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The Battalion
/olume 10B • Issue 95 • 12 Pages
The Batt Online: http:// bat-web.tamu.edu
Tuesday, February 18, 1997
stronauts fix Hubble's torn cover
SPACE CENTER, Houston (AP) — As-
onauts took a fifth and final spacewalk
onday night to fix the Hubble Space
pescope’s torn insulating cover with bits
Toil, wire, clips, plastic twists and para-
rute cord.
Mission Control added the spacewalk to
Ihuttle Discovery’s Right so Mark Lee and
Beven Smith could hang quiltlike patches
wer splits in Hubble’s thin, reflective insu-
-.J.^ItiQn, apparently damaged by sun expo-
Cl Pfluv during seven years in orbit.
■ The crew discovered the damage last
ut "it’s another® 66 ^ installing state-of-the-art sci-
encouragedii 8 ear W 'H allow the telescope to
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look deeper into the universe.
With the sort of ingenuity used on
Apollo 13, the crew cobbled together the
patches early Monday as Gregory Har-
baugh and Joe Tanner installed the last of
Hubble’s replacement parts, and did a lit
tle mending, too.
Working 375 miles above Earth, Har-
baugh and Tanner covered two gaping
holes near the top of the 43-foot telescope
with pieces of Teflon-coated material 3
feet long and 1 foot wide. They attached
the blankets, brought along to repair pos
sible pinholes, to knobs and rails with wire
and string.
The task of hanging the homemade
patches over the lower electronic compart
ments was considered more difficult and
more critical. The astronauts salvaged the
material, meant for just such a problem,
from the cargo bay.
NASA managers were relieved at how well
the first repairs went. “It was a good feeling,”
said Mike Weiss, a Hubble service manager.
The repairs were nowhere near as crucial
as those performed during Apollo 13’s abort
ed moon mission in 1970. The three astro
nauts saved their lives by using tape and the
cardboard covers torn from their flight man
uals to restore the spacecraft’s system for
cleansing the air of carbon dioxide.
Hubble, in fact, probably could have
made it to the next service call in late 1999
without the insulation repairs, NASA pay-
load manager Kenneth Ledbetter said. The
concern was that the deteriorating cover
might cause sensitive electronics in the $2
billion telescope to overheat and fail.
“It was something we felt was prudent to
do — not absolutely necessary, but prudent
to do, and we did it,” Ledbetter said.
Harbaugh and Tanner were proud of
their handiwork. They spent 1 1 /2 hours
attaching two blankets and adjusting
them just so.
“What do you think?” Harbaugh asked,
backing away.
“Like it. Looks good from here,” Tan
ner replied.
Mission Control put it this way: “A
masterpiece.”
NASA plans a more permanent fix during
the next service call in three years. The astro
nauts snipped off a piece of the damaged in
sulation to bring home for analysis.
The astronauts are scheduled to release
the Hubble on Wednesday from the shut
tle’s cargo bay, where it has been anchored
since last week. Discovery is scheduled to
return to Florida on Friday.
nes
stratiop ESS
Here, Please
Ryan Rogers, The Battalion
Justin Strelec, a junior aerospace engineer
ing major, signs a “Save Mt Aggie" petition
for Cassidy Tutt, a freshman environmental
design major Monday outside the MSC.
ther
Sherman resigns as coordinator
► He is leaving A&M to
accept a tight end
coaching job with the
Green Bay Packers.
By Kristina Buffin
The Battalion
For the second time in two months, the
Texas A&M Football Team will be on the
lookout for a new offensive coordinator.
Mike Sherman, who was promoted
from offensive line coach to offensive co
ordinator in December, resigned Monday
to accept the tight ends coaching job with
the Green Bay Packers. Sherman will re
place Andy Reid, who was named the
Packer’s quarterbacks coach.
A&M Head Coach R.C. Slocum said, in a
press release, he was disappointed to be los
ing Sherman to the Super Bowl champions.
“He’s done an outstanding job here at
Texas A&M, and I’m glad he’s been rec
ognized for his work,” Slocum said. “I ap
preciate his dedication and loyalty to
A&M and our football program. I wish
him and his family well.”
