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You do need to brush up on your geography and your missile defense history and (although SLBM are not ICBM the threat is similar) awareness. The point of ICBM is not to hit ANY territory but to hit specific targets - the Bering Strait doesn't come close compared to the distance from Siberia to Washington. This site focuses on other threats but has useful maps that demonstrate even a nation like Iran would better attack the US through polar routes.

Has anyone here ever even considered the risks of sending a NUCLEAR REACTOR through the Earth's atmosphere on a rocket?

Yes. They've also considered RTGs, which are the topic of the article.

What's the failure rate for rockets, 10%?

More like 1% for typical launch platforms.

That's a ten percent chance of spewing radioactivity all over the planet, totally unacceptable.

Unless the RTG is designed to withstand a rocket failure and make it down in one piece, spewing nothing -- as they are.

Good troll so far -- great contrafactual density, sticking to technical points, and drawing /. pedants out to make any or all of the replies above. Especially the first one -- practically guaranteed that they'll throw in a personal opinion regarding reactor safety, whether for or against, which is a great opening for a follow-up

Perhaps acceptable to teabaggers and other "America Firsters", but the rest of the sane population of the planet thinks differently. You can't differentiate between military application and those capabilities which are civil and commercial in nature. Nuclear anything is bad, according to leading environmental and climate change scientists (fully accredited with Ph.D's and serving as professors at elite universities, mind you). Don't forget that October 1-8 is "Keep Space for Peace Week".

Remember the 1989 launch of Galileo? The military-industrial complex made the decision for you, that such a horrible risk was "acceptable" and went through with launching a plutonium reactor through the biosphere even though dedicated, lifelong environmentalists evaluated the risk as unacceptable. There were those who bravely stood in protest of Galileo, but the American mainstream (i.e. right-wing) media portrayed the heroes as misguided idiots...just like today. Julian Assange, who has become such a big name due to his courageous work with Wiki Leaks, was moved enough by the campaign against the Galileo launch to feature it in the first chapter of his book.. Let's face it, if you're against WikiLeaks, you're pretty much a teabagger, or an anti-intellectual. How else do you justify disagreeing?

Protect the planet, no nukes in space! Again, this is an accredited opinion, backed by the best and most well-funded environmental NGOs, as well as university professors all across academia. The people on the other side of the argument are on the side of the Pentagon. Geekdom typically ignores its responsibilities to the planet in favor of "OOH, SHINY!" or the discredited triumphalism of the Apollo landings. All it takes is a "natural 1" on a d20 and the planet is fucked, permanently. What say you, geeks? Those of you on the political right may excuse yourselves from replying, as your opinions have already been pre-discredited by The Smart People in our society.

But now you throw away that strong start by focusing on the political side. This is /., not freerepublic or dailykos, and a good troll will camoflage itself by reflecting the primarily technical nature of the local discussion, with a dash of political disparagement for color. Even noobs have at least 36% chance of marking any highly political post as a troll. (Good work with the Assange tie-in, though!)

Overall: 2.3/10

Has anyone here ever even considered the risks of sending a NUCLEAR REACTOR through the Earth's atmosphere on a rocket?

Yes. They've also considered RTGs, which are the topic of the article.

What's the failure rate for rockets, 10%?

More like 1% for typical launch platforms.

That's a ten percent chance of spewing radioactivity all over the planet, totally unacceptable.

Unless the RTG is designed to withstand a rocket failure and make it down in one piece, spewing nothing -- as they are.

Good troll so far -- great contrafactual density, sticking to technical points, and drawing /. pedants out to make any or all of the replies above. Especially the first one -- practically guaranteed that they'll throw in a personal opinion regarding reactor safety, whether for or against, which is a great opening for a follow-up

Perhaps acceptable to teabaggers and other "America Firsters", but the rest of the sane population of the planet thinks differently. You can't differentiate between military application and those capabilities which are civil and commercial in nature. Nuclear anything is bad, according to leading environmental and climate change scientists (fully accredited with Ph.D's and serving as professors at elite universities, mind you). Don't forget that October 1-8 is "Keep Space for Peace Week".

