Re: SPACE: NASA says the 'N' word...

From: Mike Lorrey (mlorrey@datamann.com)
Date: Thu Feb 07 2002 - 20:52:11 MST


namacdon wrote:
>
> >I'm just surprised that that old anti-nuker astrophysicist Michio
> >"Ka-Ka" Kaku wasn't there spewing inanities about solar power and >the
> >alleged risks of RTGs...
>
> Funny. In "Visions", he appeared to be totally in favor of nuclear and
> ionic based propulsion systems as being the future of spaceflight in the
> 21st century. What would he be doing there?

A few years ago, when NASA was launching the Cassini Probe, Michio Kaku
led the protests in public and in the scientific community against
launching the probe, despite the fact we'd already spent a billion and a
half bucks on the thing, all because it used RTGs for power. Kaku
claimed that the risks outweighed the benefits, and all sorts of other
drivel that never happened. Kaku claimed that we could send four smaller
probes using only solar power to Saturn for the same price, although
with fewer instruments and with most of the mass of the probes being
solar panels. Of course, those probes would be ones that HIS university
group would design and build....



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