New Horizons RTG ramble

It just occurred to me that I never heard so much as a peep out
of the anti-nuclear loonies about the RTG's carried aboard New
Horizons. Nothing on TV, nothing on the Net - absolutely nada. I
wonder what got up their noses so much about Galileo and Ulysses that
didn't with THIS particular launch?

In article ,
Guy Parry wrote:
It just occurred to me that I never heard so much as a peep out
of the anti-nuclear loonies about the RTG's carried aboard New
Horizons. Nothing on TV, nothing on the Net - absolutely nada. I
wonder what got up their noses so much about Galileo and Ulysses that
didn't with THIS particular launch?

The hard-core loonies were still excited about it, but their base of
public support has been dwindling steadily. For Galileo and Ulysses,
there was significant commotion about it. For Cassini, one or two
small, half-hearted protests. Now, almost nothing. They've cried wolf
too many times.
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

"Guy Parry" wrote in message
...
It just occurred to me that I never heard so much as a peep out
of the anti-nuclear loonies about the RTG's carried aboard New
Horizons. Nothing on TV, nothing on the Net - absolutely nada. I
wonder what got up their noses so much about Galileo and Ulysses that
didn't with THIS particular launch?

Oh there were a few protesters.

But I suspect most realized when the world didn't end after Galileo and
Ulysses and Cassini that it wouldn't end this time. And the press figured
it wasn't much of a news event, so that led to less people coming out also.

On Wed, 1 Feb 2006 04:04:37 GMT, (Henry Spencer)
wrote:

The hard-core loonies were still excited about it, but their base of
public support has been dwindling steadily. For Galileo and Ulysses,
there was significant commotion about it. For Cassini, one or two
small, half-hearted protests. Now, almost nothing. They've cried wolf
too many times.

....And once was two times too many to begin with.

OM
--
]=====================================[
] OMBlog - http://www.io.com/~o_m/omworld [
] Let's face it: Sometimes you *need* [
] an obnoxious opinion in your day! [
]=====================================[

(Henry Spencer) wrote:

In article ,
Guy Parry wrote:
It just occurred to me that I never heard so much as a peep out
of the anti-nuclear loonies about the RTG's carried aboard New
Horizons. Nothing on TV, nothing on the Net - absolutely nada. I
wonder what got up their noses so much about Galileo and Ulysses that
didn't with THIS particular launch?

The hard-core loonies were still excited about it, but their base of
public support has been dwindling steadily.

Given the lack of a noticeable change in anti-nuclear sentiment, I
doubt it.

For Galileo and Ulysses, there was significant commotion about it. For
Cassini, one or two small, half-hearted protests. Now, almost nothing.
They've cried wolf too many times.

Given that New Horizons flew pretty much under the public radar (not
being nearly as well known as Galileo and Ulysses) and the vast
distractions currently occupying that end of the lunatic fringe...

Not to mention that I don't recall the protests around Cassini as
being half-hearted. Plus there were two episode of protest, one
prelaunch and another during the flyby.

I'd not draw too confident a line through a single data point.

D.
--
Touch-twice life. Eat. Drink. Laugh.

-Resolved: To be more temperate in my postings.
Oct 5th, 2004 JDL

In message , Guy Parry
writes
It just occurred to me that I never heard so much as a peep out
of the anti-nuclear loonies about the RTG's carried aboard New
Horizons. Nothing on TV, nothing on the Net - absolutely nada. I
wonder what got up their noses so much about Galileo and Ulysses that
didn't with THIS particular launch?

Didn't I see somewhere that there were about 30 protesters at the
launch? (Looking it up, I did - probably here
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8560)
Apparently 800 people protested over Cassini. Though the real nutters
were still protesting when it had problems at Jupiter - they thought it
might come back ;-)

"Jonathan Silverlight" wrote
in message ...
In message , Guy Parry
writes
It just occurred to me that I never heard so much as a peep out
of the anti-nuclear loonies about the RTG's carried aboard New
Horizons. Nothing on TV, nothing on the Net - absolutely nada. I
wonder what got up their noses so much about Galileo and Ulysses that
didn't with THIS particular launch?

Didn't I see somewhere that there were about 30 protesters at the launch?
(Looking it up, I did - probably here
http://www.newscientistspace.com/article.ns?id=dn8560)
Apparently 800 people protested over Cassini. Though the real nutters were
still protesting when it had problems at Jupiter - they thought it might
come back ;-)



Ok, they are protesting because of the danger to the people if one of
those rockets explode. So how bad would it get if say New Horizons exploded
and the container that held the plutonium or whatever it was carrying was
damaged and released it's contents? How many people would get contaminated?
And how would they be effected? Would they die instantly? Would they just
get an increase in the risk of cancer? Something in between? Would it be a
definite danger to the people in Orlando?

Ok, they are protesting because of the danger to the people if one of
those rockets explode. So how bad would it get if say New Horizons exploded
and the container that held the plutonium or whatever it was carrying was
damaged and released it's contents? How many people would get contaminated?
And how would they be effected? Would they die instantly? Would they just
get an increase in the risk of cancer? Something in between? Would it be a
definite danger to the people in Orlando?


Divers would head out into the Atlantic, recover the RTG and sent it
away for reprocessing and possible re-use. At least that's what
happened the last time a rocket with an RTG on it exploded during
launch.

Worst case scenario the RTG falls on someone and kills them instantly.
These things are designed to withstand launch accidents.

Kelly McDonald

In message . net, Von
Fourche writes

So how bad would it get if say New Horizons exploded
and the container that held the plutonium or whatever it was carrying was
damaged and released it's contents?

That's "its". And I hate people who change their email address to get
round kill files. Now three and counting in mine.

On Wed, 01 Feb 2006 12:50:19 +1100, Guy Parry
wrote:

It just occurred to me that I never heard so much as a peep out
of the anti-nuclear loonies about the RTG's carried aboard New
Horizons. Nothing on TV, nothing on the Net - absolutely nada. I
wonder what got up their noses so much about Galileo and Ulysses that
didn't with THIS particular launch?

I think the main reason New Horizons didn't get much attention is that
most of the nuclear-paranoids failed to realize it was ready to
launch. NASA has been launching quite a few planetary missions in the
last decade. Galileo got huge press because it was the first
interplanetary mission in ten years. Cassini got less, because by 1997
NASA had launch Pathfinder, Mars Global Surveyor, and NEAR in the past
couple of years. New Horizons flew under the radar because it followed
a bunch of RTG-less missions this decade.

Also, Galileo was easy to get worked up over, because it was launched
on the Shuttle less than four years after the Challenger disaster. The
protesters at that time screamed that RTGs should be launched (if they
must be launched at all) way up on top of rockets, instead of down
between three Main Engines and two SRBs in a Shuttle payload bay. That
came back to haunt them when Cassini was launched on top of a Titan.
Now New Horizons went up on an Atlas 5, which Lockheed loves to
proclaim has never failed and is descended from the 50+ launches since
a failure Atlas-Centaur. The lineage is tenuous at best, but in-depth
analysis isn't something nuclear protesters are noted for. They are
far more argue-from-emotion advocates, and its hard to call the
Atlas-Centaur a death-trap or an accident waiting to happen.

Brian