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It s a dirty job
MW Anderson Construction employees Rodney Price, Jim Morton and Alvin Boyd tear up the sidewalk at 8th and
Q streets Tuesday morning for work on the light poles.
Apollo 009 to be handled with care
By Dionne Searcey
Senior Editor
One hundred miles from home. Three thou
sand degrees Fahrenheit. No oxygen.
Twenty-one thousand pounds of pres
sure. Atmospheric friction.
That’s nothing compared to the next mis
sion planned for the Apollo 009.
The Apollo 009 was used for a sub-orbital
test flight Feb. 26, 1966. It arrived at UNL in
1972 and has endured Nebraska weather for
almost 20 years while on display outside Mor
rill Hall.
Bill Splinter, interim vice chancellor for
research, said the spacecraft soon will travel to
the Kansas Space Center and Cosmosphere in
Hutchinson, Kan., to undergo complete reno
vation. ir
On Nov. 13, University of Ncbraska-Lin
coin officials announced an agreement with the
cosmosphere to trade the Apollo for space
artifacts valued at$l .5 million. The University
of Nebraska Board of Regents on Saturday
delayed approving the trade at its monthly
meeting.
If the trade isn’t approved by the regents, the
university would hire the Kansas-cosmospherc
to restore the capsule, Splinter said. The cos
mosphcrc is the only center in the world equipped
to restore spacecrafts similar to the Apollo,
said Max Ary, the center’s director.
“We know what we’re getting into,” Ary
said, since the Kansas cosmosphere has re
stored six similar Apollo capsules.
In as soon as one month, restoration of the
craft will begin, he said.
The capsule’s next liftoff won’t require
millions of pounds of thrust to hurl it into the
air, Ary said.
This time a crane will boost the craft off the
ground. The Apollo will travel 249 miles to
Hutchinson, riding on the back of a tow-boy
semi truck. Two pace cars will escort the truck
down the back roads of Nebraska and Kansas.
When the capsule lands at the cosmosphcrc,
a team of restoration specialists will spray the
craft with a blanket of special anti-corrosion
material, Ary said. Then the capsule will be
placed in a temperature- and humidity-con
trolled wailing room.
“The key is, as soon as we get it, to stop any
further deterioration,” Ary said.
If the swap with UNL is approved, major
operations on the capsule will be put off until
the center finds a way to pay for the nearly
$400,000-worlh of repairs to counter years of
corrosion.
See APOLLO on 6
Official says ROTC cuts
offset by raised standards
By Sean Green
Staff Reporter
Proposed military budget cuts will mean
reducing the number of active personnel
in the Air Force, but the news shouldn’t
be viewed as all bad by UNL Air Force ROTC
students, an ROTC official said.
Lt. Col. Spencer Anderson, chairman of the
University of Nebraska-Lincoln Air Force ROTC
program, said the cuts in
personnel will be made by
raising the standards of the
entry and advancement that,
in turn, will improve the
overall quality of the or
ganization.
Anderson said the Depart
ment of Defense budget cuts actually have
benefited his organization.
Enrollment in the UNL Air Force ROTC
program has dropped from 130 during the
1989-90 school year to 75 this year, he said.
“I’m not sure why enrollment is down, but
it’s not because we’re not trying,” he said.
‘‘(The decline) is good, though, because we
don’t have enough spots to put people in any
way, so the cuts arc playing right into my
hands.”
Nationwide, the 150 Air Force ROTC de
tachments were commissioning 3,200 officers
AIR FORCE
a year in 1988. Today that number has been cut
in half, to 1,600 annually, Anderson said.
However, he said the cuts in commissioned
officers, meaning cadets who graduate from
the ROTC program and go on to become offi
cers in the active Air Force, docs not mean the
UNL ROTC program may be cut altogether.
‘‘In 1988, the Air Force announced that the
UNL detachment was going to be closed,”
Anderson said. “But it didn’t happen, and now
See MILITARY on 6
Freedom nears for final three American hostages. Page 2
INDEX
Wrestlers set to start season Page Wire 2
7 Opinion 4
Sports 7
Elmer Fudd meets Ozzy Osbourne A&E 9
at Barry’s. Page 9 Classifieds 11
^s.
Some regents
say meeting
should have
been open
*» a*
By Adeana Leftin
Senior Reporter
Although a closed meeting of a subcom
mittee of the NU Board of Regents is
legal according to state public meeting
laws, some regents said the meeting should
have been open.
Regent Charles Wilson of Lincoln said he
thought the subcommittee,
although not required to
comply with the letter of
the law, should have com
nvsjvlfto plied with the spirit of the
law.
The subcommittee met
Thursday at the Nebraska
Center for Continuing Education on the Uni
versity of Nebraska’s East Campus to discuss
coordinating lobbying efforts among represen
tatives from NU campuses.
“I think the meeting should all be open
unless there’s some compelling reason why it
should be closed,” he said.
exceptions, Wilson said, would be contract
negotiations or personnel negotiations. But he
said he thought the meeting Thursday was not
about anything that couldn’t have been dis
cussed openly.
“1 think wc should make an aggressive ef
fort to maintain openness,” he said.
Regents Chairman Don Blank of McCook
disagreed.
“I don’t think that was an issue that should
have been handled any differently,” he said.
The subcommittee was discussing an inter
nal issue of lobbying, Blank said.
“It wasn’t an issue that needed to be open,”
he said.
Richard Wood, NU general counsel, said
the state public meeting laws requiring public
bodies to hold open meetings do not apply to
subcommittees of public bodies.
He said subcommittee meetings must be '
open only if the subcommittee is holding a
hearing, making policy or taking action on
behalf of the board.
Fire forces Abel evacuation
From Staff Reports
fire in a trash chute early Tuesday
morning forced residents of Abel
Residence Hall to evacuate the build
ing, an official said.
University of Ncbraska-Lincoln Police
Sgt. Bill Manning said the fire started at
about 4 a.m.
Lyle Harris, Abcl-Sando/. maintenance
manager, said the fire was contained to the
trash chute. The trash chute sprinkler sys
lem probably cxiinguishcd ihc fire before
the lire deparunent arrived, Harris said.
However, Manning said, students could
not re-enter the building until 4:45 a.m.
because of the smoke.
The only damage from the fire, which
Harris said wasa minor incident, was incon
venience because of the smoke.
The source of the fire is unknown. Be
cause it is not a fire of suspicious nature,
Manning said, it will not be investigated
further.
Shortage of lettuce ends
in UNL residence halls
By Virginia Newton
Staff Reporter
A decrease in produce prices made the
serving of lettuce on a regular basis
possible again on Monday at Univer
sity of Ncbraska-Lincoln residence halls.
The serving of the product decreased about
two weeks ago after lettuce prices skyrocketed
in response to a whitcfly infestation in South
ern California, where most consumer lettuce is
grown. The whitcfly attaches itself to lettuce
leaves and prevents the plant from growing to
maturity.
Pamphlets reporting that a shortage of let
tuce could continue through January were placed
on tables in dining halls Nov. 8. On Nov. 11,
lettuce, which had been served at both lunch
and dinner daily, was taken off the menu and
served twice or three times a week.
Doug Zatcchka, director of the Office of
University Housing, said that in the first weeks
of the semester, a 40-pound case of lettuce,
which consists of 24 heads, cost about $12 to
$13.
During the week of Nov. 11, a case of
lettuce sold for $27.40, said Robert Cane, vice
president of sales at Demma Fruit Company.
If UNL had continued to buy lettuce in the
same quantities as usual at those prices, the
increase would have been $1,600 more a week
in expenses, Zatechka said.
See FLY on 2
