Ninety-One Years
Of
Editorial Freedom
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THUNDERSTORMS
Showers and thunderstor-
ms likely today. High
around 60.
Vol. XCI, No. 157
Copyright 1981, The Michigan Daily
Ann Arbor, Michigan-Sunday, April 12, 1981
Ten Cents
Ten Pages
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'U' helps
Columbia
off the
g round
By JOHN ADAM
The space shuttle Columbia, set to launch early
this morning, will take a little bit of the University
along in its orbits around the earth.
The shuttle's mass spectrometer, a device used to
determine the exterior gases vented by the shuttle,
was developed here at the University's Space
Research Lab on North Campus. That lab has also
been instrumental in the development of several
other devices that will be key to future flights.
AND THE UNIVERSITY has helped provide
some of the shuttle's manpower: Jack Lousman, a
Pioneer High School and University graduate, is
scheduled to pilot the third space shuttle mission.
The University's contribution to the latest flight is
part of a long tradition of University involvement in
the country's space program.
The tradition began in 1914 when the University
established the first aeronautical engineering
department in the nation.
"OF COURSE THEY didn't have aerospace
engineering in those days," chuckled Harm Buning,
assistant chairman of the University's Aerospace
Engineering Department.
Since that time the University has designed
equipment used in countless manned and unmanned
spacecraft and has helped educate more than a
dozen Apollo astronauts.
George Carignan, director of the Space Physics
Research lab, has been working on the current shut-
tle's mass spectrometer for several years. That
device, along with six or seven other instruments,
make up the shuttle's Induced Environmental Con-
tamination Modifier.
THESE INSTRUMENTS will monitor the exter-
nal environment of the space shuttle. Carignan said
it is necessary to know what effects the dumping
of about 200 pounds of water daily from the shuttle
will have on the immediate environment because
the optical experiments the shuttle will eventually
conduct require a clear environment.
The mass spectrometer developed here measures
the gaseous environment around the shuttle. It will
be even more significant in the Galileo mission
planned in the mid-1980s in which a probe will
examine Jupiter's atmosphere.
The University has also been conducting research
on several other instruments the space program
will use in future flights.
ONE SUCH development is a Fabry-Berot device
that will be used to measure winds in the lower at-
mosphere from observations in the higher at-
mosphere by means of the Doppler effect. Another
is an imaging spectrometric observatory which will
be able to determine the level of ozone in the at-
mosphere.
University students have a chance to get in on the
space shuttle action too. Aerospace Engineering 482
See 'U', Page 7
Columbia
cleared for
launching
Reagan returns home
to recover from shot
WASHINGTON (UPI) - With a wave
and a smile, President Reagan walked
out of the hospital yesterday and was
whisked back to the White House a
dozen days after a gunman tried to kill
him.
Reagan, in high spirits, shunned the
normal wheelchair exit of a hospital
patient.
"I WALKED IN here and I'm going to
walk out," he jokingly told some 75 doc-
tors, nurses and orderlies massed in the
lobby before stepping to a waiting
limousine.
The president, shot in the chest Mar-
ch 30 in an assassination attempt,
looked thin and moved stiffly yester-
day, but was obviously happy to return
to the White House to finish
recuperating.-.
Doctors at the George Washington
Medical Center discharged the
president when a final series of chest X-
rays showed that a spot on his left lung
was clearing up. They said it probably
was dried blood or tissue.
DR. DENNIS O'Leary, chief of
clinical affairs, estimated it would take
four to eight months, perhaps longer,
before Reagan was "totally back to
normal."
White House press secretary James
Brady, wounded in the head, was the
only one of Reagan's fellow victims who
remained hospitalized.
Brady is "making excellent
progress," O'Leary said. "Mentally he
is virtually almost 100 percent of what
he was before all this happened. The
return of personality is evolving
steadily, it is very far along.
"He is a little subdued now, but we
think it is a pretty good sign because it
means he is in touch with reality."
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) -
Space shuttle Columbia - its com-
puters now fine-tuned and flight-ready
- was given a'new curtain time for its
trial flight: this morning, just after
dawn. Lift-off will mark the anniver-
sary of man's first dramatic stab into
the heavens by a Soviet cosmonaut 20
years ago.
Weather could interfere. The
forecast was for significant cloud
cover, and launch director George
Page said yesterday, "We'll see what
it's like when we get to launch time."
Page said astronauts John Young and
Robert Crippen flew training landings
early yesterday morning and expressed
concern about the clouds.
THE PROBLEM THAT kept Young
and Crippen earthbound on Friday was
a difference in timing between two of
the shuttle's primary computers and a
backup unit, officials at Kennedy Space
Center said yesterday.
The difference, called a "40
millisecond skew" by space agency
specialists, scrubbed the first launch
attempt. Without the computers, which
control the spacecraft, the Columbia
could not return safely to Earth.
Returning to Earth is what the
Columbia is all about. It is the first
spaceship designed to be reflyable,
bearing little resemblance to the bell-
shaped capsule that Yuri Gagarin rode
into orbit during 1961.
LIFTOFF WAS rescheduled for 7
a.m. today, 59 minutes after dawn.
John Yardley, head of the shuttle
program for the National Aeronautics
and Space Administration, ordered the,
countdown to be restarted at 6 p.m.
yesterday.
"At present, all computers are up and
running properly," a space agency an-
nouncement said.
"We were quite fortunate to nail the
problem as quickly as we did," said
Richard Parten, deputy chief of data
systems at the Johnson Space Center in
Houston. "Sometimes these things take
several days to find and correct."
