Inquiry reveals pre-launch defects in Apollo-13

THE APOLLO-13 space craft was launched with a damaged oxygen tank.

This is the conclusion of the Board of Inquiry investi. gating the explosion that endangered the lives of the three US astronauts last month.

In a preliminary statement, Board chairman Mr Edward Cortright, said that the launch team found that they were unable to drain liquid oxygen from the tank in the normal way after it had been filled during a rehearsal.

'We do not know precisely why they were unable to drain the tank,' a NASA spokesman said.

However, the special procedures they had to use 'probably resulted in major damage to the wiring insulation' inside the tank.

Culminated

This started the chain of events that culminated in the éxplosion when Lovell, Haise and Swigert were over 200,000 miles out from earth.

Two switches designed to protect the tank's heaters from overheating are believed Or and causing short circuits in the heater wires.

The resulting fire would havé raised pressure in the tank so rapidly as to render the safety valves ineffective and to produce the explosion.

Question

Although the Board's final report on the abortive mission is not due until June 8 and will probably contain further détails, Cortright's statement raises the question:

Why weren't these defects remedied before Apollo-13 left the ground ?

This is especially relevant as the main Apollo contractor -North American Rockwell— has come under sharp criticism in the past for the poor quality of its products.

Sloppiness

What the latest statement reveals is more of what the 'Economist' recently called 'the familiar, avoidable sloppiness' which has increasingly been the hallmark of NASA's work as massive cutbacks have taken place in the space agency's budget.

The economic squeeze and the fact that two out of three of NASA's workers have either already been sacked or are on their way out in the near future has creatéd mood of demoralization which all the cheerful comments of Nixon and NASA chief Dr Paine have been unable to dispel.

Under thesé conditions, 'accidents' are bound to happen, particularly during the hasty preparations which took place immediately before the Apollo-13 launch.

Events

Here are a number of évents that took place: • The main rocket had been in storage for three years and spent a month longer than usual on the launch pad itself, increasing the dangers of deterioration. Swigert and Lovell both left behind equipment for the flight.

A fault developed in the helium tank few days before the flight, but 'corrected itself. Flight rengineers insisted that a final check take place after the At launch, one of the five second - stage engines packed up two minutes early.

The malfunction that finally led to the explosion was detected 15 hours previously at Mission Control, but at no time did a warning light flash on in the space craft.

The oxygen tank had been dropped in 1968 while the craft was under construcUnder these conditions, why did the launch take place at all ?

Perhaps, Mr Cortright and his colleagues will throw some more light on these questions on June 8.

Meanwhile, the Apollo-14 mission which will attempt to complete the journey to Fra Mauro has suffered a further postponement to 1971 and the future of the US space programme is looking extremely bleak.

Right: 'Keep Left' editor AILEEN JENNINGS.

chaired the meeting addressed by DAVID MERCER.

Below: CLIFF SLAUGHTER of the SLL Central Committee speaking and JOHN SIMMANCE.

Extreme right:

A section of tr audience. THE FIGHT THE SMITH regime in S Rhodesia is both an embarassment and a convenience for Britain.

On the one hand Smith is a 'naughty' boy who broke the rules and Britain was pushed into the unwanted position of having to be criticized by her own African 'independent' agents for not using force against Smith.

On the other nand, the smith regime is a whipping boy who is blamed for all the anti-African discrimination which he inherited from Britain and which per tent British-made and which match last November.

by Vorster in mid-May when he sacked de Wet Nel from his Cabinet position for having been rude during the recent election towards the Anglo-S African financial magnate, Harry Oppenheimer.

If Smith were seriously to offend giant concerns like the penheimer Entereston the Oppenheimer interests Rhodesia and the British banks thère, British imperialism would soon enough have him out on his ear.

At the moment there is no urgency for Wilson to do this job for his masters, so Smith remains cock-o-the-walk in Salisbury.

It remains sheer political hypoantiSmith gestures.

This government has Vorster and Smith to thank for the very opportunity to assume such 'proover the trade embargo in S executives the same antiThe essential point about both Vorster and Smith is that they are, fundamentally and historically, creatures of British imperialand not agents acting in their own right.

