17 October 1997
Cassini's progress
Henry Joy McCracken considers the reaction to the latest space probe
leaving Earth
Despite the best efforts of Grandmothers for Peace and a variety of other
activist organisations, NASA's Cassini probe left Earth on 15 October 1997
to begin its seven-year journey to Saturn. It took with it all of the 72
pounds of plutonium which had caused consternation among many of Florida's
anti-nuclear campaigners as well as a diverse collection of individuals
from around the world. They feared that a mishap at launch would spread
radioactive material along the Florida coast and perhaps even contaminate
Mickey Mouse himself, fifty miles north in Orlando.
The plutonium is used to generate Cassini's electricity supply; near Saturn
the Sun is much too far away to power solar panels. The plutonium was
encased in an extremely hard ceramic compound and further wrapped in
several layers of iridium making it resistant to impacts or pulverisation.
If that weren't enough, the radiation from plutonium can only travel a few
millimetres in air anyway, so the only way in which to sustain a lethal
dose would be to inhale it. The resilience of the shielding has already
been tested - in 1968 a US weather satellite re-entered the Earth's
atmosphere and plunged into the Pacific ocean. Engineers were able to
retrieve the undamaged energy source, dust it off, and put it into another
satellite. Cassini's plutonium payload wouldn't be much use in a nuclear
reactor, or in a bomb - it is not weapons-grade - a fact which the
protesters tended to ignore, preferring instead to cry "nukes in space!".
Cassini was the culmination of a decade of planning and preparation, and
will probably be the last large interplanetary mission launched for a long
time. This is thanks to the insistence on 'faster, cheaper, better' modes
of space travel, the pursuit of which is currently the only way scientific
adventures can hope to survive in today's economic climate.
The attitude of the demonstrators is hardly surprising when viewed in the
wider context of space missions over the past few years. Space is a
frontier - and exploring frontiers is by nature a risky business. Over the
past year we have watched the spectacle of the Mir space station breaking
down every other week. At every turn the press called for it to be
evacuated, as if they had only just realised that space is a lethal
environment where mistakes can be fatal. Exactly what is drummed into every
aspect of astronaut's training.
Certainty is something which does not exist in science and certainly does
not exist when exploring the furthest recesses of the Solar System. The
fears surrounding the extremely negligible danger of a release of
radioactive material from Cassini perfectly articulate the attitude of a
society retreating from innovation and exploration in favour of a pointless
quest for safety and avoidance of risk which are impossible to attain -
especially when you're attempting something of this magnitude.
Henry Joy McCracken has written the Futures feature in the forthcoming
LM105 'Why have we still not walked on Mars?'. Excerpts from LM 105 go
online on Thursday 30 October
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