Banner Graphic, Volume 16, Number 185, Greencastle, Putnam County, 15 March 1986 — Page 2
A2
The Putnam County Banner Graphic, March 15,1986
New data on Halley's Comet reveals velvet-like nucleus blacker than coal
c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service DARMSTADT, West Germany Elated scientists at the European Space Agency said Friday that the spinning Giotto craft that streaked past the heart of Halley’s comet early Friday morning revealed the comet’s mysterious nucleus to be extremely dark, rough and irregular, and bigger than had been thought. “There’s no question that the true color of the nucleus is black, absolutely black, blacker than coal, almost like velvet,” Horst Keller, an agency scientist, told a crammed news conference called to give preliminary results from the Giotto probe. “It’s very dark, the darkest dark you can imagine.” “Since the nucleus is so dark, it must be warm,” said Keller, who said the comet appeared to be covered with a black crust. “The ice has to come from deeper
Nicaraguan plan part of global barriers to Soviet aims: Reagan
,c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service , WASHINGTON - President Reagan, just days away from a crucial test on .Capitol Hill over Nicaragua, says his .policy is part of a global strategy to , “build barriers” to Soviet ambitions. In a report sent to Congress Friday, , Reagan said the United States seeks to . encourage worldwide “democratic revolution” to sweep away tyranny “whether of the left or the right.” But Reagan singled out Soviet-style dictatorships as “an almost unique threat to , peace.” Reagan is waging an uphill fight to win congressional approval to supply SIOO million in aid to rebels battling the Marxist government of Nicaragua. A vote is scheduled next Thursday in the House of Representatives. Reagan plans to make a televised address Sunday at 8 p.m. EST to appeal for public support for his program. Reagan linked U.S. efforts to support resistance movements challenging communism in Afghanistan, Angola, Cambodia, Ethiopia and Nicaragua. “Important choices now rest with the
As early as January for NASA
Nine new shuttle missions?
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. (AP) - NASA could resume space shuttle -missions as early as January and plans nine of the flights the first year, officials say. In a close-circuit televised pep talk to ■ all NASA employees, Dr. Raymond Colladay, chairman of a shuttle planning • task force, said the agency also en- • visioned “a buildup rate of 14 flights in the second year to a level of 18 flights per year with a three-orbiter fleet. ” , His comments Friday coincided with reports that nearly 500 employees of ‘National Aeronautics and Space Administration contractors were laid off. \ NASA has concluded that a one-year • “downtime scenario” was realistic in ‘view of “expected engineering changes” ito the solid rocket boosters and other shuttle components, Colladay • said. g Acting NASA Administrator William 'Graham, in West Germany, said the • agency hopes to resume shuttle flights by • January. Other officials have expressed ‘doubt that the shuttles will fly again t before 18 months to two years. | The layoffs affect 263 local employees • of Lockheed, 150 from Planning Research i Corp. and 65 from Boeing Aerospace, all • jnajor NASA contractors, The Miami Herald reported today. NASA has said contractors would lay off 1,100 employees <fby late May. *jf Meanwhile, underwater search • operations for key pieces of Challenger ‘ wreckage and further remains of the ‘seven astronaut victims of the Jan. 28 ex-
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in,” he added. The data from Giotto, the last of five missions to Halley’s comet in its journey around the Sun, go a long way toward drawing a picture of the comet, whose makeup was largely a matter of hypothesis a few weeks ago. The notion of Halley’s comet as a coalblack body challenged its earlier popular image as “a dirty snowball.” But Fred Whipple, the American astronomer who first used the snowball metaphor, told the news conference that he was “truly delighted” with Giotto’s close-up photographs. “The extreme darkness was to be expected from very fine dust embedded in ice,” said the Harvard astronomer, who noted that dust activity and solar winds around the comet were lower than when two Soviet craft passed it at a far greater distance earlier this month.
Congress whether to undercut the president at a moment when regional negotiations are under way and U.S.Soviet diplomacy is entering a new phase; to betray those struggling against tyranny in different regions of the world, including our own neighborhood; or to join in a bipartisan national endeavor to strengthen both freedom and peace,” Reagan said. At a meeting Friday with 200 state and local officials, Reagan acknowledged that there is public opposition to his policy to supply arms to the Contra rebels fighting the Soviet-backed Sandinista government in Nicaragua. Reagan, who has been meeting daily with lawmakers in an effort to build support, said, “They’re telling me more and more of the people that they’re hearing from back home don’t want us to do this.” But Reagan insisted: “Nothing is as urgent as the question of Nicaragua. There is no question that faces this administration, there’s no question, I think, that faces our times, that is more crucial to our future than what happens in Central America.”
