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Navy official presents program
describing Titanic exploration
By Shannon O’Neal
Reporter
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On April 14, 1912 the R.M.S. Ti-
anic sank during her maiden voy-
ge, taking 1,500 passengers 2.5
niles to the ocean floor. She lay
here, 400 miles southeast of New
foundland, largely intact and undis-
:overed, until 1985 when a joint ven-
ure between the Woods Hole
ceanographic Institute (WHOI)
nd a French nautical institute
found her resting place beneath the
tlantic.
In summer 1986 a venture be-
ween WHOI and the U.S. Navy’s
Sub Development Group One in
[California revisited the Titanic and
[returned with images of a site un
seen by man for 74 years.
Navy Lt. Mark Mahre was along
for the adventure and Tuesday
night he shared slides and narration
with an audience of about 100 mem
bers of several engineering societies.
Mahre stopped off at A&M during a
three-day recruiting tour for the
Navy. He also will visit Rice Univer
sity, the University of Texas and the
University of Houston.
Mahre was a crewman on the 25-
jfoot-long, deep-submersible vessel
[Alvin, owned by WHOI, that ex
plored the hulk. The U.S. Naval
[Academy graduate said the Alvin
[was specially equipped for the survey
[with Jason Jr., a remote-operated ve-
[hicle “robot eye” on a 250-foot coax
ial cable that explored where the Al
vin could not go.
Mahre described driving Jason Jr.
“One thing that amazed me were the brilliant colors
and corrosion from the rust. From a long way off the
ship would look like a melted candle. Another 100
years and it will be just a rust spot on the ocean floor. ”
—Navy Lt. Mark Mahre
(or J.J., as it was called) as a compli
cated operation.
“Below 300 feet it is pitch black
down there, darker than night ever
is,” he said. “The operator drives J.J.
by looking at a TV screen with a pic
ture from its front camera. It kind of
gives him the illusion of riding J.J.
out there 4,000 meters beneath the
sea, kind of like a video game in the
ocean. More often than not the op
erator would lose sight of Alvin, so
he would turn J.J. around and fol
low the yellow tether back out, like
following bread crumbs.”
Mahre offered his impressions of
using the $2.5 million system.
“A walking tour of the Titanic,
that is what the video impression
was,” he said. “Alvin would sit with
the portholes five feet off the
ground and then J.J. would move
out. We see a porthole, we send Ja
son in for a little peeping-tom ac
tion.”
The lieutenant said the deep-
ocean environment was responsible
for destroying much of the ornate
wood and metal work on the ship,
though the Titanic was shorn in two
in its plunge to the ocean floor.
“When the ship sank it broke just
aft of the number two (exhaust)
stack due to the flooding of the bow
dome, implosions from the pressure
and the explosions of the boilers,
shearing the decks and hull in half,”
Mahre said. “It sank quickly to the
bottom and the bow section settled
upright with the stern rotated 180
degrees and 600 yards aft. There is a
100-meter-wide debris field between
the two.
“Much of the wood has been de
stroyed by organic and chemical ac
tions, and the metal is so badly
rusted that in some cases it seems al
most melted.
“One thing that amazed me were
the brilliant colors and corrosion
from the rust. From a long way off
the ship would look like a melted
candle. Another 100 years and it will
be just a rust spot on the ocean
floor.”
As Mahre pointed out items pho
tographed by the expedition, he re
lated facts about the historic voyage.
He said a one-way, first-class cabin
ticket cost $4,000 in 1914 —$50,000
in 1988 dollars. At one point he re
marked that some of the most fa
mous passengers were the Astors,
aristocrats of the era. As relics ap
peared he said they probably were
used by the Astors — a bench of
fered seating, a bed frame provided
a place to sleep, a punch bowl was
used in their service.
Mahre described many technical
aspects of the equipment used, ex
plaining the Alvin’s six- to 10-hour
dive duration, 4,000-meter maxi
mum depth and cruising speed of
one knot along the ocean floor. The
Alvin is composed of a pressure hull
and an external body with its cam
eras, batteries and thrusters, he said.