Sherman was one of Slocum’s original
hires when Slocum came aboard in 1989.
He left after the 1993 season to serve as the
offensive line coach at UCLA but returned
to A&M after one season. Since then, the
Aggies have been one of the winningest
Division I football programs in the nation.
Freshman tailback Dante Hall said he
was surprised at the announcement.
“I thought he would be here for a
while,” Hall said. “But I would have taken
Green Bay over anything.
“I am happy for him. He’s moving to a
higher level. Personally, I hate to see him
go; there is no envy.”
Sherman said, in a press release, that he
is looking forward to the challenges of
working in the National Football League.
“I feel very fortunate to have had the oppor
tunity to have worked at the finest university in
the country, in one of the best college football
programs and for one of the best college head
coaches in R.C. Slocum,” Sherman said.
See Sherman, Page 9
Women help shape school's history
By Benjamin Cheng
The Battalion
The efforts of women to break through
barriers at Texas A&M have helped change
the school from the all-male military college
it was in 1876 to the fully coeducational uni
versity it is today.
Dr. Henry Dethloff said in A Centennial
History of Texas A&iM University 1876-1976
that Ethel Hutson was the first woman to at
tend A&M in 1893. From 1893 to 1963,
daughters of A&M faculty and staff also in
termittently attended A&M.
The A&M Board of Directors’ decision al
lowing women to attend on a limited basis in
1963 displeased one A&M student.
“I really didn’t think it could come,”
the student said in Dethloff’s book. “I
didn’t want it. It’s a helpless feeling. You
wake up one morning and you’re en
rolled in a coed school.”
Others associated with A&M saw the po
tential benefits of admitting women.
“It might help out with football re
cruiting,” said a former student at the
time women were admitted in A Centen
nial History of Texas A&M University
1876-1976.
Dr. Betty Unterberger was appointed as
the first full-time woman professor at
A&M in 1968.
Unterberger said when she first started,
the students in her classes were almost ex
clusively men.
“It was strange to go into a classroom and
very seldom have a woman,” she said.
Unterberger said she was not addressed
by her first name and she was never invited
to lunch by her colleagues.
“It was pretty lonely,” she said. “I just was
n’t included.”
While the practice at A&M was to address
people by their title, Unterberger said she was
addressed only as “Mrs.Unterberger,” not
“Dr. Unterberger.”
“I found it demeaning that I should not
also be called by my title,” she said.
As times have changed, Unterberger said
she is now accepted as a colleague.
“I can talk about my research, talk to my
colleagues,” she said, “and they all call me by
my first name.”
Cindy Ericson, Deputy Corps Cmdr. and
a senior international studies and political
science major, is the second woman to serve
as Deputy Corps Commander.
Ericson said Corps members were sur
prised at first by her membership in the
Corps because of her gender.
“When [other Corps members] found that
I was willing to work hard and was as excited
at being there as they were,” Ericson said,
“they’d show general acceptance.”
Ericson said 130 of the more than 2,000
Corps members are women.
“More and more young women find out
that they can be in the Corps,” she said. “It’s a
growing number.”
Ericson said although women in the
Corps are tempted to acquire male
mannerisms, they should retain their
femininity.
“Being a woman is an excellent thing,” Er
icson said. “You don’t want to deny the fact
that you are a woman and you don’t want to
imitate a man.”
Tina Hornberger, president of the Soci
ety of Women Engineers and a senior in
dustrial engineering major, said only 20
percent of the students in the College of
Engineering are women.
“I’ll admit sometimes it’s intimidating
to walk into a room with a bunch of guys,”
she said.
Despite the minority status of women in
the engineering field, aptitude is the best in
dicator of future success, Hornberger said.
“If you’ve got the talent and the brains,”
she said, “you’re going to get there no matter
if you’re male or female.”
Hornberger advises women to find a
mentor.
“Find yourself somebody to look up
to,” she said. “Find a good female leader
on campus.”
