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Appropriations Bill Threatens Future Space Science Missions

Posted by Soulskill on from the give-us-plutonium-or-give-us-death dept.

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."

28 of 233 comments (clear)

  1. Read the writing on the wall by elrous0 · · Score: 2

    NASA is toast. No politician wants to say it out loud, but they've been setting this up for some time now. The space race is over and they've been scrapping various parts of NASA for the last few years now.

    --
    SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
    1. Re:Read the writing on the wall by hedwards · · Score: 2, Insightful

      It's got nothing to do with the space race. NASA is one of the main agencies tracking climate change and it's a bit of an odd coincidence that the same party that denies climate change is the same party that seems to feel that NASA is no longer needed.

    2. Re:Read the writing on the wall by Jiro · · Score: 2

      The Democrats and Obama are denying climate change? Wow.

    3. Re:Read the writing on the wall by MaWeiTao · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I think you're really over-thinking this. I don't think politicians are that sophisticated and I don't think climate change factors into thinking as much as you seem to think it does. If Republicans were so hung up on climate change why wouldn't they just cut funding to those specific agencies responsible for climate research. But it's irrelevant anyway given that climate research is done by far more people than simply NASA.

      This is how NASA gets screwed:
      Republicans demand spending is cut. They don't care how or what as long as it looks like they've cut something. Democrats refuse to cut government staff or social programs, anything that might secure votes, so they go after unpopular programs. The thing is that Democrats, like Republicans only care about the jobs of people who will keep them in power.

      NASA happens to be one of those unpopular programs. You have the conservatives who think the money should go to defense to protect us from terrorists.. And liberals think all that money should be spend here on Earth. But sides balk at the big price takes, ignorant of all the work required to conduct a successful space program. They are also oblivious to the huge long-term benefits of a space program, that you can't just will new technology into existence.

      The pathetic irony is that after all this we then have everyone lamenting about the loss of American technological superiority. Unfortunately, the problem starts at the bottom, with the American public's fixation on sports and celebrity culture. We've brought this on ourselves and we perpetuate it by resorting to checklist politics. God-forbid a liberal have some conservatives ideas, or a conservative some liberal ideas.

    4. Re:Read the writing on the wall by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The article refers to the Senate approprations bill. Are you aware that the Senate is controlled by the Democrats? Which means that this appropriations bill was almost certainly written by a Democrat staffer.
      It was an Obama appointee to head NASA who said that his number one priority as head of NASA was outreach to Muslims. That sort of priorities on the part of the Administration might explain why NASA is being dismantled. Well, that combined with the fact that most NASA employees are in Texas and Florida, states that most likely will vote against Obama next year (OK, Texas will certainly vote against Obama, and Florida will likely vote against Obama).

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    5. Re:Read the writing on the wall by sumdumass · · Score: 2

      appropriations, while authorized by the congress, is under the purview of the presidency.

      Please, by all means show where republicans are trying to do away will +_all_science_art_education and health care.

      You will not be able to honestly do it. What you will find is people who value certain things over others and think the limited form of government that the federal government was designed to be means something to this day.

    6. Re:Read the writing on the wall by Attila+Dimedici · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Upon what do you base your belief that Senate Republicans are responsible for this spending cut? The Senate is controlled by the Democratic Party. The House, which is controlled by the Republicans, passed an appropriations bill which funded this program.

      --
      The truth is that all men having power ought to be mistrusted. James Madison
    7. Re:Read the writing on the wall by jd · · Score: 2

      It's not even just long-term benefits. NASA does an awful lot of engineering work for American aviation (military and civilian), which has very immediate benefits for places like Boeing.

      And, yes, you're absolutely right about the technological superiority thing. It's not limited to space tech - it's very debatable as to whether it would be even possible to re-import a lot of the tech jobs (such as plasma TVs, digital cameras, etc) back into the US due to the total lack of the necessary skills and experience. It's no good people whining about the problems caused by globalization if they then force both the local talent and the local jobs overseas. In the case of NASA, this would be to Europe and Russia, though to some extent India as well. The scientists want the same stuff done and if the former Soviet Union is going to be more obliging than Congress, then that money (and those scientists) won't wait on Congress. They'll go where the action is, same as everyone else.

