Wednesday, Jan. 29, 1986
Challenger Flight 51-L
University Daily Kansan
3
Paul Goodman/KANSAN
Members of the KU Army ROTC flag detail, Joel Brandon, Dumas, Texas freshman, left, Kirklin Bateman, Manassas, Va., sophomore and William Sheehy, FT. Leavenworth sophomore, prepare to take down the flag in front of the Military Science Building. The flag flew at half-staff yesterday in honor of the crew members who died aboard the space shuttle Challenger.
Journalists concerned about program's future
Staff writer
By Frank Ybarra
Two KU professors and a few area journalists were concerned about the future of the first journalist in space program after yesterday's fatal explosion of the space shuttle.
Marilyn Yarbrough, professor of law and associate vice chancellor for research, graduate studies and public service, is on a national panel which will pick five journalists who might have a chance to fly on the space shuttle.
Yarbrough said yesterday that the National Aeronautics and Space Administration had lost a lot of equipment and time with the destruction of the shuttle and she wasn't sure whether the program would continue.
"NASA has more pressing concerns than the journalist in space program." she said.
Rick Musser, an associate professor of journalism, is assisting Del Brinkman, dean of journalism, in coordinating a regional review committee which will select eight area journalists for the program.
Musser said it was too early to tell what effect the tragedy that killed all seven crew members would have on the program. But he said that a comment by President Reagan, in his address from the Oval Office yesterday afternoon, might have indicated that the program would continue.
referring to, Reagan said more volunteers and more civilians would eventually be in space.
Musser said he planned to attend a conference for the journalist in space program in Houston tomorrow and Friday. The conference, which was scheduled to help with the planning of the regional committee, had not yet been canceled, he said.
A spokesman at the University of South Carolina, where the program is based, would make no statement concerning the future of the program.
Ken Murphy, who is working on his master's degree in public administration at KU, is one of the many journalists in the area who applied for the job in space.
Murphy, a political reporter for WIBW-TV in Topeka, said he thought the program would continue despite the loss of the shuttle.
KU space work to continue
Murphy said he still wanted to go up in the shuttle if the chance was offered to him but wasn't sure whether other journalists who applied felt the same way.
"I think this is definitely a setback," he said. "But I don't think it's going to stop the program."
The explosion of the space shuttle Challenger yesterday hit close to home for some KU faculty and students, who said the accident should force people to stop taking the near-perfect space program for granted.
"I wouldn't be surprised to see some people more reluctant to go up," he said.
By Sandra Crider
Staff writer
Bob Getz, a columnist for the Wichita Eagle-Beacon, said he wasn't sure the program would continue or whether he wanted to follow through with his application.
The probes, Armstrong said, measured the radiation environment. The first probe, Gallileo, was to be launched from space shuttle Atlantis on May 15 and enter Jupiter's atmosphere. The second probe, Ulysses, was to go to the pole of the sun after its June 6 launch.
Thomas Armstrong, professor of physics and astronomy, and several students have been working on probes which are scheduled to be launched from space shuttles in May and June.
Armstrong has spent about six years working on the probes. He predicted the shuttle program would continue, but not without some changes.
the program in the statement that Musser was
He said he was confident his probes would eventually see deep space.
"Of course it will get done," he said. "There's no doubt in my mind that from this tragedy a stronger and more robust program will emerge."
National Aeronautics and Space Administration officials said at a press conference yesterday that all future shuttle missions would be postponed indefinitely until the cause of the apparent explosion was determined and, if necessary, corrected.
Ed Bell, Wichita graduate student who is working with Armstrong on the Gallileo probe, said that if the probes were not launched within about two weeks of their schedule, they would be delayed for more than a year.
The probes are being launched toward Jupiter, he said, and Earth and Jupiter must be in a certain position — attained only once every 13 months.
"We are dealing with rocket technology where we're using some dangerous, highly explosive fuels," he said. "So far we've been lucky and skillful. There are going to be accidents wherever man and machines mix."
Jan Roskam, Ackers Distinguished professor of aerospace engineering, said there were many possible
Roskam stressed that nothing in technology was done at zero risk, including the shuttle program. He said the great success of the space program had caused the public to see it as infallible.
causes of the incident.
Armstrong said he did not think NASA's handling of the Challenger mission, which was delayed three times before it was launched, was hapazard. But, he said, they would probably take more time on each following mission.
Bell said he also thought the shuttle missions would resume.
"Accidents happen," he said. "We're rather lucky it's the only accident in flight we've ever had."
Jerry Manweiler, coworker and Hoslington graduate student, agreed.
"Look at the success ratio we've had— only two bad things happening where lives were lost out of some 56 manned space missions."
Richard K. Moore, director of the Remote Sensing Laboratory on West Campus, said the laboratory worked on data from a shuttle imaging radar which was used in a mission in fall 1984 and was scheduled to compile data from a spring 1987 mission.
