The Orlando Sentinel from Orlando, Florida • 510

FLA The shuttle tragedy A-4 The Orlando Sentinel, Monday, February 1 0, 1 986 Twain classic Huckleberry Finn sparkles with life after a slow start in PBS miniseries Return peace Wouldn't be caught dead in Florida? Bob Morris finds way to help you out Shuttle workers say they are afraid to talk about Challenger By Dan Tracy and Jim Leusner OF THE SENTINEL STAFF Weather: May get wet in midst of Tet. Cloudy. High 75, low 60. Details, page A-2. Monday, February 1 0, 1 986 The Orlando Sentinel at the time as an engineer.

He knew Baron. Mizell said what happened was an "unfortunate" accident, nothing more. But many are not satisfied with official explanations. They say the underlying message is obvious. "The government is going to get rid of anybody who makes too much trouble," the technician said.

Former NASA engineer Bill Mclnnis said, "Nobody will talk under the present environment." Mclnnis left the agency in 1984 and has criticized the agency's management and the design of the shuttle's main engines as being faulty and poorly designed. Some KSC employees say they are hesitant to talk about "inside" information at work because they fear their phones may be monitored or they may be overheard by the wrong people. Despite their fears, however, many said they were confident the presidential commission appointed to investigate the tragedy would publish the truth, no matter who is at fault. The KSC veteran said he and other longtime industry workers in the shuttle program will not let the investigation be whitewashed. "Our livelihoods are at stake," he said.

He also placed a lot of faith in astronaut Sally Ride, one of the members of the president's commission. "Her fanny is on the line," he said. "She's got to fly in that thing." have been instructed by NASA or the contractors who employ them not to talk to the media. One technician said he has been told not to talk business with co-workers in bars. Reporters may be there, he was told, listening for anything related to the Challenger accident or KSC.

"There is paranoia dating back to the 204 incident," said one KSC veteran, referring to the flash-fire in the Apollo 1 capsule that claimed the lives of three astronauts in 1967. Now, nearly 19 years later, seven more astronauts are dead and NASA is releasing little information about the accident. But speculation and news leaks are rampant. The loose talk has revived memories in some KSC circles about the dead man known as "Byron." Tilings he talked about are called "The Byron Report." The story has been passed from worker to worker for years. KSC employees say they tell it whenever a disgruntled worker threatens to go public with charges against the space program.

Actually, the man's name was Tom Baron, an aerospace engineer who lived in Titusville with his wife and two children. He was a vocal critic of the Apollo program and testified on the subject before a U.S. House subcommittee in April 1967. On April 29, six days after submitting a 500-page file to the subcommittee, Baron, his wife, Marlene, and daughter, Penny, were killed when the car he was driving was struck by a Florida East Coast Railway train north of Titusville. The auto was dragged 30 feet by the train before falling off the tracks and rolling end over end another 30 feet into a nearby ditch.

The train was traveling 40 mph in reverse. Baron, 29, his 25-year-old wife and 4-year-old daughter were thrown from the car. His step-daughter, Robin, 6, survived. The accident, which occurred at 6:30 p.m., was witnessed by a woman who blew the horn of her car in a vain attempt to warn Baron that his auto was about to be struck by the train. The woman said the train blew its whistle as it approached the Kelly Road intersection, which was not marked with lights or cross bars.

Baron and his family lived close to the tracks in a mobile home on Fol-som Road. Brevard County sheriffs inspector George Wilson, 49, investigated the tragedy and said he found no evidence of foul play. He said the FBI checked into the case after hearing rumors that Baron was murdered. "He Baron just pulled in front of the train and boom. They're not going to take out a whole family that way," he said.

"Those trains, you just don't mess with them." NASA spokesman Jim Mizell worked at the Cape 1 986 Sentinel Communication Company TITUSVILLE The shuttle technician sat in his living room and shook his head. His hands trembled. No, he said, he couldn't talk about the Challenger or why it blew up in the skies over the Kennedy Space Center. His bosses had told him the subject was off-limits to reporters and other outsiders. He did not want to lose his job.

