University Daily Kansan/Wednesday, January 13, 1988
3B
Team gives radar Antarctic test
By Michael Carolan
Kansan staff writer
They battled the Antarctic summer with parkas, wool sweaters and insulated boots, said Curt Davis, Prairie Village senior.
Davis was one of four members of a university of Kansas engineering team that traveled across the globe in mid-November to test experimental radar equipment.
Davis, Edward Zeller, professor of geology, physics and astronomy; Dale Rummer, professor of electrical and computer engineering; and Garudachar Raju, Bangalore, India, graduate student, spent almost a year at the university as part of a project financed by the National Science Foundation.
They lived on top of a glacier in
Antarctica for 18 days, while locating hidden crevasses on the flat surface of the glacier and surveying layers in the ice and the rock surface beneath it.
"I like the isolation, the cold and the living conditions," said Zelier, who has traveled to Antarctica the past 13 years. "I feel extremely comfortable in Antarctica," he said.
Davis said, "I enjoyed living far out there in the middle of nowhere. It's a weird feeling though. You have to spend a lot of time using the sun shines 24 hours a day."
The team flew Nov. 14 to New Zealand, where they bought their arctic gear, and then to McMurdo base, which was set up by the National Science Foundation. There, they tested the radar equipment's ability
to find crevasses on glacier surfaces.
A crevase, which is a crack where two glaciers meet, is sometimes covered by a thin sheet of snow or ice that makes it difficult to spot.
"An airplane has fallen in, and every few years people fall in and have died." Zeller said. "It's just one of those facts of life down there."
The radar equipment tested by KU's team bounces signals beneath the layer of ice to determine the depth of the crevasse.
After conducting radar surveys from the air, the team traveled to a remote station 200 miles from the South Pole. There, they lived in tents with about 15 other people from different scientific teams.
"We had an excellent crew," Zeller said. "Everyone got along well. We
The temperature ranged from 25 to 30 degrees Fahrenheit, but the wind reached speeds of 50 mph, Zeller said.
got a lot of work done."
The wind would snap the sides of the hill, sounding like pistols shots "he said.
The team used Navy aircraft to test an ice-probing radar and dragged huts full of radar equipment across the glaciers with a tractor. The team also located various layers in the ice and located ences in rock elevations beneath it.
"Satellites measure the top of the ice, and we're providing the tool to measure the bottom." Rummer said. "Overall, we demonstrated that the system is working and that the design is satisfactory."
Weapons system may launch NASA probes
The Associated Press
PASADENA, Calif. — Dozens of tiny coffee can-sized spacecraft could be launched inexpensively from a "Star Wars" anti-missle weapon to explore planets, comets and asteroids, a NASA engineer said.
"It would be a good thing if resources being spent on the Strategic Defense Initiative could also be used for civilian purposes, especially for space exploration," said Ross M. Jones, a spacecraft systems engineer at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Jones, who normally works on the Mars Observer space probe planned for 1992, presented his proposal Monday during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics aerospace sciences conference in Reno, Nev.
The micro spacecraft envisioned by Jones, would each weigh two or three pounds and would be about the size of a coffee can, a NASA news release said. They would be launched from an electromagnetic launcher, commonly called a railgun, and placed in orbit around Earth.
The Defense Department is developing the railguns, which would launch projectiles to shoot down enemy missiles, as part of President Reagan's proposed Strategic Defense Initiative, nicknamed "Star Wars."
"The capability of launching smaller probes more often is very appealing because they can address a number of specific science objectives," said Ed Stone, project scientist for NASA's twin Voyager spacecraft explorations.
"I don't know the details, but it is in the direction we need to be thinking as a way to diversify our program," said Stone, who also is chairman of physics, mathematics and astronomy at the California Institute of Technology.
While the tiny probes couldn't carry many instruments, they might be outfitted with tiny cameras, radio equipment and power supplies, Jones said.
Stone said the probes also might carry gamma-ray detectors, and perhaps seismometers to measure quake activity on moons of the outer planets, if a way could be devised for them to survive a landing.
year," Jones said, estimating that the micro spacecraft would cost a fraction of the $300 million to $800 million price for major space probes
James Graf, who is Jones' supervisor and head of the laboratory's inner planets spacecraft systems design group, called the proposal "an opportunity for the civilian sector to utilize hardware that's being developed in the military arena to accomplish beneficial scientific missions."
Residents thrive in Bowersock Mill
Using micro spacecraft would reduce the cost of interplanetary missions and the need to make spacecraft totally reliable, since the failure of one or more tiny probes wouldn't be as drastic as the failure of a major spacecraft. Graf said.
"It's a very novel approach." Graf said. "It shows promise and needs to be investigated more."
By Jadey Anfinson
Special to the Kansan
Sunlight barely streams through the dusty windows at noon. Shadows are cast over rusting bolts, century-old fixtures and rotting wood piled on the third floor. Snakes slither through the rubble in the grey brick building.
But despite its run-down condition, the Bowersock Mill is used by the KU Crew team, artists, a candymaker and others in search of solitude.
The old mill building, Sixth and New York streets, is connected to the power plant behind City Hall. The huge, clammy rooms, which smell like wet wool sweaters, are sectioned off and rented for a variety of uses.
The KU Crew holds practices and stores its equipment at the mill. As the sun sets, the members pull their boats out of the water and store them on eight-foot racks. For an hour, the crew rests in a boat, then rush the rush of the Kaw River is the only sound left as the last member pulls out of the parking lot.
Other tenants' work in solitude after the crew is gone. Some stay late into the night working in the spaces of a friend together in the musy building.
Bob Gent, a glass blower, started renting space for a studio at the mill
"We put in a floor over a 12-foot deep pit, replaced 36 panes of glass and hosed the place down two or three times." Gent said.
Despite the problems with dirt and a freak fire that damaged his roof recently, Gent said he enjoyed working at the mill.
"The darkness and snakes don't bother me," Gent said. "The only thing that's spooky is the fishermen
who show up at night and get drunk."
who show up at night and get on tukk.
However, Dale Jarrrett, the night watchman, said the mill had its ghost stories.
Jarrett said as he waved his cigar around a basketball court-sized room, "A guy in a white shirt follows me when I make my rounds in the dark. He disappears when I turn around."
Jarrett said he had seen other phantom men who disappeared into vapor but he said he didn't worry about it.
"I have always felt comfortable here," he said. "I feel like a hermit." Bosco, the guard dog, is his companion during the long night watches.
The mill was built at the turn of the century by the Hill family. Stephen Hill, a Lawrence stockbroker, owns the mill now. He said he was waiting for a developer to buy the building.
He said that except for the small fire and a rowdy high school-aged band, he had no problems with tenants.
Phillips Confections, a Lawrence candy firm, spent $7,000 to renovate its space in the mill. Marcus Phillips, the founder and owner of chocolates nationwide from the mill.
Toni Kalousek, a textiles printer,
said she rented her space because
she could watch a nest of eagles
outside her window and because it
was cheap. She said she had to
replace her floor to make the room
functional, however.
Hill said he rented space for almost any legal purpose.
"They can do what they want with it," he said. "I know some of the places need work, but things have worked out."
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