Tuesday, March 14, 2000
The University Daily Kansan
Section A · Page 5
Nation/World
NASA to implement new program approach
The Associated Press
LOS ANGELES — In the wake of two botched missions to Mars, reports on NASA's "faster, better, cheaper" approach to space exploration suggest the agency is trying to do too much with too little money and not enough oversight.
The reviews released yesterday do not recommend a return to the large, expensive space missions of the 1970s and 1980s. Instead, management must be held accountable, goals clearly set and, if the money isn't available programs downsized
"We need to slow down some, not rush too quickly into important programs and projects, plan and implement them more carefully, and move away from fixations on cost and near-term gain," said Tony Spear, who led one of the reviews and is a former manager at Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Last year was especially difficult for NASA. In addition to losing two Mars probes, space shuttle flights
were delayed, the Hubble Space Telescope temporarily shut down and other missions either missed their targets or failed at launch.
NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin ordered reviews, including the two released yesterday. Spear's analysis of "faster, better, cheaper" and a report on management by the Mars Climate Orbiter failure board. Last week, another board made 81 recommendations on shuttle management, safety and technical issues.
A common theme runs through both reports:"Faster, better, cheaper" missions place too much emphasis on cost and schedule reduction and too little on management, oversight, leadership and evaluating risk.
The Climate Orbiter, for instance, was lost when a contractor failed to convert measurements into metric units. The $125 million probe flew too close to Mars on Sept. 23 and is believed have burned up in the atmosphere.
ON THE WEB
NASA's Web site:
http://www.nasa.gov
NASA's Mars Polar Lander site:
http://marslander.jpl.nasa.gov
The mistake itself was not as serious as the failure to catch it, the review board said.
"It's Management 101," said John Pike, an analyst for the Federation of American Scientists. "They're basically saying there are four things you have to balance: cost, schedule, content and risk."
The reports are vague in specifics. The Climate Orbiter board proposed a new mantra called Mission Success First that would help employees keep focused as the agency shifts from a small number of pricey missions to many cheap ones.
The space agency will decide what specific actions to take by midsummer, said W. Brian Keegan, NASA's chief engineer.
Workers search for missing bodies
Sites in Vietnam could hold clues
The Associated Press
DONG PHU, Vietnam — Peering into a mud hole 6 feet deep, surrounded by rice paddies, Defense Secretary William Cohen saw for himself the heroic efforts — and possibly the futility — of America's quest to return home the remains of 2,000 servicemen still missing from the Vietnam War.
In that hole stood a mud-caked forensic anthropologist, Dennis Danielson, and a dozen others lifting slabs of earth into metal buckets. One by one, the buckets were handed along a human chain of dozens of Vietnamese workers, some of them nearly knee-deep in
the glistening mud, to be sifted by hand for even the tiniest scrapes of wire, metal or human remains
clues to one more MIA mystery.
"We will do whatever we can to bring some peace of mind to the families who have lost their loved ones," said Cohen, in reference to the war that cost more than 58,000 American lives. Responding to
Resolving the remaining
Cohen: Resolved to locate the remains of missing American servicemen
missing-in-action cases, Cohen said, was the very highest of priorities. It also is the main foundation upon
which Washington and Hanoi are attempting to build a military-to-military relationship a generation after the last U.S. combat forces withdrew from Vietnam in defeat.
Thus, it was no coincidence that one of the first things Cohen did upon arriving in Vietnam — as the first American secretary of defense to visit since the war — was travel to the excavation site near the village of Dong Phu, about 20 miles southwest of Hanoi.
Villagers gawked and giggled at the commotion caused by a U.S. defense chief, his security entourage, his stern-faced Vietnamese military escorts and a throng of reporters and photographers.
Cohen thanked the Vietnamese— who lost an estimated 3 million of their own people during the war — for their cooperation in searching for missing U.S. servicemen.
Bosnian Serb charged in massacre
THE HAGUE, Netherlands — Calling it a "triumph of evil," U.N. prosecutors showed footage of meadows filled with corpses and bones decaying in mass graves as the trial opened yesterday of the highest-ranking Serb to go before a tribunal on genocide charges.
Bosnian Serb Gen. Radislav Kristic is charged in Europe's bloodiest massacre since World War II: the July 1995 slaughter of at least 7,500 Muslim men and boys at Srebrenica, a U.N.-declared demilitarized zone.
"The manner in which these people perish and the scale of this
The Associated Press
atrocity is truly incomprehensible by every standard of humanity," said prosecutor Mark Harmon, a former unit chief in the U.S. Justice Department. "This is a case about the triumph of evil."
The massacre at Srebrenica, Bosnia, has come to symbolize the terrifying tragedy of 1992-1995 Bosnian war's ethnic cleansing campaigns.
Prosecution witness Jean Rene Ruez set the scene for the U.N. war crimes tribunal. The French forensics expert narrated a film of refugees being crowded into a U.N. compound in Srebrenica and receiving assurances of safety from the Serbs,
investigators led by Ruez have exhumed 1,800 corpses over five years and believe 2,500 more still are buried.
to make sure that they would go like organized cattle to their deaths, he said.
Krestic, who commanded the Bosnian serb army's Drina corps during the Serb war, is charged with every crime under the judges' jurisdiction: genocide, war crimes, crimes against humanity and grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions.
He has pleaded not guilty. Conviction would bring a maximum life prison term. The U.N. court has no death penalty.