A NASA engineer, standing at the end of his driveway in the dark of night, said he wanted to talk, but couldn't. He feared not only for his job, but maybe even for his life. There was a whistle-blower against NASA in the 1960s, he said. The man caused a lot of trouble, made a lot of noise. There was only one problem he died mysteriously, late at night.

His car was crushed by a train. Officials discounted foul play, but many veteran KSC workers remain uneasy over the circumstances of the accident. "It takes a certain personality to be a whistle-blower," the engineer said. "And I'm just not the type. I have a wife, kids and a home Dozens of KSC workers contacted by The Orlando Sentinel since Challenger exploded Jan.

28 said they The best newspaper in Florida 25 cents Florida Edition i Tables turn on Haiti's Vote tabulators quit in Philippines chaos I- secret force Agents go into hiding death toll hits 300 COMPILED FROM WIRE REPORTS SEALS Brevard residents keep launch vigil 'We've had the drama now we have the tragedy' From A-1 Booster's field joint and rings Sections of the booster are fitted together with tongue-and-groove joints that are held together with pins. Each joint has two rings, which are protected by a putty coating in front of them. One of the three field joints, where gases accumulate, was low on the right booster where NASA photographs have shown an abnormal flame spewing from the side. By Lynne Bumpus-Hooper OF THE SENTINEL STAFF Steel skin UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL MANILA, Philippines Government computer operators tabulating results in the chaotic Philippine presidential election charged Sunday that vote totals were being manipulated and walked off the job, causing new delays in the vote count. President Feidinand Marcos and challenger Corazon Aquino were locked in a neck-and-neck battle as results trickled in from an election that an international observer team said was rife with fraud.

"We just felt we had to do something," one of the 30 computer operators said after walking out of the government Commission on Elections, known as Co-melec. "We are scared and we don't know what to do next," he said, as the operators, several of them weeping, took refuge in a nearby church. A member of a White House-appointed U.S. observer team called the operators' charges "damning" and said he did not see how a winner could be declared under the circumstances. Comelec chairman Victorino Savellano called the operators' actions "a political attempt to sabotage our efforts." The walkout brought counting 'Sl 2 --rocket -ij I PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti The army began searching Sunday for members of the once-feared secret police force, most of whom have gone into hiding since deposed President Jean-Claude Duvalier went into exile.

Gunfire continued to be heard in the capital Sunday, but reports from the countryside indicated few disturbances. For the third day in a row, the government imposed a strict curfew, from 2 p.m. Sunday to 6 a.m. today. The curfew effectively canceled the first day of the long-awaited Mardi Gras, marking the first time in Haiti that the festival has not been celebrated.

No official casualty figures have been released, but medical officials say at least 300 people have been killed in and around the capital since Duvalier left for France early Friday. The victims were shot or beaten; some died in traffic accidents. At least 10 were members of the secret police, which was formed by Duvalier's father, Francois, after he assumed power 28 years ago. Please see HAITI, A-10, SENTINEL PHOTO Crowds turn out in Titusville for April 1983 launch people of Space Coast felt special pride in 'their' program. UPIREUTER Computer operators walk out of hall Sunday in Manila they were hired by government commission for 'quick J8P "''aKi: 'P1 "SLdl was ahead with 5,576,319 votes, or 53.7 percent, against 4,806,166 votes, or 46.3 percent, for Marcos.