They are mere political managers of the British economic estate in S Africa.

Spurious

This is the basic fact from which to view the various spuriSmith anti-apartheid and cavorts and of staunch liberal, Anglican, Cathoc and other fair play supporters f British imperialism.

Intellectuals POSING the common problems of the working class and the intellectuals in the present world crisis of capitalism, the London area Young Socialists' school in Eastbourne last weekend was the scene of intense and thoughtful discussion by 250 YS members.

Taking the • tasks facing a working class now increasingly on the offensive-yet tied to the traditions and limitations of trade union struggle - and strait-jacket of today's in films intellectuals caught the theatre and television, the school the struggle to renderstand and poses the concrete solution develop revolutionary theory.

This year the Young Socialists celebrate 1970 as the 'Year of Lenin and Trotsky.

all YS activities is brought the fight for Leninism, in the workers move theory ment and its continuity in struggle for Trotsky's Fourth International.

the basis for concept in relation working class not separate from each other.

Well-known

LAYWRIGHT David Merc ell-known for his plays 1 theatre and television and a con tributor to Workers Press, introucture, Theatre and Socialism IN AFRICA Bu N. Makanta When these gentry made the appropriate noises about the Sprinbok cricket tour, they were less concerned with apartheid than with the Commonwealth Games of the Commonwealth as a hidden, hypocritical structure British, Australasian and Canadian imperialism super-exploitAfrican semi-colonies). 'newly-indépendent' The 'Stop the 70 Tour' leader, Peter Haine, himself wrote "The Times' about the effect of the tour on these Games-the Liberals always want to every camouflage for British im. perialism - and the Commonwealth Games are useful camou flage for the British Empir So successful has this sort camouflage been come unacceptable to speak of the British Empire, even in 'left' circles. da machine has been Paropa nda machine has be ccessful in rémoving ev term from the vocabulary, of anti-imperialists and_learned lettists in Fabian and Stalinist circles raise an eyebrow when one talks of the British Empire, as if it no longer existed and talk of it is outmoded and 'old hat'.

Slaves

For hundreds of millions of. semi-colonial slaves of British imperialism the British Empire is a reality, as it is, too, for those who live off the super-profits wrung out of cheap African, Asian and central and S African semi-colonial labour.

In the case of S Rhodesia, figures have been given in this column concerning this reality in terms of land, labour, education and political rights. These figures are, however, only abstract generalizations of the daily reality of life and death under Britain's rule, Smith or before Smith.

An heid, mittee member of the Socialist Labour League who spoke on "The Significance of. Leninism today'.

Explaining the dilemma which faces the artist David Mercer said that a play becomes a consumer product and is bought and sold like meat.

In television there was more and more stultification original work, he said.

Unions People who worked in films had to take up a struggle in their unions against conditions where artists could not produce their own work because of prohibitive costs.

Talking about his own experiences in getting his plays televised, he said there had been minor censorships in some cases and that on one occasion • the 'high-ups' had not wanted a particular play to go out becaus it might disturb people' In the case of In Two Minds' he described how he had posed the problem of children who, on coming into conflict with their parents, find themselves in fact coming into conflict with values which are imposed by capitalist society.

His play showed the case of a schizophrenic girl and the enormous pressure applied on her to 'conform' to what were regarded as 'normal' standards of behaviour.

Explaining why the television film of the play ended as i!

did, on a note of despair, Mercer explained that it was designed precisely • to prod people into questioning and acting. This was the point of conflict for those who watched the play and the basis for change.

Talking about his trilogy, 'Or the Eve of Publication', "The akranda aypocrisy Salisbury University College.

Suddenly, seven years after Smith's UDI, the University of London has, in 1970, sévered its connection with this university, which it helped to found.

Why? Because of Smith's apartheid policy? This is hardly possible, because from 1957, when Britain first set up this institution, it was run on apartheid lines, starting with 63 white students' › with full facilities, and eight Africans, with little or no proper facilities.

It was not Smith, but the British government which at first segregated the African students at Salisbury College into a separate hostel.

