There are very few obstacles that can be more severe. In order for a spacecraft to eventually have a Jovian system with enough speed to achieve orbit around Europa, it had to either launch from a powerful rocket (which NASA did not require, a ‘restricting a spacecraft to the use of a space shuttle) or being completely lightweight (for which the necessary radiation weapons were made impossible). JPL engineers quickly put out written equations in chalk before punching a blackboard in a state of despair.
There was nothing for NASA never free … except gravity support. Typically, the group could compensate for the small distances of a heavy spacecraft by taking indirect flight paths and using planets en route to a yank and shearing the robotic traveler outward, inward or outward. The laws of physics could be immutable, and the relevant numbers known, NASA orbital dynamics could do this all day, running the numbers to a spacecraft sling precisely, one planet to the next. next one: free transfer from Isaac Newton. It was arguably the best deal in a place survey.
But then television tabloid journalism got in the way, and everything got complicated.
In 1997, while waiting at Cape Canaveral for construction, Cassini’s mission was abruptly disrupted by political protest. Cassini was carrying three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, powered by the decay of plutonium 238. The plutonium of the Back in the future mixture – a fuzzy drop of Scary Material Of course into a home flux capacitor – but instead it was stored in a ceramic form, wrapped in iridium, and coated in graphite. It could not corrode, or be expelled by heat, or vaporize, or dissipate like an aerosol, or dissolve in water. It was made to withstand not only the explosion of the rocket carrying it, but even catastrophic reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Since it could not vaporize, in the event of a catastrophe, a person would not inadvertently inhale and develop superpowers or additional appendices. In fact, it was designed so that you could even eat the stuff. The human body could not accept it.
But 10 days before three and a half million pounds of rockets launched between Cassini and Earth, a much smaller number – 60, as was 60 minutes– NASA nailed to the floor. The CBS TV news program went out on a feature on the soon-to-be-launched spacecraft for Saturn, Steve Kroft featured in the segment. The communicator’s opening line: “On the thirteenth of October, a Titan IV rocket is expected to take off from Cape Canaveral carrying seventy-two pounds of deadly plutonium; plutonium enough, in theory at least, to give a lethal dose to every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth several times. ”
And it only got worse from there. Cassini was an afterthought in the story, and interviews from experts were surrounded by comments from… nonexperts, being kind, but very talkative, and their contributions – the generous ones! – lines introduced such as, “What entitles anyone, including the federal government, to risk death or – or harm the population just for the sake of space inspection ? ”
In this section a plutonium expert from the Department of Energy smoothly said that even if the rocket, the spacecraft, and the graphite-sealed ceramic plutonium, on the starting plate, exploded, it was impossible. to the debris what the campaigners did he said he would. But just to be balanced, menoftie dooftayers Kroft gave a detailed description of what plutonium is – not in the form used by NASA, which you could safely blast on your breakfast cereal, because, again, you could eat– this should be done to the human body. Key features include: “it can cause lung cancer” and “you could have numbers like 100,000 or more people developing lung cancer” and “if there is such an explosion, you can say goodbye to kiss Florida. ”
Kroft even found a former NASA employee (“He’s not a scientist or an engineer,” Kroft admitted, “but…”) publicly lamenting his role in endangering lives for such effects as space exploration. “I feel guilty, really,” said the spy.
To seal the deal, Kroft interrupted the story with snippets of an interview with Wes Huntress, head of NASA’s planetary program, who had been in charge of successfully landing on Mars Pathfinder just months earlier.
“This is from your own statement on the impact of the environment,” Kroft told Huntress – the tone of the host, but firm and accessible, with a hard face but some good eyes. “I want to read you a few things.”
Huntress was a pioneer in interstellar cloud exploration and one of the world’s foremost experts in planetary exploration, but not just as tabloid-TV material, and after a cavalcade of campaigners arguing strongly and without interruption, he looked less confident in his responses work.
Quoted Kroft: “In the event of an accident he speaks, announces, removes and removes all vegetation in contaminated areas, demolishes some or all structures and moves the population on. which has a lasting effect. ‘”
“If there should be such an accident,” Huntress said, rightly but helplessly.
Kroft replied, “I mean, that feels very magical…” and Kroft waited patiently for Huntress, who had a rope necessary to hang himself, to fill the silence. , which fills 60 minutes there were always interview topics, and he did, and he did.
“This guy didn’t even know what his own Armageddon official report said!”
“Well, the damage to the site, near – near – near the launch piece is – perhaps they’re mostly talking – mostly – because it’s clear that when one of the those things, a lot of damage near the starting point. ”
And after tapress Huntress and coincidence—this guy didn’t even know what his own official Armageddon report said!—And finally graciously descending from the gallows, followed famous doomsayers, explaining in detail how Life as We Know It Was Ending, and Kissing Your Baby Tonight as our foolish endeavor over the cosmos – Saturn! This pointless mission will be to a gas giant, whatever that means – leaving survivors fighting for the last canned goods on ransacked store shelves.
Worse still, Cassini would take the second swing of the peaceful people of planet Earth! If it did not blow when it was launched, it was ready to follow the path of VVEJGA to its path to Saturn: that is, two dragons by Venus (V, V), and then it would chicken game with the Earth, and if something went wrong … (but if things went well, from Earth [E] to Jupiter [J] for gravity aids [GA]).
The Clinton administration did not have time for this but included the letters and optics of protesters clinging to chain-link fences with a concert on the outskirts of Cape Canaveral, and inside, the police lining in body armor and carrying disarmed wings looking silent. , just waiting for – what? Open fire? Brandy bat?
Nonetheless, NASA went ahead with the reckless rocket launch that could leave just cockroaches swarming on Earth (or whatever some future species would call it this planet), and things were fine, as they had for previous launches several times. But the message from the head office for those who file future space missions: if you need to launch live radio material, do not design routes to bring the spacecraft back to Earth for gravity assistance. No one needs a headache.
This meant, for Karla and the company, year-long negotiations on a possible trade for the so-called Europa Orbiter mission. They studied other landmarks, other launch vehicles – anything to get more mass for a relevant science result. What hardware do you make “rad-hard” – similar to radiation (but expensive) – just folding into a “dumb mass,” ie, large blocks of cheap protective shield? What was the minimum possible payload of science? Eventually, they found a relatively happy medium: a spaceship that could launch directly and achieve the minimum science needed to make a Europa voyage valuable, and NASA loved it, and then the cost doubled, and in 1999 Ed Weiler shot him dead. So so.
From THE DANGER, or: How Disciple de Carl Sagan, Ex-Motocross racer, Texas Tea Party convener, World’s Worst Typewriter, California Mountain People, and NASA Executive anonymous going to war with Mars, overcoming Saturn’s crisis. , Traded Blows with Washington, and stole a trip on an Alabama moon rocket to send a spacecraft to Jupiter in search of Eden ‘s second ship at the bottom of an alien ocean inside an ice world called Europa (True Story) by David W. Brown. Copyright © 2021 by David W. Brown. From Custom House, a line of books from William Morrow / HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted with permission.