But, he added, "In our judgment it
poses no threat to the flight tomorrow."
NASA OFFICIALS said they expec-
ted troublesome cloud cover today and
Page guessed there might be some
delay in the 7 a.m. launch target. He
said a launch was possible tomorrow if
the clouds did not part anytime this
morning.
The weather was forecast to be clear
at the landing sight at Edwards Air
Force Base in California and the
emergency landing strip at the White
Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.
At the time Friday's launch was
scrubbed, it was thought that the
malfunction was in the fail-safe back-
up computer. Actually, experts
discovered the problem in the primary
system.
On April 12, 1961, Gagarin in his
Vostok I capsule, opened the door in
space to humans with a one-orbit flight
lasing one hour, 48 minutes.
The countdown was stopped Friday,
16 minutes before the scheduled
blast off of the test flight, when lights in
the spacecraft cockpit and on consoles
in Cape Canaveral and Houston
signaled a computer failure.
Ar rnoto
PRESIDENT REAGAN FLASHES a smile upon returning to the White
House yesterday. Reagan spent 12 days in the hospital recovering from a
shot by a would-be assassin.
Review of geography
unfair, students claim
bli
-woo
By SUE INGLIS
Students criticized the recommen-
dation of the geography review com-
mittee for "inequity" and "bias" at a
tudent-sponsored hearing yesterday
afternoon.
Those who attended said they were
dissatisfied with avenues for student
input in the geography review, and
alleged that their ability to "think
critically" and make well-informed
contributions to budget decisions has
been impaired by the failure of the ad-
ministration to provide them with suf-
ficient information.
. A REPORT BY THE geography
review committee, released to LSA
faculty and some students on Tuesday,
recommended that either the entire
geography department be discon-
tinued, or that only the cultural com-
ponent of the program be eliminated,
keeping the areas of cartography and
urban and physical geography intact.
"What bothers me (about the review
committee's report)," said Margaret
Talmers, LSA-SG vice president, "is
that there are two recommendations.
They recommended elimination of the
department when the committee ac-
tually saw there was a lot of value in
keeping a lot of the department."
Talmers was one of 12 students who
spoke at yesterday's hearing. Acting
LSA Associate Dean for Curricular Af-
fairs Jens Zorn was also present to an-
swer students' questions.
Student leaders from MSA and LSA-
SG will compile a report of the hearing
and forward it to the college dean and
executive committee as part of the in-
formation package on possible discon-
tinuance of the geography department.
Also included in that package will be
the review committee report, the
geography department's response to
the review, and a formal opinion on
discontinuance by the LSA faculty.
LSA FACULTY members will con-
sider the review committee report at a
special meeting tomorrow.
While not bound to the faculty vote,
the LSA dean and executive committee,
comprised of six senior faculty mem-
bers, will then decide whether to
recommend elimination of the
geography department to Vice
President for Academic Affairs Bill
Frye.
Final approval of any discontinuance
proposal rests with the Regents.
STUDENTS SAID THE data used in
the peer review committee's report was
"misleading." "The implication is that
geography is the worst department,"
said LSA junior Paul Avery.
Students also said they felt the ad-
ministration had not taken a hard
enough look at other places to cut the
budget before targeting geography.
"I have thus far to see with the
(geography) review committee, the
dean, the executive committee, even
President Shapiro, where there will be
cuts with waste in the University (ad-
ministration) instead of singling out in-
dividual units," said Mark Sobel.
"Alumni are buying cars for football
players, instead of saving departmen-
ts," added Avery.
Talmers
... disturbed by separate
recommendations
Cable communication Daily Photo by DEBORAH LEWIS
A Third Wave Communications televison satellite disc sits outside the entrance of the Track and Tennis Building at Fifth
and Hoover streets yesterday. The disc and accompanying television are part of the company's exhibit at the Michigan
Technology Fair scheduled to end today. Admission is $1 for students and $2 for the general public.
TODAY-
Tax trauma
TUDENTS WHO HAVE procrastinated writing that
last term paper or studying for final exams may
have yet another deadline to contend with-
especially if they haven't filed their federal income
tax form. The deadline is midnight Wednesday, and accor-
ding to IRS statistics, a good many Americans have put off
their tax tasks. As of April 3, the IRS had only received 58.5
to you lights up? Some people would politely inform the of-
fender they have emphysema; others might kindly ask the
smoker to leave, or leave themselves; and still others
might grin and bear it. But not Montana State Rep. John
Vincent. Vincent took quick action against a fellow
lawmaker puffing his cigar on the House Floor-he sprayed
him with a fire extinguisher. Vincent Friday asked Les Kit-
selman to put out his cigar because the smoke was
bothering him. When Kitselman ignored the request, Vin-
cent grabbed the extinguisher and doused him. Q
said. "It wasn't a reflection of the man at all," said 79-year-
old Earl Whelchel, who has lived in the town of 1,200
residents most of his life. "I live near him, and I didn't
know his last name. There wasn't a whole lot of interest in
the election anyway." It's just as well he didn't win,
Ellsworth's wife said. The couple is planning to move to
New York. okQ
Penny pincher
Among the weighty questions now before the U.S.
Supreme Court is Frank Makara's complaint over $1.95.
would take-I don't know-about six-seven gallons worth.
But it actually only took $5.05 worth," said Makara, who
has a six-cylinder sedan. "She says, 'You got to pay $7 or
you're not getting out of here.' Now, I am not going to punch
her in the nose and call her a liar, so I paid her $7. But I only
have $5 in the tank. I gave them $1.95 for nothing," he said.
So far, that $1.95 has cost Makara over $100 in court
costs.
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