Remember the 1989 launch of Galileo? The military-industrial complex made the decision for you, that such a horrible risk was "acceptable" and went through with launching a plutonium reactor through the biosphere even though dedicated, lifelong environmentalists evaluated the risk as unacceptable. There were those who bravely stood in protest of Galileo, but the American mainstream (i.e. right-wing) media portrayed the heroes as misguided idiots...just like today. Julian Assange, who has become such a big name due to his courageous work with Wiki Leaks, was moved enough by the campaign against the Galileo launch to feature it in the first chapter of his book.. Let's face it, if you're against WikiLeaks, you're pretty much a teabagger, or an anti-intellectual. How else do you justify disagreeing?

Protect the planet, no nukes in space! Again, this is an accredited opinion, backed by the best and most well-funded environmental NGOs, as well as university professors all across academia. The people on the other side of the argument are on the side of the Pentagon. Geekdom typically ignores its responsibilities to the planet in favor of "OOH, SHINY!" or the discredited triumphalism of the Apollo landings. All it takes is a "natural 1" on a d20 and the planet is fucked, permanently. What say you, geeks? Those of you on the political right may excuse yourselves from replying, as your opinions have already been pre-discredited by The Smart People in our society.

But now you throw away that strong start by focusing on the political side. This is /., not freerepublic or dailykos, and a good troll will camoflage itself by reflecting the primarily technical nature of the local discussion, with a dash of political disparagement for color. Even noobs have at least 36% chance of marking any highly political post as a troll. (Good work with the Assange tie-in, though!)

Overall: 2.3/10

Yes, the Russians have been using these mini-reactors on some of their missions.

http://www.space4peace.org/ianus/npsm2.htm#2_2_1

Has anyone here ever even considered the risks of sending a NUCLEAR REACTOR through the Earth's atmosphere on a rocket? What's the failure rate for rockets, 10%? That's a ten percent chance of spewing radioactivity all over the planet, totally unacceptable. Perhaps acceptable to teabaggers and other "America Firsters", but the rest of the sane population of the planet thinks differently. You can't differentiate between military application and those capabilities which are civil and commercial in nature. Nuclear anything is bad, according to leading environmental and climate change scientists (fully accredited with Ph.D's and serving as professors at elite universities, mind you). Don't forget that October 1-8 is "Keep Space for Peace Week".

Remember the 1989 launch of Galileo? The military-industrial complex made the decision for you, that such a horrible risk was "acceptable" and went through with launching a plutonium reactor through the biosphere even though dedicated, lifelong environmentalists evaluated the risk as unacceptable. There were those who bravely stood in protest of Galileo, but the American mainstream (i.e. right-wing) media portrayed the heroes as misguided idiots...just like today. Julian Assange, who has become such a big name due to his courageous work with Wiki Leaks, was moved enough by the campaign against the Galileo launch to feature it in the first chapter of his book.. Let's face it, if you're against WikiLeaks, you're pretty much a teabagger, or an anti-intellectual. How else do you justify disagreeing?

Protect the planet, no nukes in space! Again, this is an accredited opinion, backed by the best and most well-funded environmental NGOs, as well as university professors all across academia. The people on the other side of the argument are on the side of the Pentagon. Geekdom typically ignores its responsibilities to the planet in favor of "OOH, SHINY!" or the discredited triumphalism of the Apollo landings. All it takes is a "natural 1" on a d20 and the planet is fucked, permanently. What say you, geeks? Those of you on the political right may excuse yourselves from replying, as your opinions have already been pre-discredited by The Smart People in our society.

Has anyone here ever even considered the risks of sending a NUCLEAR REACTOR through the Earth's atmosphere on a rocket? What's the failure rate for rockets, 10%? That's a ten percent chance of spewing radioactivity all over the planet, totally unacceptable. Perhaps acceptable to teabaggers and other "America Firsters", but the rest of the sane population of the planet thinks differently. You can't differentiate between military application and those capabilities which are civil and commercial in nature. Nuclear anything is bad, according to leading environmental and climate change scientists (fully accredited with Ph.D's and serving as professors at elite universities, mind you). Don't forget that October 1-8 is "Keep Space for Peace Week".

