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Reflections on Challenger
Adam Attarian writes "CNN's Miles O'Brien (no relation to the dude on Star Trek) has an excellent column on NASA's reflection of the Challenger explosion 15 years ago, and how they are guarding against "go-fever" as much as possible. The article also talks about how detailed and precise NASA engineers are now, and how mathmatical statistics mean hardly anything anymore. This is an excellent read. Hopefully Dubya won't cut NASA's budget more than it all ready has. Those guys are all ready pretty much running on fumes."
"Tons" of radioactive material? Cassini carries 3 RTGs (total of 33 kg of plutonium dioxide) and several smaller radioisotope heater units (33.6 CI of fuel and 1.4 oz total weight PER unit). Ref: RTGs and heaters. So there's approximately 72 pounds (for the metric-challenged) of PU-238 onboard. A "metric ton" is 2200 pounds. Methinks you are off by a factor of at least 30. (60 if you really meant "tons")
The RTGs are *DESIGNED* to prevent releasing the fuel into the environment. You can question the adequacy of the design and invent scenarios where it fails but you CANNOT state that the engineers at JPL, NASA, and various contractors are not taking the risk seriously.
Next, we DO NOT know our solar system. The discovery of active vulcanism on Io, potenital for water ice and liquid water on Europa, and questions about the atmosphere on Titan are relatively recent and the result of sending space probes to Jupiter and Saturn. Data on *ALL* the planets remain sketchy. This same information helps us develop an understanding of planetrary geology and meterology that applies to understanding Earth's environment as well (a good theory should accomodate observations on more than just one planet).
Heck, we don't understand the planet we live on that well. Ever hear of Earth Observation System (EOS)? Where do you think data on global climate changes, upper atmosphere properties (ozone depletion at the poles), or some of the observations of the Pacific and Atlantic thermal osciliations come from? NASA operates ALL those programs.
The *only* mission categories that are economically viable today are communications satellites, earth observation, maybe remote imaging (commercial "spy sats"), maybe weather. Government (DoD, NASA, NOAA in the US) has to fund everything else and did much of the work to make the rest possible. As much as we'd like it, private industry has not raised the capital necessary to do it on its own (for many reasons, political, economic, and technical).
Finally, we don't know WHEN humanity will NEED a real space capability. We CAN afford the research now. It's foolish on several levels to not do it.
The traditional argument over the NASA budget has been about the manned spaceflight program. Which has been a political beast since its inception.
And while I am not employed as a "rocket scientist" today, I studied to be one (aero astro engineering major) and can tell you EXACTLY where I was for most of the Mercury and Gemini launches, the Apollo flights, Shuttle 1st flight, and yes, Challenger.
How detailed and precise they are now?! They have always been that detailed and precise. There's a reason we have an expression comparing difficult things to "rocket science". Throwing several hundred tons of metal into orbit (or beyond) without enough gas to recover from a gross error, in situations where you get it right the first time, or else (at best) lose years of research an planning, or (at worst) lose the lives of the crew of a manned flight, is amongst the most difficult feats of engineering imagineable.
What NASA has now is management too scared of being raked over the coals again for being criminally stupid. Go reread accounts of the Challenger investigation... the engineering was fine. That was a political and managerial fuckup of biblical proportions--"screw the freezing temperatures and the unknowns, we want that ship up there when Gipper gives his State of the Union address."
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WHOA!! Ken and Barbie are having TOO MUCH FUN!! It must be the NEGATIVE IONS!!
An interesting read -- for those of you who haven't seen it is the Appendix written by Feynman to the Challenger Report (otherwise known as the Rogers Commission Report).
t ml
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see http://www.ralentz.com/old/space/feynman-report.h
or
http://www.fotuva.org/feynman/challenger-appendix