It was not Smith, but Britain who banned Dr Chizere from lecturing at this college because his wife happened to be a 'white' Canadian and he an 'African'.

It was Britain which was responsible for an educational system which, by 1962, produced only 62 non-Européan students of the college, out of a total of 235, in a country where 96 per cent of the people were classified as 'black' by the race-classifiers of Whitehall and Westminster.

Racial discrimination could not, therefore, have been the reason for London • University's severance of its formal links with Salisbury University.

The reason 'was something entirely different - namely 'affront' to the British • Royal Family (the Queen Mother is Chancellor of the University) afforded by Smith's declaration of a Republic in 1970.

It was in defence of the monarchy not of human rights that London University "broke off" with its apartheid offspring, Salisbury University. The history of the LSE, especially after Adams, formerly of Salisbury University, had been • put in charge, is only a small part of the continued real connection between London University and Salisbury University, as between London and Salisbury themselves. Cellar and the Almond Tree' and 'Emma's Time', he said he had examined aspects of Stalinism from the standpoint of left-wing intellectual who had paralysed by the revelations of the 1950s.

It was necessary to reveal Stalinism for what it was.

I am under an obligation to do the best I can. The fact that I have been driven into pessimism and despair in some of my conclusions is not itself a reason for despair. It is what I have to fight with.

'A work of art cannot by itself provide the answers. Revolution is the means of transferring power. A work of art may enrich consciousness and it will enrich future society.' • Lenin's theory THIS FIGHT for revolution, said cly be realed on the base, of a fight for Lenin's theory and principles.

Such a struggle was an internationalist one. The war in Vietnam was not a small, localized skirmish, its implications were felt right round from the US to Cambodia.

The revolutionary movement could not be built separate from theory. It was necessary to understand that Lenin was above all a Marxist.

What was required was a struggle to understand the movement and change and development of reality, to understand the laws of development and change in society.

With the present development of the world economic crisis American capitalism could no longer guarantee even democratic freedom.

The dilemma facing capitalism today was that it must take on the working class, when, in a period of 25 years, it had been unable to defeat colonial revoluThis crisis of capitalism had its reflection in the severe crisis of the Stalinist bureaucracy in the Soviet Union and E Europe.

In Britain the bringing forward of the General Election date was a manifestation of the magnitude of the problem facing world capital in a period where working class through its trade union struggle was driving up wages.

It was extremely important for the working class in Britain to realize that in order to take them capitalist wanted the Tories back with a programme of extreme reaction.

The working class had to be taken through the experience of voting against the Tories to return a Labour government and take up a struggle, through the to derelip of the le inustons to. reformism.

This was the only way that a preparation for the working class to take power could be carried out.

This was what was meant by building, , the revolutionary party in the traditions of Leninism by going through to the heart of the working class and all its experiences and preparing it to take power and defeat Stalinism.

LENIN: Speech to the Petrograd Soviet, 1918 3s. 0d.

By G. Zinoviev Illustrated with many photo. Evered thy wae splent closest associates on the occasion of his recovery from wounds received in attempt on ais life, It gives a remarkably clear picture of Lonin and what is required to be a revolutionary. IF V solar chen tesin of pi vith the aepen and a about It i ing tl Owever, if this were to en, it is quite possible the two systems would ange matter so that-if survived to make the vations—we might find the sun has either lost tined a planet. cing an even more unlikely uality, we might ena ur the two suns orbiting each and sharing common Are we have stretched the By to its utmost limit in to approach what happens a chemical compound is d—a process in which the me is the sharing of elecby the atoms of two or different elements. at actually happens? was the physicist Nils Bohr irst suggested that electrons round the nucleus like ts round the sun. hough this theory was on experiments, like those lutherford, and provided nations for other observed it ran into difficulties when ists began to consider atoms er than hydrogen (which inly one electron). soon became evident that s impossible to import the governing large masses into ninute realm of the atom. • particles are sufficiently they do not simply become er versions of large bodies, • qualitative change takes ler laws- the laws um mechanics - become :able in this domain and in no longer even consider minute particles as acting mall billiard balls any more. other big difference between ¡olar system and an atom e highly-structured nature e latter. Whereas man can satellites into countless ent orbits round the earth, 'air corridors' like the sky over a busy airport.

