Few impediments could have been more serious. In order for a spacecraft to reach the Jovian system fast enough to finally achieve orbit around Europa, it had to launch from a powerful rocket (which NASA lacked, which limited the spacecraft to space shuttle deployment) or be absurdly light (which the required radiation armor made impossible). JPL engineers were quick to write equations in chalk before throwing fists at the slates in fits of desperation.
Nothing for NASA was ever free … except for gravity aids. Typically, the agency could compensate for the meager speeds of heavy spacecraft by taking indirect flight paths and using planets encountered along the way to pull and push the robotic pilgrim out, in, or forward. With the laws of physics immutable, and the outstanding numbers known, NASA’s orbital dynamists could do this all day, running the numbers to launch spaceships with precision, from one planet to the next: Isaac Newton’s free propulsion. It was incomparably the best deal in space exploration.
But then tabloid television journalism got involved and things got complicated.
In 1997, while waiting at Cape Canaveral for takeoff, the Cassini mission was suddenly beset by political protests. Cassini carried three radioisotope thermoelectric generators, which worked on the decay of plutonium 238. The plutonium was not of the type Return to the future variety, an eerie drop of Scary Substance Indeed on a homemade flux capacitor, but instead was stored in ceramic form, wrapped in iridium and coated in graphite. It could not corrode, be destroyed by heat, vaporize, disintegrate as an aerosol, or dissolve in water. It was made to withstand not only the explosion of the rocket carrying it, but even a catastrophic reentry into the Earth’s atmosphere. Because it couldn’t vaporize, in a disaster situation, no one would inadvertently inhale it and develop additional superpowers or appendages. In fact, it was designed so that you could even eat the things. The human body could not absorb it.
But ten days before three and a half million pounds of rocket propelled Cassini and Earth, a much smaller number, 60, as in 60 minutes“He almost nailed NASA to the ground.” CBS TV news magazine aired an article about the soon-to-be Saturn-ready spacecraft, Steve Kroft starring in the segment. The Correspondent’s Opening Line: “On October 13, a Titan IV rocket is scheduled to lift off from Cape Canaveral with seventy-two pounds of deadly plutonium; enough plutonium, in theory anyway, to deliver a fatal dose to every man, woman and child on the face of the Earth multiple times. “
And it got worse from there. Cassini was an afterthought in history, and expert interviews were interspersed with comments from… non-experts, to be polite, but not very well-spoken experts, whose contributions are generous! “They included lines like,” What gives someone, including the federal government, the right to risk death or – or injury to the population just from space exploration?
The segment featured a Department of Energy plutonium expert who flatly stated that even if the rocket, spacecraft, and graphite-sealed, iridium-wrapped ceramic plutonium exploded on the launch pad, it was literally impossible for the debris to do the same. than the protesters. he said he would. But just to keep the balance, Kroft’s collection of doomsayers outlined in lurid detail what plutonium is, not in the form used by NASA, which can be safely sprinkled on breakfast cereal, because, again, could you eat it“It could do to the human body.” Among the highlights: “it can lead to lung cancer” and “could have numbers like 100,000 or more people developing lung cancer” and “if there is such an explosion, you can say goodbye to Florida.”
Kroft even found a former NASA employee (“He’s neither a scientist nor an engineer,” Kroft admitted, “but …”) to publicly lament his role in endangering lives for frivolities like space exploration. “I feel guilty, frankly,” lamented the penitent informant.
To seal the deal, Kroft interspersed the story with excerpts from an interview with Wes Huntress, head of NASA’s planetary program, who had presided over the successful Mars Pathfinder landing only months earlier.
“This is from his own environmental impact statement,” Kroft told Huntress, the host’s tone solid but personable, his demeanor hard but eyes somewhat benevolent. “I want to read you a thing or two.”
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 tabloid television footage, and after the cavalcade of activists arguing convincingly and without interruption, he seemed less than confident. in your answers.
Kroft quoted: “If there is an accident, they speak, quote, ‘remove and remove all vegetation in contaminated areas, demolish some or all of the structures and relocate the affected population permanently.’
“If such an accident were to occur,” Huntress said, accurately but unaided.
Kroft replied, “I mean, that sounds pretty drastic …” and Kroft waited patiently for Huntress, in possession of the rope necessary to hang himself, to fill the silence, which 60 minutes The interview subjects always did, and he did and did.
“This guy didn’t even know what his own official Armageddon report said!“
“Well, what they’re probably talking about mainly is the damage on site, near the launch pad, because clearly there is, when one of these things happens, a lot of damage near the launch pad. “
And after Huntress tapped and staggered …This guy didn’t even know what his own official Armageddon report said!And finally swinging gracefully from the gallows, the well-tuned doomsayers followed, accurately explaining how life as we know it was coming to an end, and they kissed their babies tonight because of our reckless quest to conquer the cosmos: Saturn! This futile mission to a gas giant, whatever that means, will leave mutated survivors scrambling for the last of the canned goods on looted store shelves.
Worse still, Cassini would strike a second blow against the peaceful people of planet Earth. If it didn’t explode on launch, it was set to follow a VVEJGA trajectory to propel its way towards Saturn: that is, two oscillations of Venus (V, V), and then it would. play chicken with the earth, and if something went wrong … (but if everything went right, from Earth [E] to Jupiter [J] for a gravity assist [GA]).
The Clinton administration didn’t really have time for this, but obediently absorbed the lyrics and panicky optics of protesters clinging to concertina-wreath chain-link fences on the Cape Canaveral perimeter, while inside, the police lined up in riot gear and riot shields watched silently. , waiting for … what? Open fire? Brandishing sticks?
However, NASA went ahead with its reckless rocket launch that would likely leave only roaches crawling around Earth (or whatever some future species would call this planet), and things were fine, as they had been in dozens of previous launches times. But the message from headquarters to those presenting future space missions: if they should launch radioactive material, do not plan trajectories that bring the spacecraft back to Earth for gravity assist. Nobody needs the headache.
Which meant, for Karla and company, years of discussions about possible compensations for the Europa Orbiter mission, as it came to be called. They analyzed other trajectories, other launch vehicles, anything to get more mass for a proper scientific return. What hardware makes it “radically tough”, impervious to radiation (but expensive), rather than just wrapping it up in “silly mass” – that is, big blocks of cheap protective shielding? What was the smallest possible scientific payload? In the end, they found a relatively happy medium: a spacecraft that could launch straight and achieve the minimum science required to make an expedition to Europe worthwhile, and NASA loved it, and then the cost doubled, and in 1999 Ed Weiler shot him dead. A) Yes.
Since THE MISSION, or: As a disciple of Carl Sagan, a former motocross racer, a Texas Tea Party congressman, the world’s worst typewriter salesman, California mountain dwellers, and an anonymous NASA official, They went to war with Mars, survived an insurgency on Saturn, traded blows with Washington, and stole a lunar rocket ride from Alabama to send a space robot to Jupiter in search of the second Garden of Eden at the bottom of an alien ocean Inside from 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 by William Morrow / HarperCollins Publishers. Reprinted with permission.