KANSAN
University of Kansas Lawrence, Kansas
The University Daily
Wednesday, November 4, 1981 Vol. 92, No.53 USPS 650-640
T-minus: 31, holding Computer problems delay clock, astronauts Engle and Truly
By United Press International
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The breakthrough flight space shuttle astronauts Joe Engle and Richard Truly in the shuttle Columbia was the result of by apparent problems with a ground control company.
There was no assurance that the ship could be launched on its unprecedented second flight into orbit today, but engineers worked as quickly as possible to resolve the trouble. A postponement today would mean a delay to Friday at the earliest for the five-day flight.
At 7:30 a.m. CST, launch control said the start of the mission was most likely 1½ hours away. The clock was stopped at T-minus 31 seconds after the scheduled liftoff time of 6:30 a.m.
It was a disappointing snag in a countdown that had proceeded almost flawlessly since it began last Saturday. The flight had been delayed two hours early and it appeared everything was going well today.
Launch director George Page advised Engle and Truly, lying on their backs in the Columbia
cabin, of the possibility there would be a delay of at least two hours.
"How you guys feel about sitting there that long?" Page asked.
"We're go," said Engle, who like truly will be making his first flight into orbit. "We'll wait that long. You know where to get hold of us if you need us for anything."
"Thank you George," said Truly. "Take your time and do it right."
Page told the astronauts he would resume the countdown "if we can find out what our problem was and solve it quickly to everybody's satisfaction."
One of the reasons for the length delay, in addition to not immediately determining the nature of the problem, was that the three auxiliary power units in the Columbia needed to cool down after having run for several minutes. The system also required hydraulic power for the ship's flight systems.
The initial indication from the Launch control center was that there was a problem with the programming in the vital ground computer system that controls the launch sequence.
See SHUTTLE page 5
Standing outside the City Union Mission, 10th and Troost streets in Kansas City, Mo., a transient spends his day waiting for news from employment and Social Security officials.
Transient lives know no rest
By MARK ZIEMAN
Staff Reporter
KANSAS CITY, Mo.—Fe歼ton Booker walked toward his office at the City Union Mission, drifting through slumbering men withered and ragged from weeks, months and years in cheap flop houses, empty parking garages, abandoned homes, and undercutting the steep, secluded banks of the Missouri River.
Gandys, bums, hobos, tramps, transients,
snowbirds—they are called a variety of names
Booker, the building superintendent for the mission, settled himself behind his desk and told why he was like those men, and why their numbers were increasing at a rate that may be the largest since the days of the Great Depression.
"I came here on a freight train," he said, pipping his morning coffee. "People coming in off
In California, he worked for Volunteer Services of America, he said, and had his own car
"There's a stopin' a person from ridin' the road, I thought that to ride a freight you had"
"to be free."
For almost seven years, he said, it was a life of freight trains and hobo pots.
"t flew to Houston, chasing nothing. Drinking, drinking there, until the money was up. Teppeh
He shook his head. "All you have to be is lonely."
And it is not just men who are hopping freights now.
According to officials of area missions for transcients, women and young adults are also riding the rail and hitting the streets, pushed into transient lives by cutbacks in social services, rising living costs and the current recession.
"The kids think, I wonder how it is to ride a freight?" "Booker said," "I wonder how it is to eat out of a hobo pot with something you've scrugged up. I wonder how it is to be out there with nothing' but four directions to go in?'"
WHATEVER THEIR REASONS, Booker said, the number is growing. Missions throughout the Midwest are already reporting the largest increase in transients in several years.
"I can lay out the format for a person who's going from here to California and he doesn't have to leave the tracks very far to get something to eat," Booker said.
His own traveling days, however, are long gone. At the City Union Mission, he found a job, a wife and family, and most of all, he said, a renewed faith in the Lord.
"The number is growing," he said. "Look at the cost of living. Look at the cost of transport."
It's a liveable existence, but it took planning to survive. he said.
Unfortunately, Booker's success is not a common story. Every day, men and women roll off of freight in dingy stations throughout the Midwest, or are packing their families into battered cars and following the harvest, only to be left stranded and moneyless in the ghetto of Topeka or in skirts of Topeka, or perhaps on a deserted town a few miles east of Lawrence.
"God changed that for me and that's the only thing that's going to take a man from the front."
REV. MAURICE VANDERBERG, the City Union Mission's superintendent, estimated that there were about "2,000 to 3,000 men on the streets" of the city, and said that the number reflected about a 25 percent increase over the last several years.