Before closing its operations, Comelec issued a conflicting tally, saying that tabulated votes from 28.27 percent of the precincts gave Marcos 3,056,236 votes, or 51 percent, against 2,903,348 Please see VOTE, A-5 to a halt at Comelec where, neaiiy three days after the polls closed, less than 30 percent of the estimated 22 million votes had been tabulated. Counting continued, however, at the National Citizens Movement for Free Elections or Nam-frel, an independent citizens' watchdog group. Namfrel reported that Aquino UPIREUTER Guard has a 'still Marcos' sticker on rifle butt he was on duty Sunday at barricade near presidential palace. BondingXLT agent and Tyr liner CJ rings Puy WN Steel band Steel skin its 2 p.m. meeting today.

A public session is scheduled for 10 a.m. Tuesday but no agenda has been set, Garrett said. At its first formal meeting Thursday, the panel heard from Judson Lovingood, deputy manager for the shuttle program at the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. He said Morton Thiokol and NASA officials discussed the effects of cold weather on the boosters before the launch. A conference call late in the afternoon of Jan.

27 "centered around the integrity of the rings under lower temperatures," Lovingood told commission members. Despite concern, he said, "Thiokol recommended to proceed with the launch." The commission, appointed by President Reagan on Feb. 3, was given 120 days to write a final report on the Challenger tragedy. While he refused to confirm or deny the Times' report, NASA spokesman Jim Mizell said Sunday the internal memos would be consistent with the types of documents prepared as part of space agency's budget priorities. "It's not surprising there's a report on it It's my impression this probably showed up with other concerns," Mizell said of the memos.

"They engineers see something they don't understand and they put it on the list" of concerns, he said. "They try to get money for those concerns that are category one." Concern about the seals would be considered category one, he said. In budget reviews, NASA uses three categories of concerns, Mizell said. Category one, the most critical, involves funding for problems that could mean loss of life of the crew or the destruction of the space vehicle. Category two concerns items that would cause the mission to be scrapped, while the third category involves items "not mandatory, but which would enhance the mission," he said.

The Times reported that NASA engineers warned space center officials through internal memos last summer that the shuttle's flight safety was "being compromised by potential failure of the ring seals" that "would certainly be catastrophic." A layer of putty protects the rings, one a primary and the other a backup, from the solid fuel's intense heat. The putty also is a prime suspect in the booster failure, the report said. Testifying Thursday, Lovingood said, "We have seen some evidence of erosion of those seals, the primary seal. We've never seen any erosion of a secondary seal. But we have seen evidence of soot in between the two seals." Last summer, the Times said, a memo within the NASA comptrol- TITUSVILLE They sat on the beach eating popcorn, swatting mosquitoes, cheering and watching rockets explode over the Atlantic Ocean in the '50s.

By the '60s, NASA had made deals to move them inland, take over their property and begin the sprawling complex that is now Kennedy Space Center. The people still watched and still cheered the successes of the Mercury and Gemini programs. With a man on the moon in 1969, their pride seemed boundless. They weathered the slump in space flights during the early '70s and then witnessed with quickening pride the development of the shuttles Columbia, Challenger, Discovery and Atlantis. The people of Brevard County were the Space Coast and it was their space program.

They stopped their business in Titusville, pulled their cars to the shoulder of the road in Merritt Island, put the children in the playpen in Cocoa, hung up the phone in Cape Canaveral and stepped outside for 24 picture-perfect shuttle launches over the past five years. On Tuesday, Jan. 28, they cried. is is Vivian Zimmerman of Titusville remembers the late 1950s when she and her family lived at what then was called Titusville Beach. The land is now part of the space center complex.

"We finally had a ladder built on the side of the house so we could climb up and watch the launches from the roof. The launches were secret then, but our bedroom was at such an angle that it would light up when they took off, so we'd scramble up to the roof as quick as we could," Zimmerman said. Zimmerman, like many longtime residents, can rattle off types of missiles, launch programs, names of astronauts, even the names of the "monkeynauts." She remembers an early launch when no one including the engineers involved was certain of what was going to happen. "They told us the noise might be harmful to a small child's eardrums. We stayed home and I watched it from the front yard, but I was in such a rush to get back inside and check on my infant daughter that I ran my hand through the screen door," she said.

