Space shuttle scheduled for morning lift
By HARRY F. ROSENTHAL
Associated Press Writer
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. NASA officials, stung
three times by‘launch postponements, declared
yesterday that the space shuttle Discovery is ready to
fly and ordered a go-ahead for the ship’s first voyage
this morning.
That decision allowed the final countdown to begin,
aiming for a launch at 8:35 a.rh. EDT 24 hours late.
No weather problems were in prospect. _
Discovery’s computers were given new commands
to get. around the electronic problem that prompted the
latest delay, and NASA said the program will work
“under even the worst-case conditions.”
The shuttle’s reputation as a dependable delivery
system, damaged by the series of delays and three
failures of satellites to.reach orbit, rests heavily on a
successful flight for the third orbiter in America’s
fleet. On its six-day mission, Discovery’s crew of six,
including the second American woman in space, is to
deploy three satellites for paying customers.
“There’s been a history of teething problems in
getting orbiters off on the first launch,” said Kennedy
Space Center spokesman Richard Young of
Discovery’s tardy debut. “We’ve come to anticipate
this sort of thing.”
Top of the National Aeronautics and Space
Administration approved a computer “patch”
designed to insure that .critical commands are carried
out in the first 10 minutes of flight.
Spokesman David Garrett said experts tested “a
worst case scenario” one in which the shuttle’s
boosters and tank fail to drop off on command by the
ship’s computers. In such a case, the astronauts would
have to switch manually to a backup computer in
less than four seconds to shed the excess baggage, or
the shuttle would have to ditch in the ocean.
The problem was simulated in Houston by veteran
astronaut Brewster Shaw.
“One time he missed and the second time he got it,”
Garrett said. He said experts were trying other
B-1 bomber prototype crashes
By LEE SIEGEL
Associated PressJMritat^:
EDWARDS AIR FORCE BASE,
Calif. An unarmed B-l bomber
prototype crashed and burned
yesterday while on a low-altitude
test flight over the Mojave Desert,
killing one crew member and
injuring two others, the Air Force
said.
It was the first crash of a B-l
bomber, said Air Force Col. Alan
Sabsevsitz.
“The crew escape capsule
successfully separated and landed
near the crash site,’’ the Air Force
said in a statement. “Two
survivors were air-evacuated to
the Edwards Air Force base
hospital for treatment.” .
It wasn’t immediately clear how
the one crew member died. His
body would remain in the capsule
until the coroner could take charge
of the scene, said Senior Airman
Tom Bernas.
The plane was seen trailing
smoke before it went down at l0:30
a.m. near Boron, 75 miles
northeast of Los Angeles, a guard
at the nearby U.S. Borax plant
said. She wouldn’t give her name.
The crew members’ names were
withheld until relatives are
notified.
The charred and mangled
wreckage was scattered in a circle
roughly 200 feet in diameter, and
was still burning six hours after the
crash, according to Associated
Press photographer Doug Pizac. A
scorched white cylinder that
appeared to be the escape capsule
lay at the outer edge of the
wreckage, an orange and white
parachute draped nearby, he said.
The crash, which ignited at least
three small brush fires that were
extinguished quickly, came less
than a week before a B-IB
prototype was to be unveiled. The
plane that crashed yesterday was
an earlier B-lA prototype,
Pentagon officials said.
The four-engine plane was
engaged in “extremely low-level,
extremely low-speed” tests on its
127th test flight, a 3-hour, 45-minute
mission, said Air Force Lt. Col.
Ron Greer in Washington.
“There were absolutely no
warheads on the ship,” Bernas
A board of officers will
investigate the accident, the Air
Force said.
Sen. John Glenn, D-Ohio, had
flown in the same plane Aug. 22
when he was on a visit to Edwards,
said Dale a press
spokesman for the former
astronaut.
The swing-wing strategic
bomber has four jet engines and a
crew capacity of four. The plane
that crashed was one of the original
B-l prototypes, first flown in June
1976. In 1978, it set the B-l speed
the
daily
commands to give the shuttle pilots more time but
Discovery will be launched even if that solution is not
found.