The pressure hull is a titanium
sphere seven feet in diameter and
five centimeters thick.
Jason Jr. is a prototype funded by
the Navy, Mahre said. He explained
that WHOI is developing a sonar/vi
deo imaging system for the Navy
that will be used to scan the ocean
floor. The Navy has a definite use
for the system, he said.
“You saw the movie ‘Top Gun?’ ”
he asked. “Every time one of those F-
14s goes down we have to go find it.”
He commented on the French ex
pedition last summer that recovered
several items from the Titanic.
“It’s strange,” he said. “Look how
after falling 2.5 miles to the ocean
floor, this mug somehow came to
rest upright on this boiler. Of
course, after the French were there
last summer it may not be there.
“Some of the artifacts we took pic
tures of they collected and restored
to nearly original condition through
electrolysis. I don’t know what they
are going to do with them.”
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UTEP finalist
for president
backs out
larslor®
EL PASO (AP) — A finalist for
[ the University of Texas-El Paso
presidency has decided he no
longer wants to be in running for
the position.
Samuel Kirkpatrick, dean of
the College of Liberal Arts and
Sciences at Arizona State, told
UT System officials Monday; he
no longer wants to be considered
for the position.
Four others are still in the run
ning, said James Duncan, the UT
System official who headed the
committee that was in charge of
selecting the finalists.
The UT System Board of Re
gents plans to select the new pres
ident Thursday.
The president is scheduled to
meet the press in El Paso the next
day.
Kirkpatrick said he made the
decision to drop ou^ of the run
ning last week.
Several factors played an im
portant role in his decision
against the job, he said, including
his children’s residency in Ari
zona.
New Vend-a-card system at library
makes copying more convenient
By Christina De Leon
Reporter
Texas A&M students no longer
have to despair when they’re unable
to make copies at the Sterling C.
Evans Library because of broken or
empty bill-changer machines.
The library now has a Vend-a-
card system that allows students to
use a special decoder card that is
prepaid for a specified number of
copies.
“It’s a lot more convenient for the
students,” Scott Haus, an employee
at the Evans Copy Center, says.
One advantage of the Vend-a-
card system, he says, is that students
can make several copies at once with
out worrying if they have enough
change.
Many times the problem was not
with the bill-changer machines but
rather that a student only had large
bills and therefore could not use the
machines, Haus says.
Usually, students go to the Copy
Center to get change for paper
money if they cannot use the bill-
changer machines.
However, Rose Mary Calhoun, a
library copy-center employee says
more problems occurred because
the copy center is closed at night and
on weekends.
“Texas Copy was having a hard
time getting change for the copiers
on weekends,” she says. Calhoun
says the library copy center received
several complaints from students
unable to get change for copies on
weekends.
Texas Copy Systems Inc. owns the
copy machines in the library but is
paid by the University to maintain
the University-owned bill-changer
machines.
Jeff French, systems manager at
Texas Copy, says that one of the
main problems with coin-operated
copy machines is maintaining the
tremendous volume of coins the ma
chines collect.
“We hope it will alleviate prob
lems with the change machines,”
French says.
With the Vend-a-cards, he says,
maintenance costs are reduced while
making it easier and faster for stu
dents to get copies.
Since the Copy Center began sell
ing Vend-a-cards two weeks ago,
French says about 300 Vend-a-cards
have been sold.
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Texas high court upholds ruling
forbidding protest at abortion clinic
AUSTIN (AP) — Right-to-lifers
cannot demonstrate at a Houston
clinic where abortions are per
formed, the Texas Supreme Court
ruled Wednesday.
Right to Life Advocates Inc. had
asked the court to overturn a lower
court judgment forbidding group
members to go onto private prop
erty at Aaron Women’s Clinic to
picket, offer “sidewalk counseling,”
hand out literature or confront em
ployees or customers.
The anti-abortion protesters had
begun such activities at the clinic,
which also offers such services as
birth control, in May 1985, accord
ing to court records.
