Power probe looks to Jovian moons

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http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/3302947.stm

Scientists have been giving details of a proposed US mission to the moons of Jupiter that may possibly support life - Europa, Callisto and Ganymede.

The huge probe, which would visit each in turn to study sub-surface oceans, will need to be powered by a nuclear reactor and this may be controversial.

The US space agency calls the concept craft the Jupiter Icy Moons obiter. The Galileo mission that came to an end earlier this year produced tantalising hints that Europa, Ganymede and Callisto might have oceans of liquid water below their ice-crusted surfaces.

One of the unusual requirements of the probe is that it will have to jump from moon to moon. This, Nasa says, will require far more energy than for any previous craft, and the only feasible power source is an on-board nuclear fission reactor to drive an electric propulsion system.

That's the official story: Let's go explore Jupiter's moons. Never mind the soldiers at war. Never mind the growing ranks of jobless poor Americans.

Oh, and by the way. We'll need to employ a nuclear propulsion system. That's right. Nuclear. But don't worry. It's perfectly harmless. It's all part of the safe end of nuclear technology.

And just imagine: Jupiter's moons! Woo!

Here's my view of this nuclear space madness-


What’s actually behind the White House's hawking of this space mission is their desire to promote and legitimize the industry's new nuclear propulsion technology needed to support such a mission. That would be another in a long list of moneymaking boondoggles for the aerospace industry.

To develop and demonstrate these new nuclear power and propulsion technologies, President Bush's budget proposes $279 million; ($3 billion over five years) for Project Prometheus, which builds on the Nuclear Systems Initiative started last year.

Project Prometheus includes the development of the first nuclear-electric space mission, called the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter. This mission will conduct extensive, in-depth studies of the moons of Jupiter that may harbor subsurface oceans. Only advanced nuclear reactors could provide the hundreds of kilowatts of power the craft would need.

Included in NASA plans for the nuclear rocket to Mars; a new generation of Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) for interplanetary missions; nuclear-powered robotic Mars rovers to be launched in 2003 and 2009. NASA touts future mining colonies on the Moon, Mars, and asteroids that would be powered by nuclear reactors.


The Jet Propulsion Laboratory, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science. Additional science partners are located at the Russian Aviation and Space Agency and at Los Alamos National Laboratory. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and JPL.

The Prometheus Project is based on an archaic notion that began in the '50's with a space project named Orion.

Project Orion was a propulsion system that depended on exploding atomic bombs roughly two hundred feet behind the space vehicle.

Orion was developed at the old General Dynamics Corporation, under the guidance of several former Manhattan Project scientists.

In the late 1950's, Freeman Dyson, physicist, educator, and author, joined the Orion Project research team. The project’s participants proposed exploding atomic bombs at regular intervals at very short distances behind a specially designed space ship in order to propel it to the Moon and other planets in the Solar System far more quickly and cheaply than with chemical-fuel rockets.

The motto for Orion was, 'Mars by 1965, Saturn by 1970'; hauntingly reminiscent of the administration's line about Project Prometheus exploring Mars and Europa's moons.

Orion ran out of money and needed the government's help. The military agreed to take up the project, but only on the condition that it adapt itself to a military purpose. The project was later abandoned because of uncertainty about the safety and efficacy of nuclear energy, and the high cost of the speculative program. Also, because the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty of 1963 outlawed it.

"Technology must be guided and driven by ethics if it is to do more than provide new toys for the rich," Dyson, 76, said, as he received the Templeton Prize for Progress in Religion 2000. Dyson once commented that, "Project Orion is a monument to those who once believed, or still believe, in turning the power of these weapons into something else."

Since the 1960s there have been eight space nuclear power accidents by the U.S. and the former Soviet Union, several of which released deadly plutonium into the Earth's atmosphere. In April, 1964 a U.S. military satellite with 2.1 pounds of plutonium-238 on-board fell back to Earth and burned up as it hit the atmosphere spreading the toxic plutonium dust, God knows where.

In 1997 NASA launched the Cassini space probe carrying 72 pounds of plutonium that fortunately did not experience failure. If it had, hundreds of thousands of people around the world could have been contaminated. During the Cassini RTG fabrication process at Los Alamos 244 cases of worker contamination were reported to the DoE.

Mum to all of that, the White House wants you to know that the nuclear space project will prove new technologies for future NASA missions. Like space-based weaponry.

The decision by U.S. President George W. Bush to withdraw from the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty allows research beneficial to orbiting space-based lasers as part of a global missile defense shield to resume; orbiting space lasers on permanent space platforms.

Despite the administration and industry talk of Europa's moons, the Prometheus Project will pave the way for the original Pentagon plan to mount nuclear reactors on space-based platforms to power their nuclear lasers.

And of course, as the Space Command also asserts, “. . . the United States must also have the capability to deny America's adversaries the use of commercial space platforms, for military purposes”

Enough! This Promethus project is a cynical attempt to commit the nation to Rumsfeld's Star War's nonsense. Bush and Europa's moons:

I don't believe them! This is the foot in the door for their space platform race.

A space-based laser system would only encourage other nations to build space-nukes to counter ours. The move to expand this type of weaponry will almost certainly provoke a space-based weapon war.

Maybe we can shoot this crazy laser down before then.

