Appropriations Bill Threatens Future Space Science Missions

ColdWetDog writes "A brief story in the Atlantic notes that the U.S. Senate's energy appropriations bill has failed to supply funds to continue Plutonium-238 production, needed for radioisotope generators for NASA's interplanetary probe programs. No PU-238 means no more missions like Cassini-Huygens, or ones that go places where solar cells won't produce enough power. The article notes that the only other source of PU-238 is Russia — either through the government or through trolling through Siberia and the Russian coastline looking for old Soviet Era lighthouses and power stations."

Comments

Hurray for sanity

[DNS-and-BIND]

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.