Plutonium Blurb

In article .com,
Allen Thomson wrote:
In the Titan 4B / Cassini launch, the greater immediate hazard from an
on pad or early launch explosion would have been from the nitrogen
tetroxide rather than the plutonium.

I may be misremembering this, but ISTR reading after an NRO T4B blew up
shortly after leaving the Cape that the launch rules said "don't go if
there's a breeze toward land"...

If memory serves, at a Space Access conference a few years ago, Jeff
Greason said -- talking about the difference between guidelines and
ironclad rules -- that to launch a Titan IV in full compliance with all
the stuff in the Cape safety manual, you would have to evacuate most
of Florida first. He added: "I'm not kidding."
--
spsystems.net is temporarily off the air; | Henry Spencer
mail to henry at zoo.utoronto.ca instead. |

If NASA was to launch while artillery targeted the RTG during a major
hurricane, I MIGHT be concerned enough to get up and close the window,
otherwise dont waste my time with this sort of silliness.

On 4 Dec 2005 15:26:14 -0800, "Ed Kyle" wrote:

Heads up Florida! He has a point about how distruptive
a launch failure could be in terms of evacuations, etc.


*Yawn* Paid for by CAVE. (Citizens Against Virtually Everything.)



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"jonathan" wrote:

:Yep, they've decided to power their future spacecraft with nuclear
:fuel. Ya know, the Space Solar Power program was meant to
:also be a generic source for powering spacecraft, stations and habitats
f all kinds. SSP was meant to provide the most basic infrastructure
:needed to colonize and explore space.
:
:They've chosen the easy route, the one that won't build a long
:term infrastructure. This is the same mistake made by the Apollo
rogram. A one shot deal, no meaningful infrastructure.

Don't be stupid. This is a PLUTO probe. Unless you can find a way to
move Pluto significantly closer to the sun you are not going to use
solar power to run this probe.

RTGs are safer than houses. People get hurt in houses all the time.
Nobody has ever been hurt by an RTG so far as I know.

This is just the usual ignorant tub-thumping.

--
"Ignorance is preferable to error, and he is less remote from the
truth who believes nothing than he who believes what is wrong."
-- Thomas Jefferson