THE SUMMER SESSION KANSAN
79th Year, No.14
The University of Kansas, Lawrence, Kansas
Tuesday, July 29, 1969
KU geochemist to test moon rocks
Moon rocks brought to earth aboard Apollo 11 will enable a University of Kansas geochemist to test his theory that the lunar surface may contain water.
Prof. Edward J. Zeller and Miss Gisela Dreschhoff, a KU graduate student in physics, will be among the first scientists to examine the precious lunar samples. They expect to depart in a
few days for the Manned Spacecraft Center at Houston.
Zeller and Luciano B. Ronca of the Boeing Scientific Research Laboratory, Seattle, Wash., will examine lunar samples for chemical alteration and radiation damage caused by the solar wind. Analysis of the samples also will test Zeller's theory that a chemical reaction produces
water trapped inside lunar surface materials when they are bombarded by the solar wind (a stream of protons from the run) or solar flare protons (the result of storms on the sun).
Zeller and Ronca plan to conduct preliminary tests with equipment available at the Lunar Receiving Laboratory in Houston, and then to bring lunar samples to the University of Kansas for further tests. Their initial tests at Houston may be performed while the lunar samples are still under quarantine.
Mariner spacecraft nearing Mars, will send possible life support data
PASADENA, Calif. (UPI) — The United States is aiming for a multimillion milestone in space this week which in some respects will surpass even man on the moon.
Two littler Mariner spaceships will fly to within 2,000 miles of the planet Mars—one on Thursday and the other next Tuesday. They have no men aboard and after they fly past they will go into eternal orbit around the sun.
But the information they will flash back may give scientists the answer to whether the red planet has the environment to support some form of life comparable to what we know on earth.
Campers get top awards
Eighteen students have been recognized by the journalism division of the Midwestern Music and Art Camp for outstanding work in the 1969 summer program.
They were singled out at an awards program Thursday morning in Flint Hall. Certificates and copies of the "Autobiography of William Allen White" were presented to five students, and certificates to the other 13.
Judie Black, McPherson;
Scott Chandler, Onancock, Va.;
Wilma Moore, Wichita; Saye
Sutton, Athens, Ga.; and Debbie
Wunn, Estherville, Iowa.
Awards were made for overall performance, most of the winning students having been enrolled in such classes as reporting, editing, advertising, magazine, graphic arts, radio and television, photography, editorial and feature writing, editorial problems and policies and yearbook. Some of them worked on the camp yearbook, Tempo, and all were staff members of both the Summer Session Kansan and the Kamper Kansan.
The other 13 who were recognized:
The top five students:
Mary Elizabeth Aguiar, Portsmouth, R.I.; David Appleton, Murphysboro, Ill.; Hollye Cappleman, Austin, Texas; David Danielson, Apple Valley, Calif.; Wendy Elliott, Thayer; Cheryl George, Grinnell, Iowa; Jane Glazer, Sioux City, Iowa; Cindy Hines, Martin, S.D.; Donald Ohm, Omaha; David McMillan, Ventura, Calif.; Peggy Robinson, Knoxville, Tenn.; Sue Walker, Colorado Springs, Colo; and David Willingham, College Park, Ga.
If the answer is yes, it will be a giant propulsion for the efforts to put American men on Mars. Vice President Spiro Agnew has called for a national commitment to do so by the close of the century.
Others are calling for a reappraisal of the space program.
Mariner 6, the first of the two 850-pound, windmill-shaped craft, has been on the voyage from launch at Cape Kennedy since Feb. 24 and will have travelled 241 million miles in 156 days when it reaches "near encounter" with Mars at 1:15 a.m. EDT Thursday.
Mariner 7 was launched on March 27 and will have flown 197 million miles in 130 days when it approaches 2,000 miles from Mars at 1 a.m. EDT Thursday, Aug. 5.
A spokesman at the jet propulsion laboratory at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena, which has conducted the Mars probes for NASA, speaks rather wistfully of Mariner coming right after the moon landing.
"If it hadn't been for Apollo 11," he says, "Mariner would be the No.1 scientific event of 1969."