There were a lot of explosions back then, she said, but that was in the day of unmanned flights. Zimmerman stepped out into her front yard the morning of Jan. 28 and looked across the Indian Commission turns attention to seals Board asks NASA for documents on rings in solid rocket boosters By Donna O'Neal and Tim Smart NASA audits spot wasted millions Space agency squandered money buying spare parts for its shuttles By Tim Smart OF THE SENTINEL STAFF OF THE SENTINEL STAFF back in the car and turned the radio up and rolled down the windows so they could all hear," Margaret said. She held out hope that a parachute she thought she had seen might mean this crew members had gotten out safely. Her hopes, and those of America, were dashed only moments later when a NASA spokesman announced, "The orbiter has exploded." is is is "Every triumph was a personal triumph.

This tragedy is a personal one. We take a lot of pride in the space program and this is well, the only way I know to describe our feelings is that it's like a death in our family," said Karen Andreas. Her husband works for NASA. Before the first launch of Columbia in 1980, his job was to film every tile covering the spacecraft. Back then, the heat-resistant tiles were causing concern.

If they came off during the launch, the astronauts might burn up upon re-entry into the atmosphere. "The people who live here have a special closeness to the space program. We load the fuel, we load the astronauts. We talk in initials like STS, VAB, VIC, just like we work there even if we don't," she said. "We've had the drama, the action, as part of our daily lives.

Now we have the tragedy," she said. IS Refrains are repeated: "I've never missed a shot." "I get chill bumps every time." "I never lost the excitement." "It's just as exciting now as it was the very first time." Despite television networks dropping their live coverage, despite decreasing space in newspapers and magazines, the people of Brevard continued to watch the sky. River to the launch site. She was as excited as she had been for all the launches. What she saw appeared to be another perfect shot, at first, and she took pictures as always.

"It was the strangest feeling. I've been so shaken since then that I've had to avoid watching things on television like the memorial service in Houston. I still can't believe it happened," she said. IS IS IS Down the street from the Zim-mermans live the Markwalters Charles, Margaret and their family. One of the tracking stations that monitored the early launches was close enough to the Mark-waiter home that technicians mid bang on the roof of the station just before a launch.

Once they heard the signal, the Mark-waiters baby, children and all would head for the beach. The Markwalters also watched a number of failures that marked America's early space effort. They could occasionally hear pieces of the faulty rockets sizzle into the ocean. They even scavenged some of the debris that washed ashore. "We had one thing out there that we used to cut up our fishing bait on.

Another lady used a bunch of them to line her driveway. One day all these men from NASA in contamination suits came and took them away in a special van. We never knew what they were," Margaret Markwalter said. She and her daughter, Pam, were going shopping on the Tuesday morning of the Challenger explosion. They got out of their car at Byrd Plaza in Cocoa, but they waited in the parking lot to see the launch.

They had listened to the radio on the way down and knew NASA was in a final countdown. "I saw those strange trails and I knew it had exploded. Everyone was standing around crying. I got close to where previous sonar readings indicated the shuttle's left rocket booster sank. While divers could not identify the objects as being from Challenger, officials think the debris could include the inertial upper stage booster of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite.

The tracking satellite was to be the second of its kind deployed by NASA. It was to function as a communications relay station between the shuttle and nine ground stations. Once the divers pinpoint the location of the debris, the Preserver would send down divers in "hard-hat" equipment heavier, pressurized diving suits, NASA officials said. Norton said the satellite booster motor poses no danger of exploding if found intact. If the motor casing is broken, however, it could be dangerous, he said.

