Daily News from New York, New York • 4

mTtm news 986 I 1 rno in mm By HARRISON RAINIE News Washington Bureau WASHINGTON Pressure from NASA apparently convinced executives at Morton Thiokol, manufacturer of the solid rocket boosters that were supposed to propel the ill-fated Challenger shuttle, to countermand their own engineers and agree to the disastrous launch Jan. 28. The space agency officials, themselves under pressure because of a heavy schedule of launches this year, had sharply challenged the recommendation of Thiokol engineers not to launch Challenger. The engineers were fearful the unusual sub-freezing temperatures at Cape Canaveral would affect the crucial O-ring seals in joints between booster fuel segments. "My God, Thiokol, when do you want me to launch next April?" asked an angry Larry Mulloy, head of NASA's solid rocket booster program, during a heated telephone call on the eve of the launch, according to a congressional source.

The source confirmed an account by National Public Radio of the heated pre-launch discussions between NASA officials, who were strongly pushing for a launch, and Thiokol engineers, who feared that sub-freezing temperatures would damage the O-rings. Experts inside and outside government now believe it was a failure of those seals that caused superheated gases to escape the rocket boosters and that those gases might have caused the explosion that destroyed the Challenger and its seven astronauts. An official of Morton Thiokol yesterday said that a NASA "ice team" that inspected Challenger hours before launch found a temperature reading of 8 degrees below zero on a key strut that held the booster in place. The official said Morton Thiokol would never have given the National Aeronautics and Space Administration its eventual go-ahead to launch had it known about the temperature reading but the data was not passed along. Morton Thiokol officials have said the extraordinarily low temperatures could have been caused by a wind blowing past the supercold fuel tank toward the booster, or by an undetected leak in the fuel tank.

Judge blocks AIDS boy's return as mU AIDS VICTIM Ryan White. 14, leaves school in Kokomo, yesterday, the day he returned following a year's absence. About 4C of his classmates stayed out of school yesterday. Ryan was barred from school when it was discovered that he had caught AIDS from blood treatments he had been taking for hemophilia. At the end of his first day back in classes, he learned that the judge had issued a temporary order to k9ep him from returning on Monday.

ap to school their police department" At the end of the official, typed notification on his reappointment, Koch scribbled a brief, handwritten note to Ward that read: "Ben you are terrific. Keep it up. Ed." Koch appointed Ward, the city's first black police commissioner, Nov. 7, 1983, to replace Robert McGuire, who resigned after a barrage of police brutality complaints from minorities. Ward officially assumed the $82,000 post Jan.

1, 1984. Ward, 59, joined the police force June 1, 1951. first directing traffic then quickly risina, thEoHh the ranks. He in, 1975 to be- come lhe- se-s corrections commissioner. Hi-rise set By JOHN HENRY Daily News Staff Writer Developers have bought the Times Square site occupied by the Loews State theater, a Broadway institution since 1921, and plan to build a 50-story hotel, apartment, retail and movie-house complex on the property.

Bruce Eichner, head of New York-based Eichner Properties, confirmed yesterday that his firm and VMS Development Corp. of Chicago have bought the property at 1540 Broadway, between 45th and 46th from Loews Theaters. The theater chain has its headquarters in a 17-story office building on the site, which includes the Loews State 1 and 2 movie houses. Eichner said plans for the mixed-used tower that would replace the Loews complex are still incomplete, but that it would be probably about 50 stories high and contain a hotel with about 600 rooms, along with about 250 condominium apartments, five floors of shops and several new movie theaters below street level, which also would be operated by Loews. GOING, GOING Loews State Eichner, VMS and Loews Theaters which was sold last July by Loews the hotel and tobacco conglomerate declined to comment on the price of the deal, which Eichner said was completed in the last two weeks.

The two current Loews theaters each of which seats 1,100 are among the city's biggest and best known. Until 1968. the State was a single theater. The theater staged both vaudevil- on Bropdway will make tor le shows and movies until 1947. Eichner said his firm and VMS, which are 50-50 partners in the project, were attracted to the site because of the resurgence of the Times Square area.

"It's pretty clear that from 42d to 59th along Seventh Ave. and Broadway, there will be substantial development in the next five years." Eichner added that the opening last fall of the 50-story, New York Marriott Marquis Hotel, directly across Broadway from his planned project, "has really lent credibility" to the revitalization of the area. The Marquis is just one of several projects recently completed in the area, including the 470-room Novotel New York hotel at 52d and Broadway and the new Equitable Life Assurance Society headquarters at Seventh Ave. and 51st St. In addition, 4)a merchandise, mart; foul 'office towers, and a 750 fobfrr hotel are planned for St.

between Broadway and Eighth Ave. By TONY MARCANO Daily News Staff Writer Calling the city's top cop "terrific," Mayor Koch yesterday appointed Police Commissioner Benjamin Ward to his first full five-year term. Ward is the first commissioner reappointed under Koch's plan to assess the performance of each of the city's commissioners and, by March 1, decide whether they should be reinstated. Saying he was pleased by the mayor's vote of confidence, Ward said he will con- demand peak our per- lonOel we wurv strengthen the confidence that New Yorkers have m- --v. new 50-story hotel-retail-movie complex.

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