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About The Battalion. (College Station, Tex.) 1893-current | View Entire Issue (July 17, 1995)
13, 1995 Js/l ur 1ST R T Y 101, No. 173 (6 pages) Established in 1893 Monday • July 17, 1995 federation jvernment ngineering students perform energy audits i Audits performed trough the Texas A&M ndustriai Assessment 'enter have saved in- lustrial plants $4 mil- ion annually. y Wes Swift he Battalion ■ ndustriai plants are slash- ng energy costs and Texas .&M engineering students are gaining experience through the Texas A&M Industrial Assess ment Center. The 9-year-old center provides free energy efficiency and waste management audits to small manufacturing plants within 150 miles of College Station. Teams of three to eight engineering stu dents and a faculty member ex amine each plant and tell plant supervisors how to save money on energy and waste disposal. The center is part of an ener gy assessment program by the Department of Energy that has helped manufacturers save $547 million since 1978. Dr. Warren Heffington, direc tor of the center, said the audits benefit the industrial plants and the audit teams’ students. “The plant [personnel] is all for it because they’re receiving a benefit at no cost, that they otherwise couldn’t afford,” Heff ington said. “The students in the program learn leadership, teamwork and how to write technical reports.” The teams begin the audit by examining a plant’s utility bills of the previous year and consult ing plant supervisors about ma jor power uses and hidden ener gy costs. Team members then tour the plant and gather data on the equipment and facilities. The team meets again with plant leaders to discuss its find ings, then returns to College Station and begins compiling the report. The on-site audit takes a day, and the report is finished within a week and a half. Heffington said the most common suggestions the teams make to plant administrators is to use energy efficient equip ment and lubricants, resched ule machine operations and re cycle waste products. Plants that are audited have under 500 employees and under $75 million in gross sales. Many of these plants cannot af ford audits by professional con sulting firms. Heffington said auditing smaller plants allows students to learn more. “Students understand the smaller plants better,” Heffing ton said. “There are some large plants where, at the end of the day, even I can’t tell what’s go ing on.” Heffington said that by audit ing only smaller plants, the cen ter does not compete with profes sional consulting firms. The program is paying big dividends for the plants. The In dustrial Assessment Center in College Station and its counter part at Texas A&M-Kingsville, have saved manufacturers an es timated $4 million annually. But the rewards do not just go to the plants. Earlier this year the Department of Energy com mended the College Station cen ter for its work. Joe Wieck, senior mechanical See Audits, Page 6 ACEDONIA J| LLO 13 Week of Prayer kicks off today Former students experienced flight firsthand times of the nation s leaders yzing their jearances, 10 medical 1 leaders ne known radio and broadcast instead of a Three A&M graduates /vho worked on Apollo 13 fescribed the events dur- ng the crisis. 5y Javier Hinojosa fHE Battalion rams, sin’s aides se with de li is past is. * Apollo 13 has people rediscover- ng the event, but three Texas t&M graduates experienced the excitement firsthand. Dr. Aaron Cohen, class of ’52, vas the project manager of Apollo .3’s command and service module, .he cone-shape section that re amed the astronauts to Earth. Cohen, who came to A&M as a mechanical engineering professor in 1993 after working with NASA for 31 years, was not in the control cen ter when one of the oxygen tanks on the Apollo 13 spacecraft exploded, damaging a second tank and crip pling the command module. “Just as I arrived at home and walked through the door, the phone rang and someone said, ‘Aaron you better get back to the control center, we have a prob lem,”’ Cohen said. “When I first heard of the ex plosion, I was shocked. What happened was that there was such a catastrophe on board the spacecraft, that no one believed it was happening.” Cohen said the command mod ule was rapidly losing electrical power and the oxygen supply. Before each mission, the astro nauts went through simulations of potential crisis, so the astronauts could learn how to react and fix things while in space. The astronauts on Apollo 13 never trained for an oxygen tank explosion,- and it appeared that everything possible was going wrong all at once. Cohen’s job was to figure out what the status of the command module was. Others were responsi ble for figuring how the astronauts would survive. .earn test lat reduce Thursdays igh. Learn hat makes i - 4:00 p.m. i Making scores and jor and/or sting prior 5:00 p.m. 3 tes, videos, 1 self-paced ired to use )f assisting id attitudes ig abilities, academic at File Photo “We quickly found that we did n’t have much of the command module left,” Cohen said. “We did know that if we were to save the astronauts, they had to come back in the command module.” The control center staff had to find a way to conserve the com mand module power supply so the astronauts would have enough power to re-enter the Earth’s at mosphere. They worked on the problem for the following three and a half days. Gerry Griffin, class of ’56 and the flight director during the Apol lo 13 crisis, recently retired after working with NASA for 25 years. Griffin