Remember the 1989 launch of Galileo? The military-industrial complex made the decision for you, that such a horrible risk was "acceptable" and went through with launching a plutonium reactor through the biosphere even though dedicated, lifelong environmentalists evaluated the risk as unacceptable. There were those who bravely stood in protest of Galileo, but the American mainstream (i.e. right-wing) media portrayed the heroes as misguided idiots...just like today. Julian Assange, who has become such a big name due to his courageous work with Wiki Leaks, was moved enough by the campaign against the Galileo launch to feature it in the first chapter of his book.. Let's face it, if you're against WikiLeaks, you're pretty much a teabagger, or an anti-intellectual. How else do you justify disagreeing?

Protect the planet, no nukes in space! Again, this is an accredited opinion, backed by the best and most well-funded environmental NGOs, as well as university professors all across academia. The people on the other side of the argument are on the side of the Pentagon. Geekdom typically ignores its responsibilities to the planet in favor of "OOH, SHINY!" or the discredited triumphalism of the Apollo landings. All it takes is a "natural 1" on a d20 and the planet is fucked, permanently. What say you, geeks? Those of you on the political right may excuse yourselves from replying, as your opinions have already been pre-discredited by The Smart People in our society.

The USSR was much more into conquering and exploiting the new frontier and had developed technology with that in mind. Arguably it's a damn good thing they didn't win (from any kind of ethical standpoint) for that very reason. The US got bored silly after "winning"

"With regard to space dominance, we have it, we like it, and we're going to keep it." -- Keith R Hall, NRO Director, 1997

Nope, no "conquering" attitude there, at all.

http://www.space4peace.org/

Could it be that this is actually a toy for star wars - or whatever they call the US military's ambition to "strike any target on the planet" - you can read more about this BS (plutonium driven lasers, total US dominance of space, upsetting everyone else - China, Russia, N-Korea..., more junk in space) in the US Air Force Transformation Flight Plan, the document is there . Analysis of the text is at: <http://www.space4peace.org> <http://www.nuclearpolicy.org> < http://www.cdi.org>.

There was a show recently on TUC Radio , the first part of the show can be heard on that page , further down, at: MOST RECENT PROGRAMS: Arming the Heavens.

http://www.globenet.free-online.co.uk/articles/spa ce_is_for_peace.htm

"the exploration and use of outer space shall be carried out for the benefit and in the interests of all countries and shall be the province of all mankind;

outer space shall be free for exploration and use by all States;

outer space is not subject to national appropriation by claim of sovereignty, by means of use or occupation, or by any other means;

States shall not place nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction in orbit or on celestial bodies or station them in outer space in any other manner"

Also check out space4peace.org

Agree with your post in general, but one factor that hasn't been mentioned so far (which surprises me) but is alluded to in your post is the military aspect of all this.

The place to cut is in military spending. The war in Iraq would have paid for a lot of space travel, unfortunately it paid for blowing up buildings instead. We have lots of highly specialized weapons that are very expensive - millions of dollars per explosion. Military aircraft are not built using standard parts. Everything is custom. So everything is brutally expensive. Cut back on the custom nature of this hardware, and you'd save a lot of money. Cut back on unilateral foreign wars, and you'd save even more.

However there are those that argue that the whole space program is entirely about the military and I find this argument persuasive from several angles. Control of space is currently up for grabs. The International Space Station has been an interesting experiment, but for practical control of space a moon-base would probably be more practical. The control of space has always been an issue and has recently become a policy goal of the USA.

The presence of a large slush-fund for "space exploration" provides a huge amount of money for the companies in the Military Industrial Complex who are able to apply technologies developed for that ostensible purpose back to military and commercial projects.

So, guess where the money is going? To the kids that lack textbooks, healthcare and lobbyists or to the slick, plausible, verbose representatives of millions of dollars in campaign funds?

that is going to be spun into some kind of justification for either Bush's war on terrorism or weapons in space. or at the very least, an excuse to point a finger at Muslims, somehow blaming them for the tragedy.

It's true.

Check out space4peace.org's website. Military vet Bruce Gagnon has done a lot of work on behalf of The Global Network Against Weapons and Nuclear Power in Space to bring awareness to the public. After you read his site, check out what more google has to offer. He has done his homework and avoids zealotry.