NASA's recovery ship, Independence, continued searching with underwater cameras for the right booster in 1,100 feet of water about 40 miles east of Cape Canaveral. NASA officials would not comment on the status or exact location of the search for the left rocket booster. ler's office warned that "charring of seals" observed on flights posed "a potential major problem affecting both flight safety and program costs." It referred to destruction of the first ring and said "the second has been partially eaten away." There was no reference to when or how often that had happened. Another memo, prepared about the same time by Irving Davids, an engineer Li the shuttle rocket booster program, said there had been "12 instances during flight" where there had been some erosion of the primary ring at the seam where the nozzle segment of the rocket is bolted to the adjacent segment. In other developments Sunday, Navy divers studied debris on the ocean floor that officials said could be the booster rocket of a $100 million tracking satellite that was in Challenger's cargo bay.

Scuba divers with the USS Preserver spotted the objects late Saturday and resumed the search Sunday, said Navy Cmdr. Arthur Norton. No findings were reported. The debris was found in 100 to 120 feet of water about 18 miles northeast of Cape Canaveral, WASHINGTON Millions of dollars have been spent on spare parts for the space shuttle program, but internal NASA audits suggest the money hasn't always been spent wisely. For example, a simple spring pin used in the shuttle's main engines was bought from Rockwell International's Rocketdyne division in 1981 for $2.34.

Federal warehouses could have supplied the same pin for 3 cents. An avionics cooling fan, used in the shuttle orbiter to cool down exotic electronic equipment, was bought by NASA from Rockwell for $159,000. Had NASA bought the fan from its manufacturer, Sund-strand it would have cost $74,000. In another case, a $25,000 humidity sensor cost NASA $44,735 after Rockwell and another supplier had added overhead costs to the price originally set by the sensor's manufacturer. Similar examples are found throughout the shuttle parts program, according to audits completed in 1984 by NASA's Office of Inspector General.

The audits do not suggest any improprieties on the part of NASA or Rockwell, but they do highlight a system The presidential commission investigating the accident of the space shuttle Challenger asked Sunday for all NASA documents relating to the seals that bind together interior portions of the shuttle's solid rocket boosters. Acting NASA Administrator William Graham said the space agency would cooperate fully with the commission's request. The commission will consider the documents at a closed-door meeting today. The New York Times quoted internal NASA documents in its Sunday editions that purportedly warned of a catastrophic failure of the solid rocket boosters should one of the seals fail. Workers at Morton Thiokol maker of the boosters, have said that the company is focusing on the rings, large rubber rings used at every joint to ensure a perfect seal.

Some rocket experts have suggested that the unusually cold weather at Kennedy Space Center before the Jan. 28 launch might have caused an imperfect fit between the fuel in tike boosters and the booster's casing and internal lining. Any crack in the booster seals could have led to uneven burning of the fuel and a "burn through" of hot gases. UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL Workers prepare to attach skirt (left) to an aft booster segment in NASA file photo. NASA spokesman David Garrett said the agency Sunday began gathering all "internal documents and reports pertaining to investigations of seals on the shuttle's solid rocket boosters" and would deliver them to the 13-member presidential commission at Please see SEALS, A-4 Videotapes and photographs released by NASA nine days ago show an abnormal flame coming from the right booster seconds before the shuttle exploded.

The jet of hot gases appeared near where the booster was attached to the external fuel tank, filled with more than 500,000 gallons of liquid hydrogen and liquid oxygen. Please see AUDITS, A-4 Gasohol annual sales In Florida In millions of gallons Gasohol loses tax breaks, appeal as alternative fuel AUDITS By Jerry Jackson From A-1 OF THE SENTINEL STAFF Almanac A-2 Local state B-1 Classified E-1 Movies D-5 Comicsgames D-8 Names and faces A-2 Crossword D-7 Obituaries B-4 Editorial page A-8 Scoreboard C-4 Noel Holston D-1 Sports C-1 Horoscope D-7 Style D-1 Ann Landers 0-7 Television D-6 President Nixon in 1972, but it quickly went over budget and behind schedule. Once estimated to cost $5 billion, the program has run up $15 billion in development and production bills. Its first flight, in April 1981, was two years late. "We chose in the early period to buy the spares through Rockwell, in effect to buy the expertise of Rockwell, who knew the suppliers," Beggs said.