Bush, Gore focus campaign tactics
The Associated Press
MIAMI — George W. Bush, embracing Capitol Hill Republicans after months of keeping his distance, told them yesterday: "Be patient, help is on the way."
Meanwhile, Al Gore wanted to talk campaign tactics, pressing Bush to ditch his TV ads.
As primary voting headed into a Southern "Super Tuesday" with all the suspense gone, the two remaining major candidates — Gore from Florida, Bush from stops in Mississippi and Louisiana — dueled over which of them has the makings of a president.
continue the prosperity begun under the Clinton-Gore administration.
Democrat Gore said Americans wanted to
"We know what works. Are you with me?" he asked cheerling doctors, nurses and administrators at the University of Miami's teaching hospital.
interest campaign donors wanted.
Gore said Bush offered risky tax cuts that no one but special-
"Leadership can make a difference," he said. "Experience can make a difference in the quality of leadership."
However, at a campaign rally at Brandon High School in Brandon, Miss., Bush said, "America wants somebody not of Washington."
"What I'd like to tell this Congress is be patient, help is on the way," said the Texas governor, who, earlier in his campaign,
congressional
iroze congressional Republicans out with criticism of their agenda and ideology.
GOP leaders are trying to hold on to majorities in both houses, a task that will be easier if Bush runs a strong presidential campaign, and Bush would like a Republican Congress if he is elected president.
Politics in the South becoming less partisan
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON
WASHINGTON — The once solid South isn't solid anymore. The political transformation of territory that once was a lock for the Democrats — and then became a stronghold for the Republicans during the past two decades — could make the South a presidential battleground this year.
"The issues that moved the South into the Republican column are all pretty much on the back burner or have disappeared," said Hastings Wyman Jr., editor of the Southern Political Report newsletter. He cited the end of the Cold War, the fading of racial issues as a top priority and the Democrats' recent success with the economy.
Democrats broke the steady GOP progress in 1989 by winning governors races in Alabama and South Carolina and retaining the governorship in Georgia. And Arkansas Bill Clinton was able to carve away four of 11 Southern states — Arkansas, Tennessee and Louisiana in both 1992 and 1996, plus Georgia the first year and Florida the second.
for Republicans, many believe the political dynamic in the region is shifting.
"People in the South no longer think in purely partisan, ideological terms," said Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee, a Republican. "They are thinking in pragmatic, practical terms."
Five states from the South — Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Tennessee and Texas — hold party primaries today, along with Oklahoma. While the parties' nominees were settled a week ago, the primaries still shine the spotlight on a region that could play a crucial role in November.
"My guess is that the South will be the most Republican region in the country," said political scientist Charles Bullock of the University of Georgia. "But that doesn't mean the Democrats can't pick off some states."
While the South remains strong
Parts of the South — South Carolina, Alabama, Mississippi, Virginia and Texas — are seen as very tough for the Democrats. Other states such as North Carolina, Georgia, Louisiana, Tennessee, Arkansas and Florida are viewed as more likely to be competitive.
All Shows Only $2* Purchase Tickets at the SUA Box Office Level 4, KS Union
SOUTHWIND 12 3433 IOWA
832-0880
BARGAN MATINEES INDICATED BY ()
STADIUM SEATING * ALL DIGITAL
Hollywood Theaters
Gent & Burch   Daisy
1 Md Day Stags™ 4.25 (1:25) 4:20 (1:25) 4:20 (1:25)
2 American Express® 1:15 (1:25) 7:00 (1:25) 7:00 (1:25)
3 What Planet Are You From? 1:15 (1:25) 5:00 (1:25) 7:35 (9:50)
4 Hanging Up™ 1:25 (1:25) 7:00 (1:25) 8:40 (9:40)
5 The Whole Nine Yards™ 1:15 (1:25) 4:40 (1:25) 7:25 (9:55)
6 Mission To Mars™ 1:10 (1:25) 7:30 (1:05) 10:05 (1:55)
7 Mission To Mars™ 1:10 (1:25) 7:30 (1:05) 10:05 (1:55)
8 Wonder Boys™ 1:10 (1:25) 4:15 (1:05) 10:55 (1:55)
9 The Tiger Movie® 2:05 (1:25) 4:10 (8:55) — 9:55
also...The Beach® 2:05 (1:25) 4:10 (8:55) — 9:55
11 Snow Day® 1:30 (1:25) 4:50 (7:30) 9:30 (9:30)
12 Winter Wonderland® 1:30 (1:25) 4:50 (7:30) 9:30 (9:30)
4:54 8:00am Sat & Sun Daily
1 The Sense Sixth **M3** 11(1) (1:50) 4:30,7:00,9:30
2 Cider House Rules **M2** (1:50) 4:30,7:00,9:30
3 Pitch Black **G5** (1:50) 4:30,7:10,9:40
4 Reindeer Games **M6** (1:50) 4:30,7:10,9:45
5 The Next Best Thing **M5** (1:55) 4:55,7:15,9:45
6 Bons Don't Cry **C7** (1:50) 4:40,7:10,9:40
★ NO VIP • PASSES & SUPERSAWERS
SHOWTIMES FOR TODAY ONLY
Banner Day Camp Now Hiring Summer Staff! June 12 - August 11 Excellent Wages Lake Forest, IL (847)295-4900 or 1-800-726-4901