Tuesday April 5, 2011
Volume CXXX Issue 10
Apollo astronaut shares experiences with students
Touch-N-Go Productions Big Show
Don’t miss this year’s Big Show, featuring Less Than Jake and Reel Big Fish on Saturday. Doors open at 7:30 p.m. and the show starts at 8 p.m. in the ICI Center. For more information or to help with security, stop by the Touch-N-Go office or visit their website at touch-n-go.org
Richard Weakley Staff Reporter
Last Thursday evening, in the College of Aviation Atrium, the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) held their AIAA ERAU Student Branch Formal Dinner with Apollo Astronaut Al Worden as the guest speaker. Worden shared with the audience his memories of the Apollo Program and offered advice for up and coming engineers and those aspiring to be astronauts. Worden served as the Apollo 15 Command Module pilot performing science experi-
SGA Town Hall Do you have questions for school administrators? Come to the SGA Town Hall to get them answered. On Monday, April 18, the SGA will host its biannual Town Hall with Dr. John Johnson, (ERAU President), Dr. Richard Heist (ERAU Executive Vice President), Aaron Clevenger (Director of Student Activities & Campus Events) and Justin Fletcher (SGA President). Food will be served and there will be a chance to win an iPad.
Sixth annual Pull-A-Plane Join aviation honor society Alpha Omicron Alpha as they host their 6th annual Pull-APlane. The event will take place on Saturday, April 9 at noon at the Daytona Beach International Airport customs area. All proceeds will be donated to Angel Flight Southeast. For more information and entry details, visit website at www.aoapap.com
Inflatable Day on the West Lawn Sponsored by Touch-N-Go productions, Inflatable Day will be held as a promotional event on the west lawn tomorrow from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. For more information, stop by the TouchN-Go office or visit their website at touch-n-go.org
ments in lunar orbit while fellow astronauts David Scott and James Irwin descended in the lunar lander and explored the surface of the moon. Sitting in the Apollo Command Module atop the Saturn V on July 26, 1971 before launch was described by Worden as “quiet and dark” while the vehicle was being prepared for flight. During the time when he had completed his tasks and was awaiting lift off, Worden was actually relaxed enough for a two hour nap. The ascent of the vehicle had a “smooth acceleration” and the astronauts could not tell when they cleared the tower except for mission control stating that fact and from the instruments onboard the vehicle. Upon reaching lunar orbit, Worden said that “the most unique thing about being out at the moon is going around the moon and seeing the Earth. That’s a mind blower when you see the Earth from back there. Also another thing was the first time when we saw the moon up close was really astounding. That really just blew my mind. You see a couple of scenes like that, that you are so not prepared to see, that they make a lifelong impression on you.” When asked about how humbling it is to the see the moon up close, Worden responded that “you can’t even describe how small it makes you feel.” During the part of the lunar orbit that led him to the dark side of the moon when the spacecraft was between the Earth and Sun shadows and there was
no light, Worden recollected, “that’s something I’ll never forget seeing the universe. [I] couldn’t see individual stars, just a broad brush of light.” After returning back to Earth, Worden calculated the number of stars visible to him, at that point was 106 more than what can be seen from the surface of the Earth. After recollecting his space flight experience, Worden offered advice to those students present. For whose wanting to be astronauts or space program engineers, Worden advises to “Have patience. Hope for the best. I don’t know what direction the space program is going to go. There’s always going to be opportunities in the space program, it just might not be manned space… I think with the training you get at Embry-Riddle, it doesn’t make a difference if its manned space or unmanned space, you still learn about rockets and propulsion. I think there’s always a future there [in space exploration]”. Worden explained that in the industry you may not get along with everyone you work with, however, “you don’t need to get along with people you work with if you do everything professionally.” Worden did not get along with one of his fellow crew members but through doing everything professionally, as trained and directed by Mission Control, they were able to complete the mission objectives and perform additional research. This led Apollo 15 to be known in the scientific community as the Apollo program flight that accomplished the most science. Also, Worden cautioned that doing something “Earth shaking” like going to the moon, will not come without personal sacrifices. “What you give up is a lot of family time… in fact, my marriage did not survive to my flight because I was gone so much. We all go through periods in our lives that we have to make a decision about what you do. With the space program that was a pretty big thing. It was not something I was willing to give up.”
Arts & Letters series speaker On Saturday at 7 p.m. in the IC, join David Garfinkle, Chair of Physics at Oakland University and author of Three Steps to the Universe, talk about the mysteries of black holes. He will explain that black holes are, in fact, among the “brightest objects in the universe” and connected to wormholes, dark matter, and dark energy.
Weekly Weather Tuesday High Low
72 54
50% Rain
Wednesday High Low
74 59
Sunny
Thursday High Low
80 63
Mostly Sunny
Friday High Low
82 67
Mostly Sunny
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AL WORDEN SURROUNDED BY representatives from the Student Branch of the AIAA at ERAU. AIAA and SGT sponsored Worden for the evening as he shared his experiences and advice.
‘Watermelon Bust’ for nonperishable foods Megan Demmert Guest Reporter
Fruit was flying during the week of March 29, as one of Embry-Riddle’s social Greek lettered fraternities, Lambda Chi Alpha, held their annual philanthropy event, Watermelon Bust. In support of Lambda Chi Alpha all four of the sororities on campus, Alpha Xi Delta, Lambda Theta Alpha, Theta Phi Alpha and Sigma Sigma Sigma, participated in five different mini games involving watermelon to help benefit the philanthropy. Watermelon Bust is a national food drive, which each chapter of Lambda Chi Alpha participates in each year. The event has raised nationally more than 24.6 million pounds of food to benefit the North American Food Drive (NAFD). The NAFD,
started in 1993, is designed to raise food for local communities, which also works closely with the fraternity. This year’s goal for the NAFD is to raise over 3 million pounds of food. Not only has Watermelon Bust become the largest single philanthropic projects sponsored by a collegiate national organization, Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity has became the first fraternity to receive the Summit Award from the American Society of Association Executives in 1995 on a national level. For this year’s event, the list of mini games for the Watermelon Bust included poster painting, watermelon carving/decorating, watermelon eating, watermelon-chunk toss and an obstacle course. While the last three events included more physical activities, the poster painting and watermelon carving
showed the more artistic side of the participants. All entries for these two event included different elements of both Lambda Chi Alpha and each of the sororities participating. Throughout the week, laughter and screaming could be heard around the SC. Later in the week, the watermelon began to fly as the sisters participated in the watermelon-chunking toss. For the watermelon-chucking contest, two sisters of each sorority had to throw chunks of watermelon into a bucket using a brother of Lambda Chi Alpha as a backboard. Going into Sunday’s event, the obstacle course, there was a three-way tie between Alpha Xi Delta, Lambda Theta Alpha and Theta Phi Alpha. At the end of the day, raising 248 pounds of food, Theta Phi Alpha was named the winners of the 2011 Watermelon Bust. Krystel Parra, a sister of Theta Phi Alpha commented on the win, “Victory in the mini games was the least of our accomplish-
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ments, it was the joy of knowing we contributed 248 pounds of food to the North American Food Drive!” All together, the event raised over 350 pounds of food for the North American Food Drive.
Mitch Hoerle, a brother of Lambda Chi Alpha and coordinator of Watermelon Bust stated, “Based on the amount of food raised, this year’s event was a lot more successful than last year.”
AINSLEY ROBSON/AVION
THETA PHI ALPHA WAS named the 2011 Watermelon Bust winners after raising 248 pounds of nonperishable food items.
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