Wednesday, February 26, IQSGH'he Battalion/Page 7
World and Nation
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Engineers: Managers
OK'd Challenger liftoff
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — Morton
Thiokol engineers testified Tues
day that company managers over
ruled their fears that a cold-
weather liftoff might doom the
Challenger, and sources revealed
that investigators have uncovered
a pre-launch protest from the
manufacturer of the spaceplane.
The protest, from Rocco Pe-
trone, president of the space divi
sion of Rockwell International,
expressed fears that ice might fall
from the space shuttle’s external
fuel tank and damage Challeng
er’s fragile tiles, the sources said.
Petrone is a former NASA
launch director and his involve
ment was to be disclosed Wednes
day or Thursday as the presi
dential commission summoned
Rockwell officials for public ques
tioning. The disclosure provided
fresh evidence that NASA’s top
officials were confronted with
multiple objections to a cold-
weather launch.
Managers of Morton Thiokol,
which makes the rockets that
boost the shuttle into space, re
versed their company’s initial op
position to launch, and skeptical
commission members questioned
them intensely about their justifi
cation for that on Tuesday. The
company’s own engineers said
they were almost unanimously
opposed, one recalling that he
warned last summer such a catas
trophe could happen.
Testifying before the presi
dent’s shuttle investigating com
mission, Roger Boisjoly, a Morton
Thiokol engineer who deals in
booster rocket structures, said he
warned his company on July 31
that the erosion of the rubber-like
O-ring safety seals on the shut'’ s
solid rocket boosters could mse
an explosion. He said tha when
they were cold, the seals between
segments of the booster rockets
would not fit properly into their
seats.
All seven company witnesses
said they felt pressure from
NASA officials who questioned
Thiokol’s initial opposition to the
launch.
Joe C. Kilminster, the Morton
Thiokol vice president who fi
nally signed the firm’s recom
mendation that the launch pro
ceed, said he did so because he
was convinced that there was a
sufficient safety factor in the
seals.
But earlier, Kilminster’s boss,
Morton Thiokol vice president
Jerry Mason, had acknowledged
under intense questioning that
the company lacked enough data
to estimate the effect of the cold.
Reagan offers peace,
safety in U.S. to Marcos
Associated Press
WASHINGTON — The United
States whisked Ferdinand Marcos
out of his palace in a helicopter
Tuesday and quickly embraced the
fledgling Philippine government of
his successor, Corazon Aquino. Pres
ident Reagan guaranteed Marcos
“his peace, his safety and his dignity”
in the United States.
In a swiftly unfolding chain of
events, Marcos and Aquino both
claimed the presidency at separate
inaugural ceremonies Tuesday.
However, at the urging of the
United States and extraordinary
prodding by Reagan’s friend, Sen.
Paul Laxalt, “to cut and cut cleanly,”
Marcos threw in the towel by the end
of the Manila day and relinquished
his 20-year rule.
After an overnight rest at an
American military base, Marcos and
his family were flown out of the Phil
ippines by a U.S. Air Force jet en-
route to American soil in Guam,
according to U.S. officials.
A Pentagon spokesman said that
Marcos was scheduled to leave
Guam for Honolulu between 8 p.m.
and 11 p.m. Wednesday, local time,
(between 5 a.m. and 8 a.m. EST.)
Secretary of State George P.
Shultz made the first announcement
of Marcos’ fall from power.
On Capitol Hill, Sen. Patrick
Leahy, D-Vt., ranking Democrat on
the Senate intelligence committee,
said, “We came close to botching it
by. sticking with Marcos for so long.
But the way it ended, I think we can
work with Mrs. Aquino.”
Senior administration officials,
speaking privately, said that al
though Aquino’s party contains left
ist elements, her initial appoint
ments indicate she will have a
centrist government.
Presidential spokesman Larry
Speakes said Aquino has indicated
she will respect an agreement allow
ing two huge U.S. military bases in
the Philippines.