"Sure, that costs money. How much could we have saved? I'm not sure. Ten to 15 percent, maybe." Attempts to reach Rockwell officials Sunday were unsuccessful. After the audit, Rockwell commented on the higher cost of its spares: "The costs of these acquisitions were necessarily higher because Rockwell could not acquire in the quantities of the Defense Department and because the manufacturer's price in some instances included non-recurring special tooling and set-up charges as well as recurring production costs amortized over a small quantity of parts," Rockwellsaid. balize" one orbiter to get spares for another.

The problem diminished by 1985, then NASA administrator James Beggs told a Senate appropriations subcommittee. But, Beggs added, NASA "had to go back onto the production line and pull some subsystems and components off the production line in order to keep our in-service vehicles flying." Beggs was indicted in January on charges of mis-charging the Pentagon for costs incurred while he was senior executive at General Dynamics. He has taken a leave of absence from NASA to fight the charges. Reached over the weekend at his suburban Washington home, he defended the buying of parts while he ran NASA. "I doubt that you could have saved a great deal of money on the orbiter because we were buying in such small quantities," Beggs said.

"Because of the constraints Congress put on the money, we were forced to buy everything sequentially one part at a time. We were tight on money all through the '70s." The shuttle program got the green light from ohol raises the fuel's octane level and improves engine performance; unlike lead, ethyl alcohol doesn't pollute the environment when it's burned. Many of the nation's refiners were expected to substitute gasohol for conventional gasoline as the Environmental Protection Agency forced them to get the lead out. That would be good news for a country still dependent on Mexico, Venezuela and the Middle East for much of its petroleum, because ethyl alcohol turns 9 gallons of gasoline into 10 gallons of gasohol. It also would be good chase to purchase.

A valve assembly, for instance, was priced at $1,330 in May 1982. But an October 1982 price list had the part at $10,300. Audits further suggest that hundreds of thousands of dollars could have been saved had Rockwell bought the parts from federal warehouses, including those used by the Defense Department, rather than getting them from outside sources. Although the shuttle is a civilian program, most of its contractors are military suppliers and much of its design and manufacture is to exacting military standards. Also, the audit teams found that Rockwell had not screened its spare parts inventory to weed out unnecessary items.

At Kennedy Space Center, Rockwell had on hand more than 1,000 spare parts valued at $4.2 million that had not been used in four years. Spares have been a continual problem for the space shuttle. At various times, NASA officials have testified Jo Congress that they have had to "canni The future of gasohol, the alternative fuel that was supposed to drive a wedge between American motorists and foreign oil, may be in jeopardy at the very moment supporters had expected the fuel to capture a large, new share of the market When a federal order to begin reducing the amount of lead in gasoline took effect Jan. 1, it was considered an important step toward ensuring gasohol a permanent place in American motoring, i i lead, the ethyl alcohol in gas of buying parts that is both inefficient and expensive. The audits, conducted in 1984, involved both the orbiter and the main engines.

After they were done, NASA said action already was under way on most of the recommendations. The audits criticize NASA's practice of buying spare parts from Rockwell when the agency could have saved untold sums of money buying spares directly from the manufacturer. Rockwell is the prime contractor on the shuttle program. It made the orbiters, and its Rocketdyne division made the shuttles' main engines. The audits also tite numerous examples in which theT prices of the same part, vary wildly from pur IN A WORD tantamount, TAN-ta-MOUNT: adjective.

From an Anglo-French expression meaning to amount to as much. Having equal force, value, effect, etc. Equal or equivalent to. Charley Reese looks at the changes in farming. Page A-8 ytJaB Source: Florida Governor's Energy Office 0 100 200 300 400 500 600 Please see GASOHOL, Af sentinel grafmc.