Several faculty members and students expressed anxiety about the kind of media attention the Challenger may receive and how it would affect the shuttle program.
Roskam said that he hoped the press would not "hype" the explosion and that public opinion would remain favorable to the popular space program.
Manweller agreed, "I think that what's going to happen with the program is going to depend on the media."
He said that a lot of negative coverage might sway Congress to cut down on NASA financing.
Teachers' hopes fall with crash
Dream was to be a part of space age
United Press International
Jo Black/Special to the KANSAN
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — New Hampshire teacher Christa McAulick wrote in her application to become the first private citizen in space that she witnessed the birth of the space age and "I would like to participate."
Christa McAuliffe with her parents, Grace and Ed Corrigan, at their Framingham, Mass, home, after she was named to be the first teacher in space last July. McAuliffe died yesterday when the Space Shuttle Challenger exploded.
"I remember the excitement in my home when the first satellite was launched," she wrote in answer to the question "Why do you want to be the first U.S. private citizen in space."
"My parents were amazed and I was caught up with their wonder," she said.
"I remember when Alan Shepard made his historic flight — not even into orbit — and I was thrilled. John Kennedy inspired me with his words about placing a man on the moon and I still remember a cloudy, rainy night driving through Pennsylvania and hearing the news that the astronauts had landed safely.
"As a woman, I have been envious of those men who could participate in the space program and who were encouraged to excel in the areas of math and science. I felt that women had indeed been left outside of one of the most exciting careers available.
"When Sally Ride and other women began to train as astronauts, I could look among my students and see ahead of them an ever-increasing list of opportunities."
McAuliffe ended the question by writing: "I cannot join the space program and restart my life as an astronaut, but this opportunity to connect my abilities as an educator with my interests in history and space is a unique opportunity to fulfill my early fantasies.
"I watched the Space Age being born and I would like to participate."
McAuliffe, a social studies teacher at Concord High School in Concord, N.H., was selected from more than 11,000 applicants to fly on NASA's space shuttle.
When she and nine other finalists were announced in Washington last July, McAuliffe said she wanted to bring back the wonder of it all and convey that sense of wonder to her students. She compared herself to the pioneering women of the West. The shuttle Challenger was to be her horse-drawn wagon and outer space was her frontier.
"We hear about military and political and economic history, we don't find out what the ordinary person was doing," she said then. "So like a woman on the Conestoga wagons pioneering the West, I too would be able to bring back my thoughts in my journal to make that a part of our history."
During Challenger's flight, which NASA took great pains to publicize, McAuliffe had planned to film various demonstrations and conduct two 15-minute lessons from orbit for broadcast by the Public Broadcasting System to school rooms around the nation.
"I think it's going to be very exciting for kids to be able to turn on the TV and see the teacher teaching from space," she said at a crew news conference.
"I'm hoping that this is going to elevate the teaching profession in the eyes of the public and of those potential teachers out there and hopefully one of the maybe secondary objectives of this is students are going to be looking at me and perhaps thinking of going into teaching as professions."
Born in Boston, McAuliffe held a master's degree in education from Bowie State College in Bowie, Md. She held a variety of teaching assignments, all in junior high and high school, and was a member of the National Council of Social Studies.
Shuttle loss is personal for Kansan
By Lori Polson Staff writer
Wendell Mohling feels a more personal loss than most people who saw the explosion of the space shuttle Challenger yesterday morning.
Mohling, a science teacher at Shawnee Mission Northwest High School in Lenexa, Kan., was one of five finalists in the Teacher in Space Ambassador Program.
He spent a week of briefings and classes with Christa McAuliffe, the high school social studies teacher from Concord, N.H., who was killed in the accident. McAuliffe would have been the first private citizen to fly in space.
"I'm shocked by the tragedy," Mohling said yesterday. "My heart goes out to the family.
"We were together for a week this summer in Washington. All of the finalists got to know each other pretty well."
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration invited Mohling and the other finalists to Cape Canaveral, Fla., for a week of briefings and to watch the take off of the shuttle. However, Mohling left Monday before the shuttle launched.
"My wife and I returned Monday night," he said. "There had been so many delays, we weren't sure it was going to take off."
was going
if he had been in Florida, Moh-
ling said, he would have watched
the launching from a special VIP
section reserved for him and the
other finalists.
"I met Christa's brother and sister," he said. "I feel their personal loss."
The incident was extremely tragic, Mohling said, but it hasn't shaken his confidence in the space program.
"I have a lot of confidence in the NASA team and their ability to recover from this kind of event," he said. "It's a tragedy that has struck the entire nation. But the more we talk about it the more we might be able to understand why this type of thing happened.
"Perhaps through the study of the mechanical failure we can find the reasons and the solutions we seek, and we will be able to continue our space program."
Mohling had applied for the Teacher in Space Ambassador Program last year."
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