William Rogers whether he could re call a warning from Morton-Thio- kol, manufacturer of the solid rock ets, on the effects of such temperatures, Aldrich replied, “I do not recall any such warning at this time.” Moore said there was concern about ice buildup on the launch tower but not about the impact of low temperatures on the rocket boosters. A technical team was sent out before the launch and checked the tower. “Their assessment came back that the system is OK,” he told the panel. Navy not improving health care: senator Associated Press WASHINGTON — The Navy had failed to correct health care problems when a high-ranking officer was assuring Congress the system was improving, Sen. Pete Wilson asserted Thursday. Wilson, R-Calif., released an internal military document, which he said contradicted an as sessment of Navy health care given to a Senate subcommittee during a public hearing. In the document, the Navy inspector general concluded last October that “very little progress has been made to correct the deficiencies” identified in a 1984 review. “I am disturbed and angered by this discrepancy,” Wilson told a news conference. Wilson said he was demanding an explanation from Navy Secre tary John Lehman but said he had not yet received an answer. A Navy spokesman, Lt. Cmdr. Bill Harlow, said the service did not have an immediate response to Wilson’s statements. Wilson’s criticism comes at a time of increasing scrutiny of the Pentagon’s medical system. Last year the House passed a bill that would allow military doctors to be sued for malpractice. In addition, Navy Cmdr. Donal Billig is on trial for five counts of involuntary manslaughter in the cases of five patients who died during or after heart surgery he performed or supervised at Be- thesda Naval Hospital in 1983 and 1984. And in what amounted to a revolutionary change in military medicine, the Pentagon moved last week to systematically subject the performance of military doc tors to a review by civilians. Report says government, industry not dealing with unemployment Associated Press WASHINGTON — Government and industry are failing to deal with a massive unemployment problem caused by rapid and irreversible changes in technology and interna tional trade, a congressional agency said Thursday. The Office of Technology Assess- I ment said adult education and job training programs “have not kept up” with the needs of 11.5 million “dislocated” workers — people who lost their jobs between 19/9 and 1984 because of automation, plant shutdowns and rising imports. “Given the incentives leading U.S. firms to invest overseas and take ad vantage of cheap labor, or to use less labor at home, displacement is bound to continue,” said the agency. Hit hardest by the decline in do mestic manufacturing and other changes are blacks and up to 4 mil lion “displaced homemakers” forced into the job market because of di vorce, widowhood or the loss of wel fare assistance, said the 436-page re port, which concluded a two-year study. “Structural unemployment is not only reversing the trend toward greater equality of opportunity, it is threatening the industrial base of this country and the future of all Americans, black and white,” Mitch ell said. Structural employment is the job lessness that results from changes in technology, international trade and factors other than pure fluctuations in the business cycle. Although manufacturing now ac counts for only 20 percent of the na tion’s jobs, nearly half the layoffs be tween 1979 and 1984 occurred there, particularly among unskilled and semi-skilled blue-collar workers, the report said. “These jobs are not only the easi est to automate, they are also the eas iest to move overseas to low-wage countries,” the agency said.” Although Congress passed the hairman member c* Ting gro- fyj ere was'" ig,” buttk i some af *d they posted lisi-' he Tinniif lought'l* ted MetK ne's fiiitf 1 * ti was "so 111 *' to the fa' was no ■ such a Job Training Partnership Act ift 1982 to help displaced workers, th£< agency estimated it is reaching onlv 5 percent of the people eligible. The report said one of the most effective ways to help displaced workers find and train for new jobs' is through early warnings of large layoffs. Such a program has worked'; successfully in Canada for 20 years; it said. CHIMNEY HILL BOWLING CENTER ~~ ,40 LANES League & Qpen Bowling Family Entertainment Bar & Snack Bar 701 University Dr E 260-9184 t % don't let ■ i -S. your business bomb. coll 845-2611 to advertise at ease & $ :$• J Texas’ Oldest Wargaming Convention is back-Don’t let Msc NOVA COMMITTEE Texas A &M Memorial Student Center Registration: Texas A&M University Fri & Sat, Feb 7, 8. Con Pass: $10.00 Tournaments in: AD&D (costs $2.00), Traveller, Squad leader, Ogre Car Wars, Nuclear War, Star Trek RPG, Champions, A House Divided Other events include: The Dealer’s Room, Micro Armor, Naval Miniatures Open Gaming rooms, and much, much more! Be there! For more information, call 845-1515 or come by our cubicle in MSC 216, THE STUDENT PROGRAM’S OFFICE (SPO) fGst ACTION m/r ADS Advertise an item in the Battalion. Call 845-2611 *«*»*« *■*■*• •.•N *•!*!«. **:::•*