Emphasizing that Marcos was wel
come in the United States, Shultz
said, “Throughout this process, we
have been in close touch with Presi
dent Marcos and his family and we
want to see them continue on in dig
nity and honor. . . .”
While faulting Marcos for failing
to make economic and military re
forms, Shultz said, “As we assess the
overall picture and we assess his role
in the Philippines over a long period
of time, he has been a constructive
force.”
Laxalt, a Nevada Republican who
traveled to the Philippines last year
as an emissary for Reagan, was
called out of a briefing with Shultz
and special envoy Philip Habib Mon
day afternoon to take a call from
Marcos.
Marcos wanted to know if a publi
cized call by Reagan to resign was le
gitimate. “I said it was,” Laxalt said.
Marcos sought assurances the
United States would not punish him
if he came here and “I indicated that
was no problem,” Laxalt said. He
promised to convey Marcos’ senti
ments to Reagan, and drove to the
White House where he met with the
president, Shultz, White House chief
of staff Donald Regan and national
security adviser John Poindexter.
In that meeting, Reagan told Lax
alt, “We would like to guarantee to
President Marcos his peace, his
safety and his dignity,” according to
Speakes.
Laxalt went to Poindexter’s office
and placed a call to Marcos.
Marcos told Laxalt he wanted to
go ahead with Tuesday’s inaugura
tion, and asked if Reagan wanted
him to stay in office. Laxalt said Rea
gan could not tell Marcos what to do.
“Then he asked me the gut ques
tion, ‘Senator, what should I do?”’
said Laxalt. “I wasn’t bound by dip
lomatic niceties. I said, ‘Cut and cut
cleanly. The time has come.’
“There was the longest pause on
the other end of that phone,”
said Laxalt. “He said ‘yes,’ and then
he said, ‘I am so very, very disap
pointed.”
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Gorbachev rejects U.S. arms control proposal
Manor
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Associated Press
MOSCOW — Soviet leader Mikhail S.
Gorbachev rejected President Reagan’s new
arms control proposals Tuesday and said
timing of the next summit hinges on an “un
derstanding” about banning nuclear tests or
eliminating medium-range missiles in Eu
rope.
Convening the 27th Communist Party
Congress, Gorbachev sharply criticized Rea
gan’s stand on space weapons, his rejection of
a freeze on British and French arsenals, and
his call for cuts in the Soviet Union’s Asian
nuclear forces.
“It is hard to detect in the letter we have
to produce practical results in key areas of
limiting and reducing armaments.”
“There are at least two matters on which
an understanding could be reached: The ces
sation of nuclear tests and the abolition of
U.S. and Soviet intermediate-range missiles”
in Europe, he said.
“Then, as a matter of fact, if there is read
iness to seek agreement, the question of the
time of the meeting would be resolved of it
self: We will accept any suggestion on this
count,” Gorbachev said. “But there is no
sense in holding empty talks.”
Gorbachev spoke for about S’/a hours at
the opening of a gathering that occurs at
least every five years. The last party congress
was in 1981.
The party general secretary, who turns 55
on Sunday, broke sharply with the years of
the late Leonid I. Brezhnev, which he said
were marked by stagnation, corruption, un
controlled bureaucracy and economic mis
management.
He also outlined a program to reorganize
centralized planning and government, mod
ernize industry and agriculture, make prices
more responsive to demand and create in
centives for producing higher-quality goods.
Accusing the United States of blocking
progress at the Geneva arms talks, Gorba
chev commented for the first time on Rea
gan’s response to Gorbachev’s Jan. 15 propo
sal for a three-stage elimination of nuclear
arms by the year 2000.
The plan would begin with eliminating So
viet and U.S. medium-range missiles in Eu
rope and freezing British and French nu
clear arsenals, followed by cuts in strategic
missiles and a ban on space weapons.
Gorbachev said Reagan’s letter “seems to
contain some reassuring opinions and theses.
However, these positive pronouncements are
swamped in various reservations, linkages
and conditions which in fact block the solu
tion of radical problems of disarmament.”
2002 E. 29th
775-2463
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