Ninety-One Years Of Editorial Freedom E 3idii4a 143IatiQ 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 Iq w '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. lkt i I