See BUMS page 8
Mechanical and technical difficulties postponed the scheduled 6:30 a.m. liftoff of the space shuttle Columbia, forcing the spacecraft to remain on its laumpad at Cape Canaveral, Fla.
Downtown plan gets city OK
By JOE REBEIN Staff Reporter
The Lawrence City Commission unanimously accepted a comprehensive plan for downtown redevelopment last night after three and one-half hours of fine tuning the plan.
The plan now goes to the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission for final approval.
The revised version of Alternative 3A will vacate New Hampshire street between Ninth and Eighth Streets and re-route traffic down an alley between New Hampshire and Rhode Island streets. The plan will keep the commercial traffic from spilling into the east Lawrence neighborhoods and will designate Rhode Island as a residential street.
We have accepted a series of concepts that we believe are worth considering, both for downtown," Mavor Marci Francisco said.
The commission used a scissors-and-tape approach in its page-by-page review of the plan, drawn up by Robert B. Taska and Associates, the city's Evanston, Ill.. consulting firm.
The commissioners were as specific as removing the apostrophe from "it's" to revising the third option of the plan, which had been a major stumbling block to the plan's approval.
The city has three options in its plan for retail development.
The major revision made in the third option—changed to alternative 3A last night—was the closing of New Hampshire Street and the street between New Hampshire and Rhode Island streets.
The first two options favor having two free-standing department stores. The third option favors a retail cluster of shops near Sgt. Preston's at 815 New Hammersburg ST.
The old plan had called for the closing of New Hampshire between Nuth and Seventh streets with the traffic re-routed down Rhode Island Street.
Neighborhood groups were opposed to the plan because it would have directed commercial activity there.
The new plan also defines Rhode Island as a local street to be used strictly for residential use.
The alternative will keep the retail area
The commission used amendments written by the association, the Citizens for a Better Downtown, and individual residents as its baseline for making specific changes in the plan.
Pales said the idea of re-routing the traffic down the alley was proposed by Janet Hoffman and Katherine Koch.
"We were engaged in a balancing test—putting together all of the pieces and minuses of the equipment."
OTHER SPECIFIC changes in the plan dealt with the need for public transportation, bicycle
The commission also re-affirmed its commitment to the preservation of historic buildings.
parking and some type of grocery store in the downtown area.
"The whole idea behind the plan was showing to the developer what restrictions there will be to allow."
"It gives us the ability to say yes or no to any type of zoning or developments in the downtown area."
The commission was also firm in keeping the three-option approach.
"All of us have to look at the downtown with a open mind," Commissioner Donald Binsn said.
Security reforms demanded
By Kansan Staff and Wire Reports
LANSING—the inmate activity area of the Kansas State Penitentiary at Lansing is deep within the prison, two minutes from help if trouble starts and a prisoner attacks a guard.
"You're down there with 6 inmates and the phone's the closest protection. They could stop me from getting to the phone," said Jim Blalock, who was fired from his job as a prison guard yesterday for refusing to enter the activity area without a radio.
Blalock and another guard, Steve Becker, both of Tonganoxie, were fired yesterday by Patrick McManus, state secretary of corrections, for a "serious breach of discipline."
The men, both guards for five months, refused to enter the innate activity area on Saturday morning because the only method of communication out of the area was by phone. The prison phone lines were slow and could have been broken, Blalock said, leaving guards isolated.
THE FIRING of the two officers is part of a series of problems shaking the prison since early September, when seven inmates escaped and led police officers in Kansas and Missouri on a weeklong chase. Since then, the prison warden has been fired, a guard has been killed by an inmate
and prison staff members have demanded action to improve prison security and morale.
His firing, Blakead said, will only contribute to the problems. The prison administration found Mr. Bates was a problem.
"They're trying to make an example of us," he said. "An officer did end up down there with a broken jaw."
"It isn't possible to equip every area with a radio," he said. "That area hasn't been a parer of ours."
"A lot of people are floating in and out down there" he said.
Radios were not given to Blalock and Becker, McManus said, because of equipment shortages. Guards in areas equipped with telephones do not carry radios, he said.
Blalock, however, said the activity area, the meeting place for such groups as the prison black awareness organization, native American board of trustees and recreational clubs, could be dangerous.
A RADIO WOULD give guards a chance to prevent or end trouble, he said, because a radio carried on a belt is closer at hand than a phone. Radios also carry alarms, which only have to be turned on to bring reinforcements to an endangered guard within seconds, he said.
See LANSING page 5
Weather
The KU Weather Service forecast calls for mostly cloudy skies and a slight chance of rain today. The high will be about 60 and the low tonight will be in the low 40s. Tomorrow will be partly cloudy with a high near 60.