While Unterberger has experienced the
increasing equality between men and
women, she warned against complacency.
“We’ve still got a long way to go in
terms of equality (between men and
women),” she said.
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little support in battle
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DALLAS (AP) — American Air-
ines pilots will be flying solo in their
uest for a bigger paycheck and job
ecurity. They are pitted against
anagement, many of their
oworkers, the traveling public and
'resident Clinton.
The aviators, who already are
mong the highest-paid workers in
he nation, say they expect no sym-
athy and know they will be isolated
n pressing their contract demands.
“They’re going into this with
licensed and^ their eyes wide open,” Jim Sovich,
f 5:30-6:307
ec Center
it will explain the
nassage,
union president, said.
The pilots have been negotiating
^®vith American since 1994. This past
i/e or not,
i
flail week, talks dissolved and the pilots
ante ci# leclared a strika
The Battalion
INSIDETODAY
Skin Mixed-race
couples find that love
goes beyond the color
of one's skin.
Aggielife, Page 3
Toons
Sports
Opinion
Page 4
Page 7
Page 11
The potentially crippling walk
out, which could have affected one
of every five U.S. air passengers,
lasted mere minutes before Presi
dent Clinton intervened to stop it.
The White House action merely
postponed the showdown between
management and the Allied Pilots
Association, which represents
about 9,300 American pilots.
Now, a Presidential Emergency
Board will consider the two sides’
arguments.
In addition to wages, the dispute
revolves around who will fly small
jets that American plans to buy to
replace turboprobs now used on
commuter-length flights.
The three-member board has
30 days to recommend a settle
ment. If either side rejects the deal,
the pilots can again strike after an
other 30 days and only Congress
can stop them.
The pilots’ decision to take the
contract fight this far has left other
American workers stuck in the mid
dle. The flight attendant union,
which had its own strike in 1993, is of
ficially supporting the better-paid pi
lots, who make an average of
$120,000 a year.
On the other hand, many mem
bers of the Transport Workers
Union of America, which repre
sents about 27,000 mechanics, sim
ulator pilots, ground instructors,
dispatchers and meteorologists,
have been vocally opposed.
See Pilots, Page 10
A Piece of History
Bush library
will showcase
Avenger plane
By Brandon Truitt
The Battalion
Former President George Bush voluntarily
entered the Navy during World War II as a Sea
man Second Class just after his graduation
from high school.
Instead of enrolling in college that fall,
Bush became an aviation cadet and was sent
to war.
On Sept. 2, 1944, in a bombing mission
over Chichi Jima, just south of Japan, Bush
was shot down in his TBM Avenger-Torpedo
Bomber. He was forced to give up the open
skies for a month-long patrol through the
Pacific on the submarine that rescued him —
the USS Finback.
The submarine delivered Bush to Pearl Har
bor, where he was given the choice of returning
to the United States for reassignment or finish
ing the rest of his tour with his company.
Bush returned to his squadron, VT-51, and
was one of eight original members of the
squadron to survive.
Jack Guy is another surviving member ofVT-
51 and a close friend of Bush’s.
Guy, commissioner of the American Battle
Monuments Commission, was the logical man
Ryan Rogers, The Battalion
This full-size TBM Avenger-Torpedo Bomber will be displayed in the George Bush Presidential Li
brary and Museum. The plane is part of an exhibit chronicling Bush's World War II experience.
to call four months ago when the George Bush
Presidential Library and Museum needed a
model TBM Avenger-Torpedo Bomber. It will
be displayed in the exhibit area chronicling
Bush’s World War II experiences.
Guy did not want to use a model but did not
think he had adequate time to raise enough
money to have a plane restored.
“A model just didn’t seem right,” Guy said.
Therefore, Guy purchased a full-size TBM
Avenger-Torpedo Bomber from Robert Schnei
der of Hawkins, Texas.
“[Schneider] said it would take at least a year
to restore the plane,” Guy said. “But here it is four
months later... all dressed up like Hollywood or
maybe Las Vegas with all the lights on it.”
See Avenger, Page 12