The clinic obtained a trial court
judgment forbidding the activities,
and the 14th Court of Appeals in
Houston upheld the ruling.
“Of major importance in this case
is the physical and mental well-being
of the clinic’s patients. Whether or
not we agree with their decisions to
terminate their pregnancies, we
must recognize their right to do so,”
the majority opinion of the appeals
court said.
A dissenting opinion by an ap
peals judge agreed with the right-to-
lifers that the prohibition involves
constitional rights.
The Vend-a-cards cost 75 cents
each including tax, although the ini
tial purchase for a Vend-a-card is 10
— 75 cents for the card plus $9.25
worth of copies at 5 cents each, Cal
houn says. Afterward, the cards can
be revalidated at Vendacoder ma
chines in the amount of $1, $5, $10
or $20.
Another advantage of the Vend-
a-cards, French says, is that the cards
can be sold to other students for the
programmed amount if a student
decides he no longer needs the card
or is going to graduate.
In addition, the cards have no ex
piration date by which the amount
purchased must be used, he says.
Although the Vend-a-card system
used at the Evans Library is the same
type used at the Medical Sciences Li
brary, the cards are not inter
changeable, French says, because the
system at the Medical Sciences Li
brary is owned by the University.
Karen Moskal, an employee at the
Medical Sciences Library, says that
both A&M students and the Texas
A&M Medical School students can
purchase a Vend-a-card for use only
at the Medical Sciences Library.
“The library is open to both Texas
A&M students and medical school
students,” Moskal says.
However, she says that unautho
rized cards used at either library will
cause the programmed prepaid bal
ance to be erased.
Texas Copy first considered using
a Vend-a-card system at the library
last fall after enjoying tremendous
success with the Vend-a-card system
used at the University of Texas in
Austin.
Although only 10 copy machines
are equipped for both Vend-a-cards
and coins in the Evans Library,
French said that if the system proves
successful, Texas Copy eventually
may install Vend-a-card machines
on all of its library copy machines.
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categories:
entries:
judging:
Collage, Drawings, Paintings, Pastel,
Miscellaneous (no photographs)
will be accepted in the MSC Gallery from
11:00 a.m. until 3:00 p.m., February 22-24.
Entry fee is $3.00 per piece, limit 4 pieces.
February 25,1988.
4^ MSC VISUAL ARTS
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MSC ^ SCONA XXXIII
ALL EVENTS IN RUDDER THEATER
FREE ADMISSION TO THE PUBLIC
SPEAKER SCHEDULE
Wednesday February 10,1988.
8:00 - 9:30 p.m. Opening Address: "Glasnost"
Dr. Dimitri Simes - Senior Associate, Director, Project on U5.-Soviet Relations, Carnegie
Endowment for International Peace
Thursday, February 11,1988.
10:00 a.m. - 1200 p.m. Panel Discussion: "Soviet Foreign Policy”
His Excellency Alexander M. Belonogov - Ambassador of the Soviet Union to the United
Nations
His Excellency John A. Birch - Ambassador and Deputy Permanent Representative of the
United Kingdom to the United Nations
Dr. Aleksa Djilas - Visiting Scholar at the Russian Research Center, Harvard University
Dr. Betty Unterberger - Professor of History, Texas A&M University
7:30 - 9.00 p.m. Speech: "Life in the U.S.S.R."
Dr. George Feifer - Author of justice of Moscow and Moscow Farewell
Friday, February 12,1988.
1000 a.m. - 1200 p.m. Panel Discussion: "U.S. - Soviet Relations"
The Honorable Igor Khripunov - First Secretary, Embassy of the Soviet Union to the United
States
Dr. Robert German - Director, Office of Analysis for the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe,
U.S. State Department
Dr. Jerry Hough - James B. Duke Professor of Political Science, Duke University
Mr. Igor Fominov - Legal Affairs Officer, Legal Codification Division, United Nations
Saturday, February 13,1988.
10:00- 11:00 a.m. Closing Address: "Future of the Soviet Union"
Strobe Talbott - Washington Bureau Chief, Time Magazine
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