After the announcement Tuesday night that the flight
was being delayed, commander Henry W. Hartsfield
said through a NASA spokesman: “We were all
disappointed of course, but we agreed that the scrub
was the right decision. All of us are ready to go this
morning.”
Hartsfield and pilot Michael Coats used the extra day
on Earth to make proficiency runs in the brilliant blue
central Florida sky in T-38 jet planes. They and the rest
of the crew spent the day with their families, then went
to bed at dusk.
Others in the crew are mission specialists Judith
Resnik, Steve Hawley and Richard Mullane, and
payload specialist Charles Walker. Hawley is the
husband of Sally Ride, the first American woman in
space.
Walker, an engineer with the McDonnell Douglas
Corporation, is the first non-astronaut chosen for
shuttle flight under a NASA policy that allows
commercial customers to have one of their own people
on board to operate their payloads. He will run a
machine to make a drug which is not publicly identified
for proprietary reasons.
On the first launch attempt for Discovery on June 25,
a computer malfunction stopped the countdown at
nine-minutes-to-launch. The next day, four seconds
before liftoff, computers detected a fuel valve problem
and shut off the engines. Both times the crew spent
hours lying on their backs in the cockpit waiting for a
liftoff that never came.
The latest problem involved commands from the
shuttle’s four computers to an electronic device called
a Master Events Controller. The computers not only
command the separation of the boosters and fuel tank
but also trigger the firing of the boosters and shatter
the bolts that lock the shuttle to its launch pad.
The space agency had planned to launch six shuttles
by the end of August, but Discovery’s flight will be only
the third this year.
(1 B-1A
> / Bomber
UtaftX Crashes
(Francisco
l^vf
! Edwards g
f S
•Lancaster
•Palmdale
CALIFORNIA
record of Mach 2.22, or more than '
twice the speed of sound at about
1,400 mph.
Military authorities quickly
restricted the crash area and
surrounding airspace to
emergency and military personnel
only.
Sally Kinnear, a warden’s
secretary at the nearby Boron
Federal Prison, said prison
employees saw the plane fly
overhead.
“We just saw the column of
smoke,” Kinnear said. “It’s about
10 miles east of here in the middle
of the desert.”
She said the prison also sent out
an inmate crew and ambulance to
assist firefighters and rescuers.
There was no danger to the prison.
After being rejected by the
Carter administration in the late
1977, the controversial B-l project
won a new lease on life from
President Reagan and Congress as
a replacement for the nation’s
Collegian
CALIFORNIA
aging B-52 bomber defense.
According to the Air Force, the
downed plane was prototype No, 2
of only four B-l A’s. Only No. 2 and 4
were based at Edwards, and of
those, only No. 2 had the escape
capsule. Prototype No. 4 has
separate ejection seats for the
crew. Prototypes 1 and 3 are in
storage, the Air Force said.
Congress approved Reagan’s
request for $8.3 billion for 34 B-l
planes in fiscal 1985. Eventually,
the Pentagon intends to buy 100 fi
ls at a cost now projected at about
$28.3 billion.
A ceremonial rollout of the B-1B
prototype was scheduled Sept. 4 at
the Rockwell International Corp.
plant in Palmdale, near Edwards
AFB. RockwelHs the prime
contractor for the B-l.
The new prototype looks the
same but is designed for more
effective evasion of Soviet radar
and defenses and will be more
heavily armed.
Henry Hartsfield Jr., commander of the space shuttle Discovery, walks under the wing of a training plane yesterday
morning at the Kennedy Space Center before making a practice flight.
Former student still incarcerated
By TERRY MUTCHLER
Collegian Staff Writer
David E. Schmidt is still waiting.
Schmidt, a former University student, is being held
in the Centre County Jail where he has been since the
first week of May in lieu of $lOO,OOO bail.
Schmidt was arrested April 5 and charged with theft
of trade secrets, theft by unlawful taking or
disposition, receiving stolen property, possessing
instruments of crime, possessing wiretapping
equipment and possession of marijuana with the intent
to manufacture or deliver.