Astronaut says 'BS mission also nearly catastrophic
PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) An astronaut who flew on the space shuttle Challenger in 1985 said Friday that his flight nearly blew up when one O ring seal on a solid-fuel rocket booster failed and its backup nearly burned through. Don L. Lind, a scientist-astronaut aboard Spacelab 3 when it took off April 30,1985, said his mission “came the second-closest to destruction.” After the Spacelab flight, the crew learned that the primary O ring had failed and “the second seal was 80 percent gone,” Lind said. “The crew did not know certain risks we did not know the trade-offs on the O rings. “The managers did not pass that
plosion were interrupted Friday by stormy seas. All but two vessels of a 12-ship search flotilla stayed in port but were expected to return to the 351-square-mile search area as soon as the weather cleared, said NASA spokeswoman Andrea Shea. The Navy submarine NR-1 and its mother ship remained at sea trying to identify debris from the solid rocket boosters. The right booster is a crucial missing piece of evidence. Investigators would like to find and
world
For several years infrared observations of comets made by groundbased telescopes have indicated that comets are certainly not pristine balls of ice but apparently contained a considerable amount of dark dust. Dr. Donald K. Yeomans, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said the Giotto findings
Reagan’s remarks echoed the concerns he outlined in his report to Congress. “Unless we build barriers to Soviet ambitions, and create incentives for Soviet restraint, Soviet policies will remain a source of danger and the most important obstacle to the future spread of freedom.” Reagan said the past decade has brought a growth of “democratic revolution, a trend that has significantly increased the ranks of those around the world who share America’s commitment to national independence and popular rule.” “In this global revolution, there can be no doubt where America stands,” Reagan said. “The American people believe in human rights and oppose tyranny in whatever form, whether of the left or the right. We use our influence to encourage democratic change, in careful ways that respect other counrtries’ traditions and political realities as well as the security threats that many of them face from external or internal forces of totalitarianism.”
knowledge on to the operational people, including the crew . ” The failure of a booster O ring seal is believed to have caused the explosion of Challenger just 73 seconds after launch Jan. 28, killing all seven crewmembers. Lind’s comments are part of a tide of astronaut criticism of NASA that rose after the space agency relaxed a no-comment policy it put in effect as a result of the Challenger tragedy. “We’re not foolish people, we’re not frightened people,” Lind said at a news conference at Portland International Airport. “I think we should know about the problems, and we obviously have not in the past.”
examine the segment containing the bottom seam of the booster for evidence of leaking gases they believe triggered the explosion of the shuttle’s large external fuel tank during liftoff. Richard Feynman, a member of the presidential commission investigating the disaster, said NASA would have to redesign the booster joint before it launches another shuttle. “There’s no doubt whatsoever the design of that joint is hopeless,” Feynman told The Huntsville (Ala.) Times.
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suggested that comets may have even more black dust than had been imagined but that they are “still substantially ice bodies.” He said the discovery was a significant confirmation of what many scientists had theorized and did not contradict Whipple’s “dirty snowball” hypothesis. Excited by the fresh findings about a
Palatial peek
Peasants angered, awe-struck by look at mansion
c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service MANILA, Philippines Dressed in their cleanest clothes, poor people were bused Friday from their ramshackle reality to the presidential palace abandoned by Ferdinand E. Marcos. The humblest of voyeurs, they found a foreign place at the heart of their homeland: a garish citadel of luxury and hoarding. “This is the reason we eat dilis,” a mother said, referring to the cheap fish staple of the poor as she peered about with a scowl. The slum dwellers were polite and hesitant but could not resist begging to sniff a $lO bar of perfumed soap, one of dozens tossed in seven baskets in the cathedral-like bath of Imelda Marcos, the first lady. “Ah, this is what a 200-peso bar of soap smells like!” one visitor said to Isabel Gonzalez Tobias, a volunteer tour guide. Just as innocently did they wonder at the array of bejeweled statues in the Marcos family’s private chapel. “So many saints for such a devil,” a sinewy gray-haired woman said, her few teeth poking into a grin. A girl made the sign of the cross before an altar that seemed more sybaritic than Christian. Beyond the plush prie-dieux of the now exiled couple, the throng of visitors exclaimed at the sight of the bedroom of Mrs. Marcos, who used to dab tears away when she visited the slums. Her private room seemed a tableau in the life of passive, imperious lolling. A giant television set remained programmed for a video recording of “Zorro the Blade,” starring Mrs. Marcos’s friend, George Hamilton. The screen faced an outsized bed cascading with a score of pillows and a regal fall of sheer netting. It was a double-queen-size resting place that measured close to the 16-foot-by-20-foot rented room that Ben Medina noted was the entire home for his wife and six children in the Tondo slum. “I feel pity for Marcos, not anger,” said Medina, a thoughtful stranger in Imelda’s room. “Marcos did not expect this to happen to him,” he said, gesturing at the general spectacle as a throng of visitors inspected the most intimate corners of what had been the Marcos haven. Some of them exacted a certain revenge on Marcos as they peered into his secret sick room and snickered at his supply of diapers. “Did Imelda sleep alone?” a woman asked, and her companion responded with a Tagalog question, “Malikot?”— speculations on