      Of course, this would not be such a catastrophe if America developed new industries and new skills to fill in the gaps every time work got exported. You can't do everything single-handed and it makes sense to export some things. Likewise, overseas markets take time to ramp up and have only finite workers with the necessary abilities. So long as you keep moving forwards, you don't lose anything by donating what is no longer practical. The catch is, you've got to move forwards for this to work.

      Re-inventing the Saturn wouldn't have helped much, since the Russians could adapt Soyuz to do the same work for less. Projects like the Blended-Wing Body passenger jet NASA was working on, the turbine-assisted ramjet, or the now-abandoned hypersonic jet - these are the things that could have kept NASA ahead of the curve. In F1, the saying is that if you're not moving forwards, you're moving backwards. The current state of funding for NASA, combined with the brain-drain and transfer of funds to places more willing to venture into space, is a perfect demonstration of how this applies to every industry.

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    8. Re:Read the writing on the wall by gtall · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Keeping health care in the back pocket of insurance companies which cherry pick only healthy people to insure, I'd call that doing away with health care. Attempting to turn Social Security over to the private sector (that'd be the one that gave us the current economic crisis), that's simply attempting to hand more of the economy over to Wall Street..that's just anti-people. Cutting the budgets of NIH and NSF, that's anti-science. On a local level, attempting to get Creation "Science" taught as if it were somehow equal in theoretical prowess as Evolution, that's anti-science. A basic problem with the current Republican "Leadership" is that they do not believe humans can affect the planet. They appear to have no problems with pollution, overfishing the oceans, destroying habitat for critters, uninsured poor people, poor people, etc. The result of this will be an America that is too busy putting out fires caused by their incompetence to compete in the world economy.

      Sure they aren't attempting to do away with ALL science and health care, just the parts they some how have a "philosophical" (read: monetary) disagreement with. It used to be we could trust the Republicans, I consider myself a conservative Republican of the Bill Buckley mold. However, the current crop of scientific and fiscal illiterates (Ron Paul, Rick Perry, Michele (I've talked to Jesus) Bachmann) reads like a cast from some perverted version of the Rocky Horror Picture show. Can't they all just go the hell away and leave us some decent candidates?

  2. No more PU-238? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Funny

    That means no more Explosive Space Modulators for Marvin to use to threaten to blow Earth away!

  3. Re:No need for it, go SOLAR! by lgw · · Score: 3, Informative

    Why is this a bad thing? Plutonium is one of the most toxic subtances known. If a spacecraft carrying this stuff blew up after lift-off, the resulting radioactive debris field could be massive. That could potentially shower millions of people with radioactive dust. It would be in our clothes, in our eyes and, worst of all, inhaled into our lungs.

    Sorry to reply to such an obvious troll, but the point is worth discussing. Pu is a really nasty poison - but then so is hydrazine. Rockets have some nasty stuff. However, a chunk of Pu metal isn't such a hazard - it becomes so toxic when reduced to dust.

    Spacecraft carrying RTGs are designed with this hazard in mind (as well as the danger of "roll up") and if the rocket should explode the RTG system is designed to fall from any alitiude and remain a solid lump of Pu.

    --
    Socialism: a lie told by totalitarians and believed by fools.
  4. Re:In Soviet Russia... by Hartree · · Score: 3, Informative

    "plutonium trolls you!"

    No, no. That was back on Usenet.

    What, you've never hears of Ludwig Plutonium and the Plutonium Atom Totality?

    Plutonium and Alexander Abian were the net loons supreme on sci.physics for years.

