Spring 2003 In-line Hockey League
8 Game Season, plus Double Elimination Tournament
Games are scheduled on Tuesday and Thursday Nights
X
Registration, Feb. 10-21, 2003
600 N. Randolph, Bryan
Cost: $200. 00 per team
For more info call the Neal Recreation Center at 209-5210
\
All Ladies FREE all night!!
Guys over 21 Free until 10:00 pm
$ 1 Bar Drinks
*2 Premium Drinks
8-11 p.m.
S 1 Pints, $ 2 Tap Teas
all night
Kitchen open all day, all night!!
696-5570
for details
Party Safe and Designate a Driver.
Listen up, Aggies...
Did you catch the hoops win
over Bobby and his Raiders
last weekend? Some Ags didn’t because they waited
too late. Yes, it was a sell out—the first ever for
Reed Arena basketball. We have another game at 7
pm Saturday against a little Austin school and we
expect another full house. Big games against Mizzu
and OU are coming up. Don’t miss out, pull your
tickets today or tomorrow. Then you just walk in the
door, hand your ticket to the ticket taker and catch
every minute, every shot and every steal of the
Aggie victory.
Tickets are available now for the rest of the season.
Bring your all sports pass —and your friends’
passes—to Reed Arena Box Office or the Athletic
Ticket Office to pull your tickets. Loud is loud. And
then there’s the LOUD of Reed Arena full of Ags.
Be there for the fun.
Remember Reed’s First Law:
Pull your tickets early to avoid the lines!
6B
Thursday, February 6, 2003
NATIQty
THE BATTALION
After more than four days, debris search
still fails to find crucial pieces, NASA says
KRT CAMPUS
National Guard soliders Staff Sgt. Mike Sisk, left, Staff Sgt. Sonny Wiseman and Maj. Beverley
Simpson, right, load a piece of debris from Columbia near Nacogdoches, Texas Wednesday,
By Pauline Arrillaga & Joesph
B. Verrengia
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
NACOGDOCHES, Texas — Despite
gathering more than 12,000 pieces of debris
from the shuttle Columbia, a NASA official
said Wednesday none of the pieces provides
critical answers for why the shuttle
broke up.
“We do not have any red-tag items,” said
Ron Dittemore, shuttle program manager,
referring to items engineers have identified
as crucial to the investigation into the cause.
He said those items would include parts
of the left wing, data recorders and certain
pieces of insulation and tiles.
The widening search now extends from
Louisiana to California.
In Texas alone, officials have identified
38 counties with debris, while pieces have
turned up in two dozen Louisiana parishes.
And NASA investigators are checking
California and Arizona for debris as well.
“The scale makes it unprecedented,” said
Dave Bary, a spokesman for the
Environmental Protection Agency, which is
overseeing the collection of debris. He noted
that even in other major disasters — the
attacks on the World Trade Center and the
Pentagon, the explosion of space shuttle
Challenger — the recovery sites were
restricted to a central location.
In this case, “the debris field is so large
— covering so many counties — I can’t
think of anything historically that would
compare to this,” he said.
That could delay meaningful analysis of
those parts that have been collected — and
what role they might have played in the dis
aster, NASA spokesman Rob Navias noted.
“We have to put the puzzle together
before we see what the mosaic looks like,”
Navias said.
The shuttle was composed of about 2
million parts, many of which shattered into
pieces as small as a nickel.
Bill Waldock of Embry-Riddle
Aeronautical University in Arizona said any
of the craft’s 20,000 insulating tiles or metal
components from the left wing would be
significant.
At least two possible wing sections have
been discovered in east Texas, although
authorities did not know from which side of
the shuttle they came. A robotic underwater
camera was brought in Wednesday to help
search a reservoir along the Texas-Louisiana
border where there were reports of debris
the size of a small car falling.
A patch of foam insulation that broke off
from the shuttle’s external fuel tank during
launch and struck tiles on the underside of
the left wing had been the focus of the probe
into the possible causes of Columbia’s
destruction. After days of analysis, NASA
backed away Wednesday from the theory
that the foam might have been the root cause
of the accident.
Instead, Dittemore said investigators are
focusing more closely on the frantic effort of
Columbia’s automatic control system to
hold the speed of the spacecraft stable
despite increasing wind resistance, or drag,
on the left wing.