Pre-presidencyMarcosnot wealthy
c. 1986 N.Y. Times News Service WASHINGTON Ferdinand E. Marcos’s tax returns show that he was not a wealthy man before becoming president of the Philippines 20 years ago, the head of a Philippine government commission said on Friday. The official, Jovito R. Salonga, chairman of the commission investigating Marcos’s financial affairs, said in an interview here that in 1966, Marcos’s first year as president, the former Philippine leader put his assets at approximately $30,000; Philippine investigators believe he is worth more than $5 billion today. Salonga, who arrived in Washington Thursday night, said he had brought copies of the tax returns with him from Manila to show to U.S. government officials. He acknowledged the possibility that Marcos had understated his income and assets. But he noted that since Marcos had filed
celestial body that has fascinated man for centuries, Keller and other scientists said that the peanut-shaped comet had emitted jets of what appeared to be melted ice and dust that might have disrupted the Giotto’s antenna as the European spacecraft raced within 335 miles of the core. “There are centers of high activity where beams of dust are coming out of it,” said Keller of the comet’s nucleus. “Almost all of the activity is toward the Sun.” Rudiger Reinhard, the mission’s project scientist, said one of the greatest surprises was the extreme “heterogeneity” of the dust-filled atmosphere around the comet, which gave off particles in irregular bursts and not in a uniform manner, as some had thought. European Space Agency scientists said they had dramatic photographs of these
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Attorney Jejomar Binay inspects a closet full of shoes and bags owned by former Philippine first lady Imelda Marcos. An
naughtiness and restlessness. “See the oxygen tank?” a guide responded. “Sometimes he came by.” The old Spanish palace was remodeled by Mrs. Marcos with grand rooms dimmed by heavy dark paneling, with entire windows eliminated and with the breezy river veranda closed off. The result suggested a gloomy turning inward away from the nation. The invited poor trooped past shelves, closets and rooms filled with excess raiment and commodity goods, from rotisseries to tape decks. The scene seemed some sort of fantasy on a television game show. The excess of the place caused one witty visitor to quote the opposition’s campaign cry of general denunciation at Marcos’s 20-year rule: “Sobra na! Tama na! Politan na!” much! Stop it! Change it!” The poor people were welcomed by President Corazon C. Aquino as the first official visitors to what is now a museum memorializing the rapacity that government officials charge was the mode of Mr. and Mrs. Marcos.
the statements himself, he could not now claim to have made his money before taking office, as President Reagan recently asserted. Reagan declared last week: “The information that I have always had was that while his salary was extremely modest as president of his country, and obviously could not have ever made him wealthy, the information I’ve always had was that he was a millionaire before he took office, and so that there probably is some wealth that is his legitimately by way of investments over all these 20 years.” Based on that remark, Salonga expressed some uncertainty about how much cooperation he could expect from the Reagan administration. “I do not know how to describe this kind of attitude on the part of the American government,” he said. He added that State Department officials with whom he met on Friday
“jets” that were being studied before being released. At 1:10:58 a.m., two seconds before the space probe made the closest approach ever to the comet’s nucleus, bombarding dust particles knocked the Giotto slightly off course, pointing its antenna away from the Earth and interrupting the transmission of data. But 34 minutes later ground stations in Australia recovered the wobbly craft’s signal and the Giotto resumed data transmission. Its camera, however, had ceased emitting images of the comet 8,104 miles from the closest approach point, according to Keller, meaning that the mission had no photographs as the Giotto emerged on the other side. The German scientist said that the latest analysis of data showed that Halley’s comet was 9.3 miles long and “at least” 2.5 miles wide.
estimated 2,500 pairs of shoes were kept in her private quarters at the presidential palace in Manila. (AP Wirephoto).
Some of the visitors, however, expressed exuberance and even pride that the Philippines need not be second to other nations in the conceits of official ornamentation. “It’s so wonderful, I’m ready to die!” Julita How exclaimed after viewing the state dining room. The 50 empty velvet chairs echoed nights when, one upper-income visitor recalled, Mrs. Marcos used to dine on thick roast beef and celebrate the Filipinos’ pluckiness in pulling fish from the ocean and coconuts from the trees to sustain themselves. “I know people in the barios sleeping on the floor, “ said Matthew Burns, a missionary from the city of Baguio. “It makes me angry, taking people’s sweat and blood for this,” he said, snapping a photo. Many of the visitors seemed to long numbly for slum hearths by the time they trekked past the basement storerooms. They stared at the 167 department-store-sized racks of dresses and accessories, part of the leftovers abandoned by Mrs. Marcos.
John Monjo, assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, and John F. Maisto, head of the Philippine desk had promised to help him get an inventory of 1,500 documents belonging to Marcos, and he praised their willingness to cooperate. The documents and a large amount of freshly printed Philippine currency were taken to Hawaii when Marcos fled the Philippines last month and have been impounded by the U.S. Customs Service. The new Philippine government of President Corazon C. Aquino wants the documents as possible evidence of what is believed to be Marcos’s diversion of funds. A federal district court in Honolulu issued a temporary restraining order on Thursday barring release of the documents for 10 days, except as required by law, treaty, or subpoena.