wrote in message
...
Given all of the manned space accidents (fatal and non-fatal) what makes
you
think that requiring a "man in the loop" is going to make much of a
difference in safety?

It's true that plane crashes still happen despite pilots in the
cockpit. However, pilots are ulimately responsible for the safety of
passengers and usually pay with their own lives if they screw-up.
This gives many passengers the confidence necessary to board planes.

Irrelevant. We're talking about spacecraft, not aircraft.

In the case of nuclear reactors in space, the concern with an
uncontrolled re-entry is causing an international incident and an
environmental disaster costing billions to clean-up. Having people
with hands-on control at all times would go a long way toward giving
governments the confidence to allow spaceborne reactors in spite of
the risks.

So you're ducking the current safety record of manned spacecraft and
changing your argument that having a man in the loop would somehow inspire
confidence in other governments. I find this argument weak. NASA has
launched plenty of unmanned (and manned) spacecraft with nuclear RTG's on
board and despite the protests of a few nutjobs that don't understand the
engineering behind the nuclear RTG's, there really aren't problems with
convincing other governments that the US knows what it's doing.

One final thing you're ignoring. No one would launch a space based nuclear
reactor "hot" because of the problem of cooling it, among other things.
Prior to that the nuclear fuel could reside in similar reentry/impact proof
containers used by existing RTG's (scaled up of course). You'd only
activate the reactor in space where it would be safe to do so. for
something like a reactor for a Mars mission, this wouldn't be until the
reactor was on the surface of Mars (again due to cooling issues).

Jeff
--
"Take heart amid the deepening gloom
that your dog is finally getting enough cheese" - Deteriorata - National
Lampoon