Re: SPACE: Cassini Mission Consequences

Mark Grant (mark@unicorn.com)
Sun, 21 Sep 1997 08:30:00 +0000


On Sat, 20 Sep 1997, Michael Lorrey wrote:

> failure would only threaten some fish in the Atlantic Ocean, and because
> they know that the RTGs have been specifically designed to survive
> launch failures (and have sucessfully done so in the past, to be
> refurbished and reused on a later mission).

They've also survived reentry from lunar return trajectories at around
25,000 mph (AFAIR Apollo 13's RTG is sitting intact somewhere off the coast
of New Zealand), and survived mostly intact a few feet from a
kiloton-range nuclear explosion. What tougher testing could these guys
expect?

Note also that estimates of the amount of plutonium put into the atmosphere
by nuclear testing run from 3-10 *tons*. If the fanatics are correct, then
we're all dead of plutonium poisoning but just haven't stopped moving yet.
Hmm, actually this could explain a lot about the human race ;-).

Mark

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