Few impediments could have been more severe. For a spacecraft to reach the Jovian system with enough speed to eventually reach orbit around Europe, it had to either launch from a powerful rocket (which NASA did not have, limiting the spacecraft to a shuttle deployment). spatial) or be slightly absurd (which was necessary for radiation armor made impossible). JPL engineers hurled chalk-written equations before punching the boards in desperate attacks.
Nothing for NASA was ever free … except gravitational assistance. Typically, the agency could compensate for the low speed of heavy spacecraft by taking indirect flight paths and using planets encountered along the way to snatch and push the robotic pilgrim outward, inward, or further. Since the laws of physics are immutable, and the highlighted numbers are known, NASA’s orbital dynamics could do this all day, driving the numbers with the spaceship, one planet to another: free propulsion from Isaac Newton. It was incomparably the best deal in space exploration.
But then tabloid television journalism got involved and everything got complicated.
In 1997, while waiting for takeoff at Cape Canaveral, the Cassini mission was suddenly assailed by political protest. Cassini was carrying three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which were powered by the degradation of plutonium 238. Plutonium was not from Back to the Future variety – a disturbing drop of really scary substance in a homemade flow condenser – but rather was stored in a ceramic form, wrapped in iridium and baked in graphite. It could not corrode or be destroyed by heat or vaporized or disintegrated as an aerosol or dissolved in water. It was made to withstand not only the explosion of the rocket carrying it, but even a catastrophic reintroduction into the Earth’s atmosphere. Because it could not vaporize, in a disaster situation, no one would breathe it by mistake and develop additional superpowers or annexes. In fact, it was designed so that you could even eat things. The human body could not absorb it.
But 10 days before three and a half million pounds of rocket, centimeters were placed between Cassini and Earth, a much smaller number – 60, as in 60 minutes– almost NASA nails to the ground. CBS TV magazine aired a feature of the spacecraft soon to be ready for Saturn, with Steve Kroft playing in this segment. Correspondent’s opening line: ‘On 13 October, a Titan IV rocket is scheduled to leave Cape Canaveral carrying seventy-two kilograms of deadly plutonium; enough plutonium, in theory anyway, to deliver a fatal dose to every man, woman and child on Earth several times. ”
And from there it got worse. Cassini was a later thought in the story, and the interviews from the experts were interspersed with comments from … non-experts, to be kind, but very well-spoken non-experts, whose contributions – the generous ones! – lines included, such as “What gives anyone, including the federal government, the right to risk the death of the population or – or injury just for space exploration?”
The segment featured a plutonium expert from the Department of Energy, clearly stating that even if the rocket, spacecraft and iridium-coated graphite-sealed ceramic plutonium exploded on the launch pad, it was literally impossible for the debris to do what it did. protesters. he said it would be. But just to be balanced, Kroft’s menagerie, which said convictions, described in terrible detail what plutonium – not in the form used by NASA, which you could safely sprinkle on breakfast cereals, because, from new, you could eat it“It could hurt the human body.” Among the most important: “it can cause lung cancer” and “you could have 100,000 or more people developing lung cancer” and “if there is such an explosion, you can say goodbye to them in Florida.”
Kroft even found a former NASA employee (“He is neither a scientist nor an engineer,” Kroft admitted, “but …”) to publicly lament his life-threatening role in such frivolities as space exploration. “I feel guilty, honestly,” he cried from inside the penitent.
To conclude the deal, Kroft interspersed the story with excerpts from an interview with Wes Huntress, head of NASA’s planetary program, who presided over the successful landing of Mars Pathfinder just a few months earlier.
“This is from his own statement of environmental impact,” Kroft told Huntress – the tone of the host solid but nice, with his hard face, but with somewhat benevolent eyes. “I want to read you some things from him.”
Hunting was a pioneer in the study of interstellar clouds and one of the world’s leading experts in exploring the planet, but it was not exactly tabloid television material, and after the cavalcade of activists arguing convincingly and uninterruptedly, it seemed less than confident. in answers.
Kroft quoted: “If there is an accident, it is talked about, quote, ‘removal and removal of all vegetation from contaminated areas, demolition of some or all structures and permanent relocation of the affected population.”
“If there should be such an accident,” said Vânătoreasa, accurately, but without help.
Kroft replied, “I mean, it sounds pretty drastic …” and Kroft waited patiently for the Huntress, in possession of the rope needed to hang himself, to fill the silence, which 60 minutes interview subjects always did, and he did and did.
“This guy didn’t even know what his own official Armageddon report said!”
“Well, what he’s probably talking about the most is that there’s damage on the spot, near the ‘near’ launch platform, because clearly when one of these things happens, there’s a lot of damage near the platform. launch. ”
And after Huntress danced and staggered …this guy didn’t even know what his own official Armageddon report said!– and finally he swayed gracefully from the gallows, the judges watched closely, explaining exactly how Life is approaching as we know it and kissing your babies tonight, because our crazy quest to conquer the cosmos – Saturn! This useless mission for a gas giant, whatever that means – will leave the survivors mutated fighting for the last cans on the shelves of revolted stores.
Worse, Cassini would make a second cradle to the peaceful people of planet Earth! If it did not explode at launch, it was set to follow a VVEJGA trajectory to increase its path to Saturn: that is, two swings of Venus (V, V), and then it would be play chickens with the Earth, and if something went wrong … (but if everything went well, from Earth [E] to Jupiter [J] for gravitational help [GA]).
The Clinton administration did not have time for this, but it did absorb the panicked letters and optics of protesters grabbing concertina-covered fences on the perimeter of Cape Canaveral, while inside, police lined up in armor and wore shields against riots. , looking in silence. , just waiting for – what? Open fire? Brandy sticks?
However, NASA continued with its reckless launch of rockets that could only leave beetles crawling on Earth (or any other future species they would call this planet), and things were fine, as they were for previous launches. dozens of times. But the message from headquarters to those who are on future space missions: if you have to launch radioactive material, do not plan the trajectories leading the spacecraft back to Earth for gravitational assistance. No one needs a headache.
Which meant, for Karla and company, years of discussions about potential trade-offs for the Europa Orbiter mission, as it came to be called. They looked at other trajectories, other launch vehicles – anything to get more mass for a proper scientific return. What hardware do you make “radiation resistant” – radiation impermeable (but expensive) – conversely simply wrapped in “dumb mass”, ie large blocks of cheap protective shielding? What was the smallest possible payload? Eventually, they found a relatively happy environment: a spaceship that could launch directly and achieve the minimum science needed to make a worthy European expedition, and NASA adored it, then the cost doubled, and in 1999 Ed Weiler shoots her. Simply.
from OR MISSION: How a Saturn Insurgent Survived a Disciple of Carl Sagan, a Former Motocross Rider, a Texas Tea Party Congressman, the World’s Worst Typewriter, California Mountain People, and Anonymous of NASA, which went to war with Mars? , Exchanged blows with Washington and stole a ride on a lunar rocket in Alabama to send a space robot to Jupiter in search of Eden’s second garden, at the bottom of an alien ocean inside a world of ice called Europe (A 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.