[DUreader]

1. "...may be controversial" These assholes never stop

Fucking corporate whore media

[ithacan]

2. you're right. Check out this website:

Global Network Against Weapons & Nuclear Power in Space

http://www.space4peace.org/

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3. JOVIAN SPACE NEWS SERVICE- Interplanetary Edition

JOVIAN SPACE NEWS SERVICE- Interplanetary Edition
Serving the Jovian moons of Ganymede, Callisto and Europa.
Space Travelers Come in Peace; Turned Back, Nonetheless.

(Europa) Today marked two historic firsts for Europa. Space travelers from a distant planet, believed by many to be uninhabitable because of its toxic atmosphere, locked into our planet's orbit and were quickly intercepted by our interplanetary space patrol.

The travelers are apparently the first-ever recorded visitors to Europa from a planet far beyond our tri-planet system.

The travelers reportedly communicate by projecting the air into the other's orifices in modulated waves. All attempts by the patrol to connect with their inner voice have encountered only static and clutter, making communication difficult if not impossible.

The interplanetary patrol also encountered another first in their encounter with the travelers which was met with much alarm as the patrol reported their discovery to the interplanetary council.

Apparently, the traveler's spacecraft is powered, in part, by a nuclear reactor system. According to Europan law, concentrated radioactive devices have been extremely prohibited since the planet lost its natural atmosphere from the misuse of these materials.

The travelers were regrettably forced out of orbit and are assumed to be returning to their native planet, perhaps to perish in the toxic haze which covers their
dying home.

[wuushew]

4. Unnecessary fear mongering

Past Space Nuclear Power System Reentries
The NASA Nimbus B1 satellite was launched from the then Western Test Range at Vandenberg in May 1968 and failed to reach orbit. The Nimbus B1 RTG went into the Santa Barbara Channel. Its radioisotope heat source containing nuclear material was later recovered intact and its fuel was reused on a later RTG-powered mission. There was no release of radioactive material.

On Apollo 13, there was an RTG on the Lunar Module (LM), used to power the Apollo Lunar Scientific Experiment Package. When the Apollo 13 spacecraft was forced by an accident to return to Earth without landing on the Moon, the LM was jettisoned as the spacecraft approached the Earth. The RTG reentered over the Pacific and is in the Tonga Trench in the Pacific Ocean. Air and water samples taken in the reentry area indicated there was no release of radioactive material from the reentry of that RTG, which means that the fuel capsule survived reentry as designed.

The third reentry of an RTG occurred with a Navy navigational satellite, Transit 5BN. This occurred in 1964, prior to the adoption of the full fuel containment design philosophy. The design philosophy at that time was to allow RTGs to burn up in the atmosphere in the event of reentry. Consistent with that design philosophy, the Transit 5BN RTG did burn up at an altitude of 75 miles in the vicinity of the Mozambique Channel in the Indian Ocean. This reentry released 17,000 curies of radioactive material into the atmosphere at that altitude.

http://www.nuclearspace.com/use_in_space.htm

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6. my main complaint is with the nuclear waste

Any other argument against these space boondogles is fine with me.
You seem willing to risk others well being for some dreamy space mission. Will you vouch for all of the risks to the community, the nuclear plant workers,and the environment?

Where is the fuel for these nuclear adventures to be produced? In your neighborhood?

There are more than 100 operating nuclear power plants in America and 16 non-operational power plants. The electricity produced by these plants provide the U.S. with only 20% of our electricity needs. That 20% could easily be made up by any combination of alternative sources.

Most of the supporters of nuclear energy would be loath to place their homes and their families directly in the way of the negative effects of production.

By the time the fuel is converted into some neat package, millions in the community, in the nation and even the world could suffer the negative effects of its production.

We go to a gas station for our fuel. On the land where it is produced, the effects are devastating. One accident can mean death and destruction to the people or to the environment.

This is no idle musing. Nuclear power is not safe, as the industry supporters claim. The waste is not manageable in a way which will protect future generations from the effects of exploitation, misuse, or mishaps.

It's hard to be intellectual about nuclear energy when so many innocent people suffer the effects of its production. These plants are placed in areas where the people are poor and unable to defend against the intellectuals and space buffs.

These plants are presented as job creators for these community's weak economies. They become dependent on the revenue, and can't count on the proponents who sold them these nuclear plants to regulate them in a way that would put the public's welfare ahead of profit.

Try to shut down a plant once it is in operation. Try to stop the exploitation of the material after it is produced. Try to clean up the inevitable mess to the environment. How about we don't do this dance again? How about putting the nuclear monster back into Pandora's Box?

This raw ambition for nuclear power meshes perfectly with conservative tripe about the primacy of industry: "Damn the public. To hell with land, I don't live there. To hell with the people, they aren't me."

In the communities where the land has been poisoned, the people who have to live there and work in these plants know full well that the risks of nuclear production outweigh any benefit from electrical power.

The Government Accountability Project contends that 67 workers were exposed between January 2002 and August 2003 to toxic vapors escaping from tanks that hold radioactive wastes from the production of nuclear weapons.

The watchdog group reports that scores of Hanford nuclear reservation workers have been exposed to toxic vapors as the government pushes for faster and cheaper cleanups of wastes.

Until there is a change in the White House or in the control of Congress, it is folly to expect that the worst won't happen, or that we will be able to stuff all of the planned nuclear expansion back into some benign box.

It is immoral and wrong for this administration to hide their nuclear ambitions and proceed as if they had won the debate over the acceptability of nuclear power, when in fact no such public debate has occurred.

[central scrutinizer]

5. wouldn't it be more appropriate

if these assholes probed Uranus?