  5. Winding down the age of transmutation by Animats · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Many short-lived isotopes are in short supply. There's very limited US tritium production, medical radioisotopes production is so limited that there are medical shortages, and there are fewer research reactors operating. Transmutation is almost a dying technology.

    Most of the radioisotopes were made in facilities built for bomb programs. Both the US and the USSR now have far too much bomb-grade PU-239, which has a half-life of 24,000 years. The giant nuclear facilities of the Cold War are mostly idle, or are hazardous waste sites.

    The smaller nuclear powers are mostly separating uranium isotopes, which today is a centrifuge operation carried out in plants of modest size. The old gaseous diffusion plants were huge - square miles of plant.

  6. Re:anti-nooks by rossdee · · Score: 2

    Why are the Democrats opposed to Barne&Noble eReaders? They are not really competing in the iPad market,, only against the Kindle and other low cost devices.

  7. Re:Could we use tiny U235 fission reactors instead by ravenspear · · Score: 2

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

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

  8. Re:Could we use tiny U235 fission reactors instead by MozeeToby · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Complexity and weight. A radioisotope thermal generator has exactly zero moving parts. It is almost literally a sphere of nuclear unstable metal, surrounded by some thermocouples. You really can't get much simpler and hardy than that.

  9. Re:Could we use tiny U235 fission reactors instead by gewalker · · Score: 2

    What you are missing is how radioactive Pu-238 is compared to U-235 / U-238

    Pu-238 half life 87.7 years. U-238 4.5 billion years, U-235 713 million years, so using pure U-235 the material is 8 million times less radioactive. -- So, you need a corresponding bigger lump of U-235. Needless to say, this is quite a different thing.

  10. Some speculations by Xacid · · Score: 3, Insightful

    I know we all love our space projects here and I'm no exception - but the reality is that part of recovering from this unfathomly huge deficit is cutting spending.

    If you were looking at your finances and were trying to take care of your debt aggressively you'd cut damned near anything not necessary. I can't really fault the politicians for this per se, but if they're going to make the programs we love suffer they need to continue cutting elsewhere as well (which appears to be happening relatively slowly and painfully). I've heard them mention there'd be sacrifice and thus I'd also like to see them cut their own benefits and salaries; however, I haven't seen such occur yet. (If it has and I've somehow missed it by all means educate me).

    My questions to you all:
    -If we start slashing budgets in this manner how does this affect jobs? Obviously there will be layoffs but will it be on a scale that's more/less devastating to our economy as a whole?
    -Would you approach this specific funding issue differently?
    -What else would you cut?

    1. Re:Some speculations by Microlith · · Score: 2

      I'd start with defense spending, as well as Social Security and Medicare reforms. For instance, would it not make sense for the government to negotiate the price of drugs and equipment they buy for Medicare/Medicaid, instead of being legally barred from doing so and paying whatever obscene price the manufacturer asks? Then I'd pare down in order of budget size.

      Attacking NASA while refusing to even look at defense spending or Social Security is them saying "I refuse to even approach the problem," not that they are interested in solving it.

    2. Re:Some speculations by robot256 · · Score: 5, Interesting

      1) I heard recently that the reason unemployment remaining flat because the government as a whole is cutting jobs (mostly contractors) at the same rate the private sector is creating jobs. That sounds pretty significant to me, maybe you wouldn't call it "devastating" but it's definitely relevant to the discussion.

      2) Science and technology investment, of which NASA is a part, is precisely that: an investment. Infrastructure, education, health care, and environmental regulations are also investments that increase productivity over the long term. Cut them, and you reduce economic output (and tax revenue) in decades to come.

      3) Things that could be cut with fewer long-term consequences: tax breaks, subsidies, and foreign wars. Also social security reform with means testing, and a health care system that does not involve siphoning billions of dollars into the pockets of insurance executives.

      BTW, I don't know why people (including Obama) think cutting business taxes will spur hiring. No business is going to hire unless they see demand for their services, and demand is spurred by consumer wealth, not business wealth. Unless the people who are actually employed get paid more, they will not increase demand and businesses won't hire, no matter how "cheap" employees become.