Assistant District Attorney Dennis Pfannenschmidt
said Schmidt pleaded guilty at his May 3 preliminary
hearing to 19 counts of burglary and one count of
receiving stolen' property. He added that Schmidt will
remain confined until bail can be posted or until the
probation office completes its pre-sentencing
investigation.
“They (the probation office) will look into Schmidt’s
background and his circumstances as part of the pre
investigation,” he said.
Phone-in registration successful
By T.J. MARTIN
Collegian Staff Writer
As a result of the University’s
new phone-in registration process,
6,100 students were able to make
revisions in their schedules for Fall
Semester without leaving their
homes, University Registrar
Warren R. Haffner said.
Any student who had submitted a
request for registration, formerly
called a pre-registration form, and
had received an incomplete
schedule was eligible to use the
system.
Haffner said 8,479
upperclassmen and 1,401 freshmen
received incomplete schedules. He
defined an incomplete schedule as
one in which an undergraduate
registered for 15 or more credits
but received less than 15 credits.
However, freshmen were
advised to use the on-line
registration in the Intramural
Building on Aug. 21, he said.
“Maybe more than 6,100 called,”
Haffner said. “There may have
been some that called we don’t
have a record of those yet that
tried some different things and
were unable to complete their
index
Classifieds
Comics, crossword
Opinion
Sports
State/Nation/World.
Thursday, Aug. 30,1984
Vol. 85, No. 37 14 pages University Park, Pa. 16802
Published by students of The Pennsylvania State University
©1984 Collegian Inc.
The office of probation would not comment on the
case.
According to Pfannenschmidt, bail was originally set
at $250,000, but was lowered at Schmidt’s preliminary
hearing.
“His attorney (James Bryant) asked for the amount
to be reduced. The magistrate went over our objection
and lowered the bail to $100,000,” Pfannenschmidt
said.
Pfannenschmidt explained that the district
attorney’s office thought the $250,000 bail was fair
because Schmidt had stolen master keys to the
University valued at that amount.
The next official action that will take place for
Schmidt will be sentencing, Pfannenschmidt said.
But, he added that “with a case of this complexity,
it’s hard to tell when he will be sentenced it may be
months.”
Pfannenschmidt said that he and the district
attorney’s office are are “fairly pleased” with the case
results thus far.
schedules.”
Students who wanted to complete
their schedules could call a toll
free number between July 25 and
Aug. 16, he said. Eight operators
manned the phones from 10 a.m. to
10 p.m., Monday through Friday.
Incomplete schedules with
instructions on how to use the
phone-in registration process were
mailed to students before complete
schedules were mailed, in order to
give those with incomplete
schedules the opportunity to
complete them, Haffner said.
“We mailed those out in three
different bundles so that the phone
calls would come back spread out
over a period of time,” he
explained. “The (phone) lines were
busy almost all the time from
about the third day on until about
Aug. 15.”
Haffner said, however, that the
'operators probably could have
handled more calls during the
phone-in registration process.
“Another thing that probably
should have been obvious, but
wasn’t to us in the beginning, is
that most students called more
than once,” Haffner said.
After finding that a course they
Bryant was not available for comment yesterday.
wanted was not available, students
would hang up, look for another
course or another section of the
same course and call again, he
said.
One such student was Kevin
Gallagher (sophomore-earth and
mineral sciences) who said he
found out during his first call that
all sections of the speech
communications course he wanted
to take were filled. He called a
second time to register for a
different course.
“1 guess it was about as smooth
as it was going to get,” Gallagher'
said about the new process.
However, after students added
one or more courses to their
schedules, they were not permitted
to call again to add or drop an
additional course, Haffner said.
Linda Jones (sophomore
business administration) was able
to complete her registration with
one call by waiting until 9:30 p.m.
to call and by having a list of
courses in case some of the courses
she wanted to take were full.
“I guess (the phone-in
registration process) is okay,” she
said. “I think it was better than
drop-add:”
weather
Partly cloudy skies this morn
ing. Chance of a late afternoon
storm. High of 84. Cloudy to
night, chance of a shower. Low
of 65... Dan Zimmerman
AP Lassrpholo