The factor that makes Mariiner 6 and 7 so significant is the meshing of photographic, temperature, and atmospheric findings that may find an answer to man's dream of living things on another planet.
Mars is six-tenths the size of earth. Previous scientific research, including the flypast of Mariner 4 in 1965, shows it does have a gaseous atmosphere, its temperatures may be roughly equivalent to those on earth and it has clouds floating above its surface.
One of the vital requirements to support of life is water and that is one of the principal clues that Mariner will seek.
The world's television public will get another incredible show from space. The two spacecraft are programmed to transmit back 143 still pictures, some showing a closeup of as little as 900 feet of the planet's surface.
interpreting the data obtained are Larry J. Kevan, associate professor of chemistry, and Robert J. Friauf, professor of physics.
KU Aids office hampered by lack of available funds
By TERRY ALGREN Summer Kansan Reporter
Students who are in need of financial aid in order to attend KU are the concern of the Office of Student Financial Aid. Robert Billings, director of the office, states that the current problem is not simply that more students are applying than can be given aid, but that more students are applying and less money is given to the office through governmental agencies—and therefore fewer students are being helped. Those who are helped are being helped to a lesser degree than they would have been a few years ago.
Aid from the government is given through three main channels. This coming fall, about 700 students will share in about $400,000 worth of Educational Opportunity Grants. Another 250 will benefit from the Work-Study Program, and receive a total of $130,000. The largest of the three programs is the National Defense Students Loans (NDSL). This program will give aid to about 1200 students at KU and it will total over $650,000. Even as much as this seems to be, the amount has been reduced as much as 25
per cent from its level of a few years ago, 2,000 to 2,500 students regularly apply for grants, but only around 1,200 are given aid. 2,500 incoming freshmen have requested consideration for aid in scholarship form for the fall term, but only 600 can be given the scholarships.
The problem is federal allocation of funds. Under the NDSL plan, 1,377 KU students were aided in 1965-66. They received $1,014,000 in grants. There were 15 fewer aided in 1967, but the amount of aid was down to $969-600. In 1967-68, the number of students receiving assistance from NDSL was up again, but the total figure of aid was down by $14,000.
Last year only 1,124 KU students received the aid, and the total amount was down again, this time to a figure much lower than that of other years----$709,350.
During the past four years Zeller and Ronca, who earned the Ph.D. degree at KU, have conducted experiments showing that chemical reactions occur when solids are irradiated with high-energy protons. They expect that the solar wind or solar flare protons produce similar chemical reactions on the lunar surface. Since some of the compounds resulting from these reactions are capable of exploding on contact with oxygen or water, Zeller and Ronca believe the compounds may be hazardous to activities on the lunar surface.
Approximately 45 per cent of KU's students will receive aid through the Financial Aid office this fall. Many others will apply, and it will be their misfortune to be rejected as aid applicants because of lack of funds. Little can be done to expand the amount of funds made available.
The potential dangers suggested by Zeller's and Ronca's experiments were taken into consideration in planning the Apolla 11 mission, Zeller said. He hopes that the tests he and Ronca will conduct in Houston and at the University of Kansas will be of substantial help in planning future Apollo missions.
Other University of Kansas scientists who may assist Zeller, Ronca, and Miss Dreschoff in examining the lunar samples and
In laboratory experiments using protons to bombard glass, a silica compound, Zeller found that water was produced by the resulting chemical reaction. The protons, which are the nuclei of hydrogen atoms, jar oxygen atoms loose and react with them, he explained. The silica compound used in his experiments has a close chemical resemblance to the materials scientists believe make up the lunar surface, and the laboratory proton bombardment corresponds to the effects of solar flares.
Zeller said NASA is interested in finding a lunar source of water not for drinking, but for fuel. If the solar wind produces water inside the rocks on the moon, as Zeller's experiments indicate it may, the water could be extracted and separated into hydrogen and oxygen by using solar energy. The hydrogen and oxygen could in turn be used for fuel, Zeller explained.
If Zeller's theory proves correct, it could be of long-range significance to the space program.
Lea Anne Brown, Journalism Camper, ponders packing chore for homeward trip