    3. Re:Some speculations by jd · · Score: 2

      Actually, no. I side with Keynes to some extent on this. To cut deficits when in a recession, you have to increase spending (in the short term), but you should also increase taxes for the wealthy to cover the increase in spending (since resources don't vanish, a recession is ultimately a hoarding problem).

      --
      It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
    4. Re:Some speculations by blueg3 · · Score: 2

      Well, if I scale the federal budget down to the size of a (relatively large) household budget, since "running government spending like household spending" seems to be a popular meme, I get that this program would cost me less than $1 a year.

      I think if I was in debt and trying to cut spending, taking any appreciable amount of time to figure out how to cut $1 a year is not going to be a worthwhile investment, especially if that limits my future ability to do useful things. Kind of like saving money by not replacing a broken light bulb. Working out how to save $1 a year is exactly the kind of thing someone does when they want people to think that they're working hard to save money, when in reality they don't want to make the changes necessary to actually balance their budget. It's a money-saving measure for someone who refuses to accept reality. (Alternately, for someone who is really bad at mathematics.)

      I'm thinking that the ~10% of my income that I'm willingly giving away to the wealthy is a great place to start if I want to balance my budget.

    5. Re:Some speculations by Overzeetop · · Score: 2

      I've got bad news for you: Despite the current unemployment rate being "high," there are too many people working. Those people are getting paid, in part, by the trillion dollars a year the federal government is borrowing with no plan to ever pay it back.

      Here's the funny thing about money the government spends: nearly every dollar ends up employing someone. Go ahead, let that sink in.

      Every dollar the government "pays" is in salary for a federal worker (employment) or benefits (which employs people who provide services to that worker), or goes to a contractor for goods (which keeps people employed making said goods) or services (which employs people to do things for the government).

      Obama and the Democrats know this, and so do the Republicans. The TEA Party representatives may not know this, but their handlers do. A correction will have to occur, and it's going to result in a spike in unemployment. If you're not in the White House, you'd really like that spike to happen now so that when the current occupant is gone, the worst part is over.

      This is not a political post. It wouldn't matter who was in the White House. the stimulus would have happened under McCain, because it's the only way that the economy wouldn't have tumbled into an abyss. The challenge for each representative is to protect as much of their constituency from the effects. If unemployment goes to 12-13%, but your constituents don't feel the pinch much, you get re-elected. The game not to save or hurt the country, but to strategically choose how to make sure the other side takes the hit. And, if you're out of power, to make sure that hit comes before the next election cycle so you can capitolize on it.

      It's all part of the game.

      to answer your questions:

      A minimum impact on the US (and the world be damned) would be to cut foreign programs, shut down all foreign military bases, and make an orderly but rapid pull out of the middle east. Halve most of the defense programs that involve research and development of new weapons. Shut down NASA manned space flight completely, keep the science. Shut down most of the Education grants to states, along with police, fire. Shut down DHS, scale back all TSA functions to pre 9/11/01 levels. Maintain Interior resources for existing installations (maintenance) but do not expand operations. Raise the Soc/Med age to the average age of mortality for people who live to 18, 6 months per year is too aggressive, 3 months is better. The social contract should be that if you plan your money to last a statistical lifetime, society will make sure you don't starve if you live too long. Might as well extend the payroll tax to all income with no cap.

      Taxes should eliminate EIC, child tax deductions - hell - I think they should eliminate all deductions and go with a gross receipts tax. Corporate, individual, everyone. No deductions or exclusions means no loopholes and no under-the-table benefits.

      The next ten years is not going to be pretty, but unless congress royally screws up (and even if they do) we'll get through.

