Historical Newspapers of South Carolina

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Space center honors Apollo 11 mission BY PAM EASTON THE ASSOCIATED PRESS HOUSTON — Johnson Space Center staff and retirees Tuesday marked the 35th anniversary of the first manned lunar landing with MoonPies, a vintage car pa rade and proud reflections of a deed that dazzled the world. The celebration was a far cry from the 1969 bash that some re membered as a “drunken orgy” to mark the safe return of the Apollo 11 crew of Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin and Michael Collins. “The cigars came out,” retiree Norman Chaffee, 67, said Tuesday. “The flags came out. Boy, you put away your slide rule. For about 24 hours, there were people stum bling out there on the road. That was just a tremendous party.” It was also a time of less tech nology — and less bureaucracy, veterans recalled. “I stared up at the moon and couldn’t believe what we had just done,” JSC’s chief engineer, Jay Greene, said as celebrants browsed mock-ups of the moon’s surface, a personal hygiene kit that traveled with the astronauts, newspaper articles from 1969 and pictures of the crew that flew the famed mission. “We went to the moon with slide rules,” noted Chaffee, who worked on the spacecraft propul sion system. “I didn’t even have my first full-function calculator until 1972. There was much less bureaucratic oversight at that time. People generally felt like if it made sense, go ahead and do it. we were much less risk averse. Now with the Challenger accident and the Columbia acci dent and some of the other things, we have become so risk averse that we don’t dare do things,” he said, adding: “The key is to take responsible risks.” Randy Stone, deputy director of the Johnson Space Center, said many things made the Apollo era easier than today for space proj ects. “We were in the Cold War,” he said. “We were in a technologi cal race that most people believed we could not afford to lose. “The naysayers didn’t have as much influence,” Stone said. “It was still hard to get money, but it wasn’t near as hard as it is to day.” Stone said accomplishing some thing great, however, is difficult regardless of the era: “Technical things and things where you are putting people’s lives at risk are tough at any time.” The challenges of the Apollo 11 mission were so all consuming that Cecil Gibson, who also wui kcu on me rocKei s propulsion system, said he didn’t even know his first child had been born until three days later. “By the time it kind of settled down and I got a chance to go home, I had a 3-day-old daughter,” Gibson recalled Tuesday. “We called her the moon baby. ” Milt Heflin, chief of JSC’s Flight Director Office, said taking a man to the moon was the “gutsi est thing that we have ever, ever done. “At that time, you could feel it. Man, we were on a roll,” he said. PHOTO COURTESY OF THE ASSOCIATED PRESS Buzz Aldrin celebrated the 35th anniversary of the moon landing. PETA investigator captures video of chicken abuse BY BRETT BARROUQUERE THE ASSOCIATED PRESS LOUISVILLE, KY. - An investi gator for an animal rights group captured video of chickens being kicked, stomped and thrown against a wall by workers at a sup plier for Kentucky Fried Chicken. The footage, released online Tuesday, was secretly taken at the Pilgrim’s Pride plant in Moorefield, W.Va., by an investi gator for People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals who worked there from October to May. PETA said its investigator also obtained eyewitness testimony about employees “ripping birds’ beaks off, spray-painting their faces, twisting their heads off, spit ting tobacco into their mouths and eyes, and breaking them in half— all while the birds are still alive. ” Pilgrim’s Pride spokesman Ray Atkinson said the company is ap palled by what it saw on the video, has reopened a previous investi gation into complaints of chicken mistreatment and will fire any em ployees who are found to have vi olated company policies on animal welfare. “These actions are completely contrary to all of our company’s practices and policies regarding the humane treatment of poultry,” Atkinson said. KFC spokeswoman Bonnie i-m i-» mk-■ Warschauer said in a statement that KFC told Pilgrim’s Pride it will buy no more chickens from its Moorefield plant unless the supplier provides assurances that the abuses are no longer taking place. KFC also said it has hired an in spector trained in animal welfare investigations whose job will be to prevent similar abuses at the plant. PETA has been pressuring KFC since last year, when it sued the company and called for a boycott, demanding that KFC require sup pliers to treat animals more hu manely. The group has recently won similar concessions from oth er major fast-food chains, includ ing McDonald’s and Burger King. PETA said it wants West Virginia authorities to prosecute plant employees and managers un der state animal-cruelty laws. The animal rights group filed a com plaint with Hardy County Prosecutor Lucas See in Moorefield, who did not immedi ately return a call Tuesday. —V--1 www.palmettobargains.com f . . ff t www.paimenopargams.com or news tip?