Decatur Daily Democrat, Volume 61, Number 244, Decatur, Adams County, 16 October 1963 — Page 12

PAGE FOUR-A

Deplores Current Thinking On Venus

/ By ALVIN B. WEBB JR. United Press International CAPE CANAVERAL (UPI) — Venus, that planetary beauty in the sky, still has at least one champion. Venus has faired rather poorly at the hands of non-esthetic scientists this year. They have ruled that this ancient <queen of the heavens actually is nothing but a sort of oven in the sky, hiding her dreary ugliness beneath a perpetual skirt of brilliant clouds. But up steps a U. S. space scientist, Krafft Ehricke, with a dissenting opinion to the general scientific conclusion that Venus is a broiling, lifeless desert. At the risk of getting into a man-versus-machine argument, Ehricke remains unconvinced that the planet is broiling. That poses an interesting point of speculation. If Venus is not broiling, then it is cool — perhaps cool enough to support life. Granting Loans For Farm Golf Courses By DICK WEST United Press International WASHINGTON (UPI) — Back in the days before Arnold Palmer was invented, people in rural areas used to ridicule the game of golf by calling it “pasture pool.” This rude jest was particularly meaningful to the golfers in my home town in Texas because the course they played on actually was an old pasture. Being unable to afford a groundskeeper, they used to let the cows graze on the links to keep down the imson weeds on the fairways. This created some rather unusual hazards. It was customary for golfers playing that course to carry three woods, nine irons, one putter and a shovel. Times Change Times do change, however, and I gather that golf has now become a popular bucolic pastime. I gather this from a press release reporting that the Agriculture Department in the past nine months has granted 20 loans totaling sl,500 million to build golf courses for farmers. At first, this information rather startled me. But upon second thought I could see that it was a logical extension of the federal farm programs of the past few decades. I mean, if the government is going to pay farmers for not growing crops, it seems only fair that they should have a place to spend the time they save not growing them. And what better place than a golf course? Instead of plowing the “back forty,” they can try to shoot 40 on the back nine. Some golfers, of course, play better than other golfers. These differences presently are adjusted by a system of handicaps. But if golf has become a part of the farm program, I assume that,the handicap system will be replaced by a system of subsidies. Would Get Penalty Instead of paying a fine, farmers who exceed their acreage allotments will receive a two-stroke penalty. After a day on the links, they will go home and brag to their wives that they “broke parity.” Inevitably, as I see it, some farmers will fail to lose their quota of golf balls, thereby creating a surplus. This will force the Agriculture Department to adopt a program of price supports, under which the surplus will increase. Congress will then be asked to pass a new farm bill which will propose two possible solutions to the problem: Either sell golf balls to the Russians or bring

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Deplores Current Thinking Ehricke deplores the current tendency to rule out Venus as having no merit for future manned exploration. “Venus is an example of why you need man in space,” he said. It does not distrub the stocky cx-German rocket expert that he is at odds with popular scientific sentiment about the planet Venus. Actually his argument is not that his fellow anti-Venus scientists are wrong — but that they do not have enough information to prove they are right. Ehricke is director of advanced studies at General Dynamics-As-tronautics in San Diego, Calif. — and, as such, he is one of the so-called “four-out” group that Is studying where, when and how man should go into interplanetary space after he conquers the moon. Despite the apparently negative results from America’s Mariner-2 space probe — the basis for most back Billie Sol Estes. I may be needlessly alarmed about this, but I thought I should sound the warning anyhow. Or, as they say down on the farm — “fore.” Steak Favorite Os Men In Restaurant INDIANAPOLIS (UPI) — No less an authority than Miss Indiana Restaurant Association says that the dinner favored by most men is a steak, baked potato. tossed salad and coffee. "Women are more venturesome than men when it comes to food,” Mrs. Carolyn Mayes, Evansville, observed. “Women will try something different when ordering a restaurant meal.” Mrs. Mayes was selected to preside over the association’s annual convention opening here Wednesday. The tall brunet beauty won in competition with other waitresses in a recent held at Lafayette. Mr/ Mayes works as a waitress ‘for the McCurdy Hotel in Evansville, a job she finds interesting and also adapted to her home duties. She has three children, two boys, 5 and 8, and a girl 4, for whose support she is responsible. “The little girl is getting more fun out of my being Miss Indiana Restaurant Association than anyone,’’ Mrs. Mayes explained. “She watched me on television and went around telling everyone Mother looked right at her ” Her own children, like many the nation over, favor a hamburger and a coke if asked their choice of a menu. However, the IRA, at its majoi; banquet Friday night, expects td have a five course dinner featuring roast duck, which Miss IRA explained was in tribute to Indiana’s role as the biggest producer of ducks. The banquet opens with a toast in rose wine to Mrs. Mayes, and proceeds through shrimp cocktail, celery hearts, bib lettuce with almond dressing. browned rissole potatoes, asparagus points and Napoleon coffee and cream. Culinary arts lectures, including some open to the public, also are part of the convention program. Mrs. Mayes, who is pretty enough to have been picked queen on looks alone, said she believed answers the waitresses made to questions may have been a deciding factor, too. One of the questions was how she would handle a rude customer. It developed that Mrs. Mayes in her four years as a waitress never has had a rude customer. -

of the present ill thoughs about that planet — Venus remains Ehricke’s favorite initial planetary port-of-call in his own proposals for post-lunar expeditions. “Venus might hold even more surprises than mars” is his opinion. ‘ Covered By Clouds There is an element of mystery about Venus, whose surface is 100 per cent hidden by clouds. Mars, on the other hand, is naked in its reddish brilliance to earth-

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THE DTCATtJR DAILY DEMOCRAT, DECATUR. INDIANA

bound telescopres. , Ehricke takes exception to the i inclination of the space science ' fraternity to almost completely write off Venus as a worthwhile 1 target on the basis of information i gleaned by the 447-pound Marin- < er-2 that swung to within 21,648 : mile? of that planet last Dec. 14. i An official report said the : probe’s readings indicated “a 1 fairly uniform 800 degrees fahrenheit.. .of the entire surface.” This is four times the boiling i

point of water, enough to turn any form of life on earth into well-done steak within minutes. But Ehricke questions whether the readings from a comparatively small but almost primitive sort of instrument like Mariner-2 during a comparatively brief 35-min-ute “near-approach” to Venus shd u 1 d constitute errefutable proof. Questions Interpretations For instance, he does not doubt that Mariner-2 detected a

high temperature reading somewhere. But was that “somewhere” actually on the surface, or was it somewhere in the |hick cloud layers. If the latter was the case, said Ehricke, then “Venus “does not necessarily have an 800-degree temperature on the surface, and therefore (if the temperature is lower) the surface is not necessarily dry,” as has been the common interpretation. Thus: “If Venus has oceans,

they could contain life.” “And they could have more life than Mars.” And there is where Venus has it all over Mars as a possible . package of surprises. “I don’t think people would be i surprised if our astronauts I brought lichens (primitive plants) ; home from Mars,” said Ehricke. But to find life, even in the rudimentary form of lichens, on a planet that had been given up for dead would indeed raise some

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 16, 1963

eyebrows, particularly in the scientific field. Ehricke suggested that the mysteries of Venus would be cleared up only by “detailed recdnaissance” far more elaborate than that of which Mariner-2 was capable. In fact, he said, the equipment would hav§ to be so complex that “you might as well take a man.” ' ’ “ And that is just what Krafft Ehricke would like to see.