      --
      Is it just my observation, or are there way too many stupid people in the world?
    6. Re:Some speculations by suresk · · Score: 2

      The simple fact is that budget cuts will be made based on what is politically easiest, not based on what will save the most money or will be best for our long-term future. Congress is trying to drum up loose change from the couch while ignoring where the bulk of our spending actually goes. We'll cut (comparatively) tiny amounts from research, while leaving intact hundreds of billions in spending to fight an enemy that stopped existing decades ago.

      To put it into perspective, the CBO estimates NASA has cost us around $790 billion total (adjusted for inflation) since it was founded in the fifties. That resulted in decades and decades of research, education, new technology, national pride, and a whole host of other benefits. We are poised to spend almost that much on the military, just this *year*.

      That figure ($790 billion) represents less than half of what we'll end up spending on the Iraq war. But, hey, at least we got Saddam, right?

    7. Re:Some speculations by blueg3 · · Score: 2

      Raise the Soc/Med age to the average age of mortality for people who live to 18

      Since the SSA has historical data on survival probability going back to, roughly, its inception, there's a more clever way of adjusting this. Look at the probability of surviving to the retirement age when SSA was instituted, and pick the age such that you have the same probability of surviving to retirement now. (SSA already provides data limited to people who survive to adulthood.)

      There's a bit of drift in men vs. women, but it works out to about 3 years, if I remember correctly. Oddly, that happens to be one of the two popular proposals for extending the Social Security age.

      It makes sense to phase this in in some reasonable fashion. If you just make it proportional to time-to-retirement-age, starting at 18, you get that it adds about 3 weeks for every year until you retire, which seems pretty reasonable.

  11. Re:Hurray for sanity by theJML · · Score: 2

    DNS-and-BIND: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cassini%E2%80%93Huygens#Plutonium_power_source

    To quote the article: ASA's complete environmental impact study estimated that, in the worst case (with an acute angle of entry in which Cassini would gradually burn up), a significant fraction of the 32.7 kg[4] of plutonium-238 inside the RTGs would have been dispersed into the Earth's atmosphere so that up to five billion people (i.e. the entire terrestrial population) could have been exposed, causing up to an estimated 5,000 additional cancer deaths[21] (0.0005 per cent, i.e. a fraction 0.000005, of 1 billion cancer deaths expected anyway from other causes; the product is incorrectly calculated elsewhere[22] as 500,000 deaths), but the odds against that happening were more than 1 million to one.

    In other words, there was a 1 million to 1 chance that the space craft might have caused an additional 5000 deaths due to radiation. NOT the 10% you came up with. iirc from the news at the time, a malfunction of the space craft in most probable consequences could have resulted in a small population receiving about what you'd get from one X-ray as the PU-238 ball would mostly just fall through the atmosphere.

    --
    -=JML=-
  12. Re:Oh noes by 0123456 · · Score: 2

    What are the millions of children who want to become Astronauts going to dream about at night?

    Kids used to dream about being astronauts when they did exciting stuff. Not so much now they just deliver pizza to the space station.

    I doubt that many dream of being train drivers anymore either.

  13. Re:No need for it, go SOLAR! by tibit · · Score: 2

    OK-dokey, so presume we're trying to put solar panels on Cassini.

    Solar flux @ 1 A.U. (Earth's orbit) -- round to 1kW/m^2
    Solar flux @ 10 A.U. (Saturn's aphelion) -- 10W/m^2

    Power needed: 700W (to be generated by solar panels instead of RTGs)
    Space-rated solar panel efficiency: ~10% (conservative figure takes into account degradation due to age and radiation)

    Needed area: (700W)/(0.1)/(10W/m^2) = 700m^2

    That's a freaking huge panel, almost as big as a pair of U.S. wing arrays on ISS. For a sense of scale, here's how big the darn things are.

    Besides, you need extra fuel or energy to keep the damn things oriented towards the sun. This would likely add more weight since Cassini had to, first and foremost, take lots of pictures. Good luck with taking pics *and* pointing the solar panels. Of course you can have batteries like ISS does. All of this hassle adds significant risk to the mission.

    --
    A successful API design takes a mixture of software design and pedagogy.