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When the 60-minute hysteria nearly toppled a NASA mission on Saturn
The NASA / JPL-Caltech / Space Science Institute impediments via GettyFew could be more serious. For a spacecraft to reach the Jupiterian system with sufficient speed to eventually reach orbit around Europe, it needed to be launched from a powerful rocket (which NASA lacked, limiting the spacecraft to a space shuttle launch) or be absurdly light (which is the necessary radiation armor made impossible). JPL’s engineers drew up equations written hastily with chalk before plunging their fists into blackboards in fits of desperation. Nothing for NASA was free … except for gravity assists. Normally, the agency could compensate for the meager speeds of heavy spacecraft by taking indirect flight paths and using planets found along the way to pull and push the robotic pilgrim out, in, or forward. Since the laws of physics were immutable and the salient numbers were known, NASA orbital dynamizers could do this all day, processing the numbers to accurately launch the spacecraft from one planet to another: Isaac Newton’s free propulsion. It was incomparably the best bargain in space exploration. But then television tabloid journalism got involved and everything got complicated. In 1997, while waiting at Cape Canaveral for takeoff, the Cassini mission was suddenly assailed by political protests. Cassini carried three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which were powered by the decomposition of plutonium 238. Plutonium was not of the Back to the Future variety – a disturbing drop of Scary Substance in a homemade flow capacitor – but stored in a ceramic. shape, wrapped in iridium and hardened in graphite. It cannot corrode or be obliterated by heat, or vaporize, or disintegrate like an aerosol, or dissolve in water. It was made to resist not only the explosion of the rocket that carried it, but also a catastrophic re-entry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Because he cannot vaporize, in a disaster situation no one would inadvertently inspire him and develop extra superpowers or appendages. In fact, it was designed so that you could even eat things. The human body could not absorb it. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission could rock our world, but ten days before 1.5 million pounds of rocket thrust if they placed centimeters between Cassini and Earth, a much smaller number – 60, as in 60 minutes – almost got it right NASA to the ground. The CBS TV news showed an article about the Saturn spacecraft, Steve Kroft, starring in the segment. The correspondent’s opening sentence: “On October 13, a Titan IV rocket is scheduled to take off from Cape Canaveral carrying twenty-two kilograms of deadly plutonium; enough plutonium, in theory at least, to administer a fatal dose to every man, woman and child on Earth several times. ”And it only got worse from there. Cassini was an afterthought in the story, and expert interviews were interspersed with comments from … not experts, to be kind, but not widely talked about experts, whose contributions – the generous ones! —Included lines such as: “What gives anyone, including the federal government, the right to risk the death of the population or – or injuries only for space exploration?” The segment featured an Energy Department plutonium expert categorically stating that even though the rocket, spacecraft and ceramic plutonium sealed in graphite and wrapped in iridium exploded on the launch pad, it was literally impossible for the wreck to do what the protesters said would make. But just to keep it even, Kroft’s collection of doom hunters described in frightening detail what plutonium – not in the form used by NASA, that you could safely spray your morning cereal because, again, you could eat it – could do to the human body. Among the highlights: “it can produce lung cancer” and “you can have numbers like 100,000 or more people who develop lung cancer” and “if there is such an explosion, you can kiss Florida goodbye”. Kroft even found a former NASA employee (“He is neither a scientist nor an engineer,” admitted Kroft, “but …”) to publicly lament his role in putting lives at risk for frivolities like space exploration. “I feel guilty, frankly,” lamented the penitent insider. To seal 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 ago “This is from his own environmental impact statement”, said Kroft to the Huntress – the host’s tone is solid but affable, his face hard, but his eyes somehow benevolent. “I want to read some things for you.” Huntress was a pioneer in the study of interstellar clouds and one of the world’s leading experts on planetary exploration, but he wasn’t exactly a TV tabloid, and after the cavalcade of activists arguing convincingly and without interruption, he seemed less than confident. in your answers. Quoted Kroft: “If there is an accident, he talks about, quote, ‘removing and disposing of all vegetation in contaminated areas, demolishing some or all of the structures and relocating the affected population permanently. ‘”“ If there is an accident of this kind, ”said the hunter, accurately but to no avail. Kroft replied, “I mean, that sounds pretty drastic …” and Kroft waited patiently for the hunter, in possession of the rope needed to hang himself, to fill the silence, which the 60-minute interviewees always did, and he did, and did. “Well, the – what they’re probably talking about is – is the damage on the spot, near the – near – near the launch pad because th There is clearly, when one of those things goes, a lot of damage near the launch pad.” that the hunter tapped and staggered – this guy didn’t even know what his own official Armageddon report said! – and finally swung gracefully from the gallows, well-trained pessimists followed, explaining precisely how Life as We Know It was coming to an end, and kiss your babies tonight because our reckless quest to conquer the cosmos – Saturn! This useless mission for a gas giant, whatever that means, will leave mutant survivors fighting for the last canned ones on looted store shelves. Worse, Cassini would give it a second blow to the peaceful people of planet Earth! If it didn’t explode at launch, it would be set to follow a VVEJGA trajectory to propel its path towards Saturn: or that is, two oscillations of Venus (V, V) and then I would play chicken with Earth, and if something went wrong … (but if everything went right, from Earth [E] for Jupiter [J] for gravity assistance [GA]) The US Air Force security police form a line to stop protesters protesting the launch of the Cassini nuclear powered spacecraft in front of the security fence on October 4, 1997 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, in Florida. Cassini is a scientific spacecraft that will travel to Saturn on a five-year journey to orbit the planet and implant a probe to the surface. Roberto Schmidt / AFP via Getty The Clinton administration didn’t really have time for this, but obediently absorbed the panicked letters and the optics of the protesters holding accordion-topped wire fences on the perimeter of Cape Canaveral, while inside, the police lined up with body armor and carrying riot shields he looked in silence, just waiting for – what? Open fire? Brandishing canes? However, NASA has moved forward with its reckless rocket launch, probably leaving only cockroaches crawling on Earth (or whatever the future would call this planet), and things were fine, as they have been in previous launches dozens of times. But the message from headquarters to those entering future space missions: If you must launch radioactive material, don’t plan trajectories taking the spacecraft back to Earth to get help from gravity. No one needs the headache. Which meant, for Karla and the company, years of discussions about possible compensations 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 an adequate scientific return. What hardware do you make “rad-hard” – impervious to radiation (but expensive) – instead of simply wrapping it in “stupid mass”, that is, large blocks of cheap protective armor? What was the smallest possible science payload? In the end, they found a relatively happy medium: a spaceship that could be launched directly and achieve the minimum science necessary to make a Europe expedition worthwhile, and NASA loved it, and then the cost doubled, and in 1999 Ed Weiler shot her. MISSION, or: As a disciple of Carl Sagan, a former motocross racer, a Texas Tea Party congressman, the world’s worst typewriter seller, California Mountain People and an anonymous NASA employee went to war with Mars, survived an insurgency on Saturn, exchanged blows with Washington and stole a ride on an Alabama lunar rocket to send a space robot to Jupiter in search of the second garden of Eden at the bottom of an alien ocean within an ice world called Europa (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. Read more at The Daily Beast. Get our top stories in your inbox every day. Subscribe now! Daily Beast Membership: Beast Inside goes deeper into the stories that matter to you. To know more.