said one of the biggest hurdles in Apollo 13’s safe return was the quick transfer of the com mand module’s course alignment to the lunar module so they would be able to safely navigate them selves back to Earth. “It was too important of a calcu lation to make in haste because if the angle was off more than half a degree, it would have ended in cat astrophe,” Griffin said. Jim Lovell, an astronaut on the Apollo 13 mission, had to maneu ver the spacecraft to an entry cor ridor into the earth’s atmosphere that was two degrees wide. If the entry angle was too shal low, the spacecraft would have skipped out into space. Anything too steep would have resulted in the spacecraft burning up during re-en try into the Earth’s atmosphere. Henry Pohl, class of ’56 and chief of the auxiliary propulsion system on Apollo 13, recalled how tired everybody was. “The first 24 hours were busy for all of us,” Pohl said. “I person ally did not have a chance to go to sleep until 2:30 a.m. the next morning, and even then I could not go to sleep. I must have worked 40 hours straight.” Griffin said seeing the capsule splash down into the sea marked the end of a long ordeal. Bill Paxton, Kevin Bacon and Tom Hanks star as the crew of an ill-fated lunar mission in "APOLLO 1 3/ See Apollo, Page 6 o There will be four open prayer services through out the week in the All Faiths Chapel. Guy Wim, senior sociolo gy major and member of A&M’s Methodist Student Center, is part of the team leading Tuesday night prayer services. The By Tara Wilkinson The Battalion Members of several Christian denominations and organizations are unit ing this week in the Texas A&M Campuswide Week of Prayer. The event is organized by members of the Intervar sity Christian Fellowship’s Graduate Chapter and will consist of prayer services held Monday through Thursday at 7:30 p.m. in the All Faiths Chapel. Tina Awokuse, Week of Prayer coordinator, said that although the event is specifically Christian, everyone is welcome to at tend the meetings. “The Week of Prayer is open to anyone who wants to see the power of prayer,” she said. Each prayer service will have a different focus and will be led by members of a different Christian organi zation. Participants will pray Monday for faculty, Tuesday for administra tors, Wednesday for stu dents and Thursday for campus revival and vision. Awokuse said the pur pose of the week is to pro mote unity among mem bers of different Christian denominations and a greater vision for ministry at A&M. “It’s good for us to come together to see what God is doing in individual groups,” Awokuse said. “It helps us better understand how God is at work on the whole campus.” evening will include a mix of music and prayer. Wim said he is confident that A&M voices united in prayer will have a power ful effect. “We want to come to gether as a group of Christians, lift up our prayers collectively and invite God to work on our campus,” he said. Father Mike Sis of St. Mary’s Catholic Church, co leader of tonight’s service, said prayer will fall into three categories: rejoicing, repentance and requesting. The week is unique. Sis said, because Christians with different theological viewpoints can find com mon ground. “It is about respecting denominational differences while seeking points of unity,” Sis said. “There may be non- Christians that come, and they are surely welcome,” he said. “We’re not ap proaching it as a recruiting tool, we simply are ap proaching it as a chance to See PRAYER, Page 6 fVggie moms nationwide work together to ease students’ burdens _i The Federation of Texas A&M Moth ers' Clubs has provided emotional and financial support to Aggies since 1928. By Michael Simmons The Battalion Ji Students may leave home to attend Texas A&M, but the A&M Mothers’ Clubs make sure the feeling of home never leaves students. The 103 clubs across the United States provide sup port for A&M students and organiza tions. K A&M Mothers’ clubs are a familiar sight on the A&M campus, whether they are distributing care packages during finals or selling crafts at their annual Parents’ Weekend craft fair. I Peggy Erikson, president of the Federation of Texas A&M Mothers’ Clubs, said the clubs not only encourage students, but members are able to support and confide in each other. I “Aggie Mothers’ Clubs provide a warm and com fortable group,” Erikson said, “which enable Aggie moms to stay connected to the University. The clubs are very unselfish and a good source of support.” Membership in the A&M Mothers’ Clubs is open to any mother of a current or former A&M student. Membership fees vary for each club, but the federation requires a member ship of $1 per member. The money is used for the federation’s general oper ating cost and newsletter. Erickson said the federation enables the clubs to stay abreast on meetings and events that concern its members. “The role of the federation is to serve as an umbrella over the A&M Mothers’ clubs,” she said. “We act as an information broker for the clubs and organize the three major meetings that are held on the A&M campus each school year.” The federation holds its largest meeting during Parents’ Weekend, as well as meetings before the start of the fall and spring semesters. Susie Powell, president-elect of the federation, said - . - • - '• Eddy Wylie, The Battalion Running down a dream .. See MOMS, Page 6 Jeff Darby, a senior agricultural economics major, runs laps at the Anderson Track and Field Complex Sunday. Jeff runs 35 miles a week as a part of his off-season triathlon training.