The insulating tiles protect the underbel
ly and the wings of the shuttle from searing
heat. Each is stenciled with a code to tell
engineers where it was located on the craft.
Tiles that peeled off the left wing had been
considered crucial to the probe.
Waldock said some pieces, such as the
nose cone, could help investigators rule out
other potential causes of the disaster. “It
didn't look like the nose cone had much
thermal damage at all; it’s not even really
scorched.” he said. “It means that area was
not exposed to the high temperatures.”
Another expert said the pattern of where
pieces fell would also offer important clues.
The heat of re-entry would have peeled back
the shuttle, layer by layer, heating and
breaking off pieces in succession as it
streaked eastward through the atmosphere,
noted William Ailor, director of the Center
for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies at
The Aerospace Corp. in El Segundo, Calif.
“It’s basically like heating an onion,”
he said.
“The sequence of events and of the
debris on the ground is going to be very
important to unraveling this mystery,” Ailor
said.
As Columbia shed debris, dense and
streamlined objects would have traveled far
ther eastward. That explains why the shut
tle’s heavy, heat-resistant nose cone traveled
as far east as it did, Ailor said.
Lightweight, less aerodynamic pieces of
debris, including the thermal tiles that coat
ed the underbody of Columbia, would settle
more quickly to the ground after
breaking off.
Recovery teams are using global-posi
tioning system satellites to determine the
location of each piece of debris so the field
can be mapped. NASA hopes to use that
information to develop computer models to
simulate the disaster. The models would
track each piece of debris back in time to the
moment it was shed from the orbiter.
“The two most critical things are deter
mining where the pieces are and identifying
the precise location where those pieces
came from on the shuttle, no matter how
small or large,” said James Kroll. who is
heading the mapping project at Stephen F.
Austin State University in Nacogdoches.
“Then we can make them jump back if
into the air and go back to that part ofjsf
spacecraft.”
Retired Adm. Harold Gehman, chain®
of the independent panel investigating tk
disaster, said such computer simulations
would be pivotal in determining how tlif
shuttle failed.
Four days after Columbia shattered on its
journey home to Florida, more than 1,2(K)
people were picking up the pieces in Texas
and Louisiana, traipsing through forests and
cow pastures in rain and sleet to hunt down;
smaller items that can be retrieved by hand J
NEWS IN BRIEF
CBS radio reporter
Larry LeSueur dies
WASHINGTON (AP) - Larry
LeSueur, a former CBS corre
spondent and one of the World
War II "Murrow Boys," died
Wednesday of Parkinson's dis
ease. He was 93.
LeSueur died at his home in
Washington, his family said.
A third-generation newsman,
LeSueur began his journalism
career in 1936 as a writer for the
United Press in New York and,
later, in Washington.
Shortly after World War II
began, he was hired by CBS'
Edward R. Murrow as his assis
tant in London. In a series called
"London After Dark," LeSueur,
Murrow and Eric Sevareid
reported on the nighttime sights
and sounds of London during
the Nazi Blitz.
On D-Day, in 1944, LeSueur
landed on Normandy beach
with U.S. troops and was the
first correspondent to broadcast
from the American beachhead.
He was made an honorary
member of the 4th Division of
the 8th Infantry and awarded
the Medal of Freedom.
LeSueur reported the first
news of the liberation of Paris,
for which he was cited by the
War Department for "outstand
ing and conspicuous service"
and awarded the French Legion
of Honor. He also covered the
liberation of the Dachau and
Manthauson concentration
camps.
"He was one of the great wat
reporters that there have even
been," said Stanley Cloud, who
co-authored "The Murrow Boys"
with his wife, Lynne Olson.
"He did remarkable things,"
Cloud said, adding that LeSueuf
was "a gentleman."
Seniors.
TODAY
ONLY!
In addition to
its regular hours,
AR Photography
will be taking
yearbook pictures
today from 9-11 and
1:30-7.
No appointment
necessary.
Don't miss your
opportunity to be
in the 2003 Aggieland.
AR is located at
404 University Dr. E,Ste,F.
Questions?
Call 693-8183 or 845-2682.
Agcrieland 2003
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