Just as aircraft have to remain within these corridors so as to avoid collision, so the electrons are most likely to be found within these atomic corridors, known as orbitals.

There is therefore much more order in an atom than in solar system.

Electrons are to be found in various spherical 'shells' surrounding the nucleus, each of which contains a number of corridors.

Let us imagine an atom with all its orbitals empty, so that we just haye happen at high tem- a nucleus. (This, in peratures when the electrons can achieve enough energy to escape.)

We now form the different elements by introducing the appropriate number of electrons: one for hydrogen, two helium ... 92 for uranium.

We can imagine passenger: getting on to a double-decker bus and sitting down. They will first of all try to get a seat downstairs, on their own if possible. When every seat downstairs is occupied by a single passenger, those following have the choice of sharing a seat or golng upstairs.

Similarly, the hirst electron to choose an empty orbital will go into the one at the lowest energy level. The next one will have the choice of sharing this orbital or going into the next lowest energy orbital and so on.

The laws of atomic physics tell us how many electrons are allowed in each shell. No more than two are allowed in the innermost, so that lithium-the element with atomic number three-has its third electron in the next shell up.

When we get to uranium 92, we have seven shells containing 2, 8, 18, 32, 21, 9 and 2 electrons respectively.

What is important is that the outermost shell cannot contain more than eight electrons and this is the shell which plays the By MARTIN ZARROP dominant role in a chemical reaction of the element with another. Once the shell has its full quota, it is virtually impervious to other atoms-there is no crack in its armour.

This explains the 'inertness' of the gases helium, neon, argon, krypton and xenon. Their elecronic patterns are, respectively: 2; 2, 8; 2, 3, 8; 2, 8, 18, 8 2, 8, 18, 18, 8.

Urgınally• discovered at the end of the last century, it was not until 1962 that a compound of xenon was formed.

Conversely, we would expect that the smaller the number of electrons in the outermost shell, the more reactive the element should be. Those with only one electron in this shell fall into Group 1 in the Periodic Table and this consists of the reactive metals lithium, 'sodium, potassium, etc.

The Periodic Table, therefore, can be. described as a ,twodimensional picture of a series of 3-d structures and reflects the qualitative changes that take place as we complete shell after shell.

What happens when a compound is formed?

Let us take the example of common salt, a compound of sodium and chlorine.

The sodium atom has one electron in its outermost shell, the chlorine atom has seven. When salt (sodium chloride) is formed, the sodium atom losses one electron which the chlorine atom packs away to complete its outer shell. But now the two atoms are held together by electrical forces!

In losing the electron, which has a negative charge, one the sodium atom's positive charges is no longer neutralized. chemistry of living cells.

In reality, matters are not so simple. When we mix two chemicals together, we do not necessarily get a compound. We are dealing with billions of atoms which are undergoing large numbers of collisions, only some of which may result in 'link-ups'.

If we simply, mix two parts of hydrogen with one part of water in a container, we will have to wait hundreds of years before any detectable amounts of water are formed 'naturally'.

However, as any schoolboy will tell you, an electrical spark will accomplish the job in a split Atoms bonded together in this way are called molecules, and we can say that what the chemical industry does on a gigantic scale today is to produce these to order by combining the correct elements under controlled external conditions.

Today it is possible to build up artificially huge structures (polymers) out of basic molecules and to produce the synthetic materials with which we are familiar, like bakelite, nylon, terylene and many athers.

probing the nature of life itself, scientists study the huge molecules known as protein which can comprise up to 50,000 atoms strung out along a chain and can be several million times the weight of a hydrogen atom.

In each case, the number of atoms relationship in the molecules lead to qualitatively different properties and different fields of study.

The work of Mendeleev & part ofago was an important these developments.

Although he remained an idealist and a political reactionary to his dying day, both Engels and Scientil goously deferded his order enrich Marxist dialectics as the theoretical reflection of an unconscious material process.

this, the development of chemistry—the transmutation of matter-forms an integral part.

FOUR Thursday, June 4, 1970